Negotiation, Organizations & Markets
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- 2025
- Chapter
Employer-Based Short-Term Savings Accounts
By: Sarah Holmes Berk, John Beshears, Jay Garg, James J. Choi and David LaibsonWe study the introduction of a choice architecture design intended to increase short-term savings among employees at five U.K. firms. