Publications

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01 Dec 2015
First Look

December 1, 2015

will have an important future impact on our understanding of consumer psychology. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=50106 forthcoming Management Science Experimental Evidence of Pooling Outcomes Under Information Asymmetry By: Schmidt,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

10 Jan 2012
First Look

First Look: January 10

within markets: When sentiment is high, future returns are low on relatively difficult to arbitrage and difficult to value stocks. Private capital flows appear to be one mechanism by which sentiment spreads across markets and forms global... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

April 2024
Article

Detecting Routines: Applications to Ridesharing CRM

By: Ryan Dew, Eva Ascarza, Oded Netzer and Nachum Sicherman

Routines shape many aspects of day-to-day consumption. While prior work has established the importance of habits in consumer behavior, little work has been done to understand the implications of routines—which we define as repeated behaviors with recurring, temporal... View Details

Keywords: Ride-sharing; Routine; Machine Learning; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior; Segmentation

12 Mar 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, March 12, 2019

emergent machine of the sovereign state. Yet such strategic interaction rarely yielded a decisive victory for either the secular state or for religion. By tracing how state-builders engaged religious institutions, elites, and attachments,... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

August 2006
Article

Predicting Returns with Managerial Decision Variables: Is There a Small-Sample Bias?

By: Malcolm Baker, Ryan Taliaferro and Jeffrey Wurgler

Many studies find that aggregate managerial decision variables, such as aggregate equity issuance, predict stock or bond market returns. Recent research argues that these findings may be driven by an aggregate time-series version of Schultz's (2003, Journal of Finance... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Fairness; Managerial Roles; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Equity; Bonds; Financial Markets; Investment; Capital Markets; Borrowing and Debt; Investment Return

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Forthcoming
Article

Mitigating the Negative Effects of Customer Anxiety Through Access to Human Contact

By: Michelle A. Kinch and Ryan W. Buell

Prior research in social psychology has shown that when people feel anxious, they seek advice from others. However, companies that operate in high-anxiety settings (like financial services, health care, and education) are increasingly deploying self-service... View Details

Keywords: Anxiety; Self-service; Empirical Operations; Behavioral Operations; Communication Technology; Behavior; Customer Focus and Relationships; Trust; Satisfaction; Financial Services Industry

05 Nov 2013
First Look

First Look: November 5

role of firms as facilitators of globalization during the nineteenth century and more recently and as preservers of it when governments sought to close it down in the interwar years. However the ability of firms to shape the world was always constrained, especially... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2022
Working Paper

Confidence, Self-Selection and Bias in the Aggregate

By: Benjamin Enke, Thomas Graeber and Ryan Oprea

The influence of behavioral biases on aggregate outcomes like prices and allocations depends in part on self-selection: whether rational people opt more strongly into aggregate interactions than biased individuals. We conduct a series of betting market, auction and... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Cognition and Thinking; Markets; Price

23 Jun 2015
First Look

First Look: June 23, 2015

Experiment of On-the-job Learning of Knowledge Production by Local Workers Reporting to Return Migrants By: Choudhury, Prithwiraj Abstract—I study whether return migrants facilitate knowledge production by... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

14 Nov 2017
First Look

New Research and Ideas: November 14, 2017

experts to discuss how researchers can impact a broader audience, by lending their scientific expertise to pressing social issues, current events, and public debates. The landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, in which the Supreme... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

05 Jun 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, June 5, 2018

Swiss Mechanical Watchmaking, 1970-2008 By: Raffaelli, Ryan Abstract—In 1983, 14 years after the introduction of the battery-powered quartz watch, mechanical watches and the Swiss watchmakers who built them were predicted to be obsolete... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

25 Sep 2012
First Look

First Look: September 25

of tomorrow's innovative new products, arguing that companies must reinvest in new product and process development in the U.S. industrial sector. Only by reviving this "industrial commons" can the world's largest economy build... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2016
Article

Buying to Blunt Negative Feelings: Materialistic Escape from the Self

By: Grant Edward Donnelly, Masha Ksendzova, Ryan Howell, Kathleen Vohs and Roy F. Baumeister

We propose that escape theory, which describes how individuals seek to free themselves from aversive states of self-awareness, helps explain key patterns of materialistic people’s behavior. As predicted by escape theory, materialistic individuals may feel dissatisfied... View Details

Keywords: Materialism; Escape; Self; Negative Emotions; Self-awareness; Emotions; Consumer Behavior; Identity; Motivation and Incentives

2016
Article

Does volunteering improve well-being?

By: A.V. Whillans, Scott C. Seider, Lihan Chen, Ryan J. Dwyer, Sarah Novick, Kathryn J. Gramigna, Brittany A. Mitchell, Victoria Savalei, Sally S. Dickerson and Elizabeth W. Dunn

Does volunteering causally improve well-being? To empirically test this question, we examined one instantiation of volunteering that is common at post-secondary institutions across North America: community service learning (CSL). CSL is a form of experiential learning... View Details

Keywords: Prosocial Behavior; College Students; Bayesian Statistics; Education; Well-being

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24 Dec 2013
First Look

First Look: December 24

differs by firm ownership. We study CEOs in the Indian manufacturing sector, where family ownership is widespread and the productivity dispersion across firms is substantial. Time use analysis of 356 CEOs of listed firms yields three sets... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

September 2014 (Revised June 2016)
Case

Whole Foods: The Path to 1,000 Stores

By: David F. Drake, Ryan W. Buell, Melissa Barton, Taylor Jones, Katrina Keverian and Jeffrey Stock

The case examines the operations strategy of Whole Foods, one of the largest natural grocery chains in the United States. In late 2013, Whole Foods was expanding rapidly, with a publicly-stated goal of growing from 351 to 1,000 domestic stores by 2022. It was also... View Details

Keywords: Human Capital; Food; Expansion; Market Entry and Exit; Operations; Strategy; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

Educators

05 Aug 2014
First Look

First Look: August 5

shape important outcomes in organizations, such as individual stress and well-being, intergroup conflict, performance, and change. By providing a way to investigate patterns of relationships among multiple identities, the identity network... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

November 2016 (Revised August 2020)
Case

Improving Access at VA

By: Ryan W. Buell, Robert S. Huckman and Sam Travers

In 2015, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) ran the largest healthcare system in the United States, with over 1,700 sites of care that served nearly 9 million veterans. One year earlier, a scandal had erupted over a cover-up of the excessive wait times veterans... View Details

Keywords: Service Operations; Service Delivery; Social Issues; Health Care and Treatment; Government Administration; Performance Improvement; Public Administration Industry; Health Industry; United States

Educators