Publications

09 Jan 2014
Research & Ideas

The Entrepreneurs Who Invented Economic Forecasting

economic future? How have forecasting methods changed over time? What makes one forecaster more popular than another? I chose to research these questions by focusing on the first generation of economic... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

01 Mar 2017
News

Students Forecast Climate Change’s Impact

this past fall with an open challenge: choose an organization whose operating model will be significantly affected by climate change, and tell us what it should be doing to address it. Students posted responses to the prompt on HBS’s Open... View Details

Keywords: Dan Morrell

2022
Working Paper

Human-Computer Interactions in Demand Forecasting and Labor Scheduling Decisions

By: Caleb Kwon, Ananth Raman and Jorge Tamayo

We empirically analyze how managerial overrides to a commercial algorithm that forecasts demand and schedules labor affect store performance. We analyze administrative data from a large grocery retailer that utilizes a commercial algorithm to forecast demand and... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Human Capital; Performance; Applications and Software; Management Skills; Management Practices and Processes; Retail Industry

SSRN

September 2011
Article

How Did Increased Competition Affect Credit Ratings?

The credit rating industry has historically been dominated by just two agencies, Moody's and S&P, leading to longstanding legislative and regulatory calls for increased competition. The material entry of a third rating agency (Fitch) to the competitive landscape offers... View Details

Keywords: Credit; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Competition; Forecasting and Prediction; Theory

Article

Getting the Most Out of Giving: Concretely Framing a Prosocial Goal Maximizes Happiness

By: Melanie Rudd, Jennifer Aaker and Michael I. Norton

Across six field and laboratory experiments, participants assigned a more concretely-framed prosocial goal (e.g., making someone smile or increasing recycling) felt happier and reported creating greater personal happiness after performing a goal-directed act of... View Details

Keywords: Prosocial Behavior; Goal Framing; Affective Forecasting; Goals and Objectives; Happiness; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

Article

Dying Is Unexpectedly Positive

By: Amelia Goranson, Ryan S. Ritter, Adam Waytz, Michael I. Norton and Kurt Gray

In people’s imagination, dying seems dreadful; however, these perceptions may not reflect reality. In two studies, we compared the affective experience of people facing imminent death with that of people imagining imminent death. Study 1 revealed that blog posts of... View Details

Keywords: Death; Language; LIWC; Positivity; Affective Forecasting; Open Materials; Perspective; Attitudes

17 Sep 2012
Research & Ideas

Blue Skies, Distractions Arise: How Weather Affects Productivity

conducted the sessions of the study to take advantage of natural variation, and then we experimentally manipulated subjects' exposure to outside options," the authors explain in the paper. Half of the participants were asked to come to the lab on days View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

July 2024 (Revised September 2024)
Case

Shell’s Balancing Act: Resource Allocation and the Green Transition (Abridged)

By: David Collis and Haisley Wert

In mid-2023, amid pressure from climate change activists, shareholder activists, and confronting enormous uncertainty about the future demand for and price of fossil fuels, new Shell CEO Wael Sawan (Harvard MBA 2003) announced a change in strategy for the U.K. oil... View Details

Keywords: Oil ＆ Gas; Renewables; Forecasting Demand; Strategy; Energy; Climate Change; Resource Allocation; Corporate Strategy; Investment Activism; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Energy Industry

Educators

2021
Working Paper

Entrepreneurial Learning and Strategic Foresight

By: Aticus Peterson and Andy Wu

We study how learning by experience across projects affects an entrepreneur's strategic foresight. In a quantitative study of 314 entrepreneurs across 722 crowdfunded projects supplemented with a program of qualitative interviews, we counterintuitively find that... View Details

Keywords: Experience; Interdependency; Strategic Foresight; Crowdfunding; Timeline; Delay; Forecasting; Entrepreneurship; Learning; Complexity; Forecasting and Prediction; Product Development; Planning

September 2017
Article

The Belief in a Favorable Future

By: Todd Rogers, Don A. Moore and Michael I. Norton

People believe that future others’ preferences and beliefs will change to align with their own. People holding a particular view (e.g., support of President Trump) are more likely to believe that future others will share their view than to believe that future others... View Details

Keywords: Social Cognition; Judgment; Prediction; Forecasting; False Consensus; Donation; Open Data; Open Materials; Preregistered; Forecasting and Prediction; Perception; Values and Beliefs; Behavior

2003
Article

Confirming Management Earnings Forecasts, Earnings Uncertainty, and Stock Returns

By: Michael B. Clement, Richard Frankel and Jeffrey Miller

In this study we examine the association among confirming management forecasts, stock prices, and analyst expectations. Confirming management forecasts are voluntary disclosures by management that corroborate existing market expectations about future earnings. This... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Corporate Disclosure; Price; Stocks; Investment Return

Purchase

Research Summary

Effective Capital Market Communications

Hutton's most recent research and cases examine how managers enhance the credibility and effectiveness of their financial reports and voluntary disclosures. Her most recent working paper, "Effective Voluntary Disclosure" (co-authored with Greg Miller, HBS, and Douglas... View Details

November 2024
Article

Perceptions About Monetary Policy

By: Michael D. Bauer, Carolin Pflueger and Adi Sunderam

We estimate perceptions about the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy rule from panel data on professional forecasts of interest rates and macroeconomic conditions. The perceived dependence of the federal funds rate on economic conditions varies substantially over time,... View Details

Keywords: Monetary Policy; Policy; Interest Rates; Perception; Economy; Forecasting and Prediction

2012
Working Paper

Issuer Quality and Corporate Bond Returns

By: Robin Greenwood and Samuel G. Hanson

We show that the credit quality of corporate debt issuers deteriorates during credit booms, and that this deterioration forecasts low excess returns to corporate bondholders. The key insight is that changes in the pricing of credit risk disproportionately affect the... View Details

Keywords: Price; Credit; Risk and Uncertainty; Investment Return; Forecasting and Prediction; Bonds; Market Design; Cost of Capital; Mathematical Methods; System Shocks

June 2013
Article

Issuer Quality and Corporate Bond Returns

By: Robin Greenwood and Samuel G. Hanson

We show that the credit quality of corporate debt issuers deteriorates during credit booms, and that this deterioration forecasts low excess returns to corporate bondholders. The key insight is that changes in the pricing of credit risk disproportionately affect the... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Bonds; Forecasting and Prediction; Credit

05 May 2022
HBS Seminar

Caleb Kwon, Harvard Business School

May 2018 (Revised October 2019)
Case

Managing the Future of Work

By: William R. Kerr, Allison Ciechanover and Jeff Huizinga

By 2019, leaders from the public and private sector had become increasingly anxious about how advanced technologies and aging global populations could affect labor markets, workplaces, and workers’ lives. Some analysts forecasted that hundreds of millions of workers... View Details

Keywords: Labor Markets; Workplace; Employment; Technological Innovation; Demographics; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change Management; Problems and Challenges; Opportunities

Educators

Purchase

2023
Working Paper

Algorithm Failures and Consumers' Response: Evidence from Zillow

By: Isamar Troncoso, Runshan Fu, Nikhil Malik and Davide Proserpio

In November 2021, Zillow announced the closure of its iBuyer business. Popular media largely attributed this to a failure of its proprietary forecasting algorithm. We study the response of consumers to Zillow’s iBuyer business closure. We show that after the iBuyer... View Details

Keywords: Algorithmic Pricing; Price; Forecasting and Prediction; Consumer Behavior; Real Estate Industry