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- June 2025
- Article
Collusion in Brokered Markets
By: John William Hatfield, Scott Duke Kominers and Richard Lowery
High commissions in the U.S. residential real estate agency market present a puzzle for economic theory because brokerage is not a concentrated industry. We model brokered markets as a game in which agents post prices for customers and then choose which other agents to... View Details
Keywords: Real Estate Agents; Real Estate; Realtors; Broker Networks; Brokerage; Brokerage Commissions; ＂Brokerage Industry; Brokered Markets; Brokering; Brokers; Industrial Organization; Repeated Game Framework; ＂Repeated Games＂; Collusion; Antitrust; Microeconomics; Market Design; Theory; Game Theory; Real Estate Industry
- June 2025
- Article
What Board-level Control Mechanisms Changed in Banks Following the 2008 Financial Crisis? A Descriptive Study
By: Shelly Li, Shivram Rajgopal, Suraj Srinivasan and Yu Ting Forester Wong
Following the 2008 financial crisis, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) identified major shortcomings in bank board governance, contributing to systemic risk management failures. This study adapts a management control framework and empirically examines... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Partisan Corporate Speech
By: William Cassidy and Elisabeth Kempf
We construct a novel measure of partisan corporate speech using natural language
processing techniques and use it to establish three stylized facts. First, the volume
of partisan corporate speech has risen sharply between 2012 and 2022. Second, this
increase has... View Details
- April 2025 (Revised May 2025)
- Background Note
Customer Acquisition and the Cash Flow Trap
By: E. Ofek, Barak Libai and Eitan Muller
Startups as well as existing firms recognize the need to invest in order to acquire customers for their new ventures. And as each customer is expected at some point to have generated sufficient gross margins to cover their CAC, management expects that, soon enough, the... View Details
- 2025
- Report
High Stakes: A Framework for Geopolitical Risk Management
By: Meg Rithmire and David Fagan
This report provides a data-based assessment of how U.S. companies perceive geopolitical risk and articulates a recommended decision-making process and framework to manage such risk. The research reflected in the report indicates that various concerns related to China... View Details
- April 2025
- Article
Buying (Quality) Time Predicts Relationship Satisfaction
By: A.V. Whillans, Jessie Pow and Joe J. Gladstone
Seven studies examine the association between time-saving purchases (e.g., housecleaning and meal delivery services) and relationship satisfaction. Study 1 uses an eleven-year longitudinal panel survey to show that increases in time-saving purchases predict long-term... View Details
- April 2025
- Article
The Allocation of Socially Responsible Capital
By: Daniel Green and Benjamin N. Roth
Portfolio allocation decisions increasingly incorporate social values. We develop a tractable framework to study how competition between investors to own socially valuable assets affects social welfare. Relative to the most common social-investing strategies, we... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Transferability MATTRs: Towards Understanding Antecedents of Strategic Licensing
By: Dafna F. Bearson and Maria P. Roche
This paper examines the antecedents of firms’ decisions to license intellectual property
(IP). We propose a conceptual framework emphasizing two critical factors: (1) transferability,
which we define as the ease of moving knowledge embodied in inventions across
firm... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
How to Choose Among Technologies with Learning Curves: Making Better Investment Decisions
By: Christian Kaps and Arielle Anderer
Learning curves, the fact that technologies improve as a function of cumulative experience or investment, are desirable-think inexpensive solar panels or higher performing semiconductors. But, for firms that need to pick one technology among several candidates, such as... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Incentive-Compatible Recovery from Manipulated Signals, with Applications to Decentralized Physical Infrastructure
By: Jason Milionis, Jens Ernstberger, Joseph Bonneau, Scott Duke Kominers and Tim Roughgarden
We introduce the first formal model capturing the elicitation of unverifiable information from a party (the "source") with implicit signals derived by other players (the "observers"). Our model is motivated in part by applications in decentralized physical... View Details
- January 2025
- Module Note
Understanding and Addressing Gender Gaps
This module provides a framework for students to analyze how gender stereotypes, through their impact on beliefs about others and beliefs about ourselves, contribute to gender gaps in the workplace. The module proceeds in three parts. First, through a case and an... View Details
- January 2025
- Case
Constitutional Fiction: John Miller & the Legitimacy of Family Constitutions
By: Lauren Cohen, Octavian Graf Pilati and Sophia Pan
John Miller sat reviewing his family’s Constitution, grappling with how best to implement and enforce its provisions. Designed to prevent ambiguity in governance, the Family Constitution set out core values and guidelines to promote harmony and cohesion among family... View Details
Keywords: Conflict Resolution; Perspective Taking; Liabilities; Family Business; Family Ownership; Business Growth and Maturation; Alignment; Cooperation; Attitudes; Behavior; Cognition and Thinking; Conflict Management; Conflict of Interests; Power and Influence; Perception; Trust; Perspective; Motivation and Incentives; Happiness; Identity; Goals and Objectives; Legal Liability; Contracts; Fairness; Values and Beliefs; Governance Controls; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Family and Family Relationships; Manufacturing Industry; Germany
- 2025
- Article
Statistical Inference for Heterogeneous Treatment Effects Discovered by Generic Machine Learning in Randomized Experiments
By: Kosuke Imai and Michael Lingzhi Li
Researchers are increasingly turning to machine learning (ML) algorithms to investigate causal heterogeneity in randomized experiments. Despite their promise, ML algorithms may fail to accurately ascertain heterogeneous treatment effects under practical settings with... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Charting (and Updating) the Path: A Bayesian Perspective on Entrepreneurial Learning
This chapter explores two distinct modes of entrepreneurial learning: assessing
venture viability and choosing between alternative development paths. It introduces
a framework for decomposing venture viability into technological feasibility, commercial
potential and... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Priceless: How to Create, Trade, and Protect What Matters Most
By: Debora L. Spar
This article explores the concept of the "sacred economy," a realm of human interactions and exchanges that transcends traditional market dynamics. It illustrates the emotional and relational aspects of human connections that cannot be quantified or traded like... View Details
- November 2024
- Case
Innovation at Master Kong Beverages
By: David E. Bell and Shu Lin
Hong-Chen Wei (HBS MBA 2014), Chairman of KSF Beverage Holding Co., Ltd. (KSFB), was steering the company toward the premium segment with the launch of “InheriTea,” a premium, sugar-free tea product. Traditionally, KSFB’s flagship brand, Master Kong, catered to the... View Details
- November 2024
- Article
Preference Externality Estimators: A Comparison of Border Approaches and IVs
By: Xi Ling, Wesley R. Hartmann and Tomomichi Amano
This paper compares two estimators—the Border Approach and an Instrumental Variable (IV) estimator—using a unified framework where identifying variation arises from “preference externalities,” following the intuition in Waldfogel (2003). We highlight two dimensions in... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Priors, Experiments, Learning and Persuasion in (Bayesian) Entrepreneurial Finance
By: Ramana Nanda
At the heart of entrepreneurial finance lies a persuasion challenge: regardless of
the strength of an entrepreneur’s belief in the potential of their idea, they typically
need to convince investors to provide the financial capital required for its... View Details
- September–October 2024
- Article
How AI Can Power Brand Management
By: Julian De Freitas and Elie Ofek
Marketers have begun experimenting with AI to improve their brand-management efforts. But unlike other marketing tasks, brand management involves more than just repeatedly executing one specialized function. Long considered the exclusive domain of creative talent, it... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
The Wade Test: Generative AI and CEO Communication
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Bart S. Vanneste and Amirhossein Zohrehvand
Can generative artificial intelligence (Gen-AI) transform the role of the CEO? This study investigates
whether Gen-AI can mimic a human CEO and whether employees display aversion to Gen-AI
communication. We present a framework of Gen-AI aversion that distinguishes... View Details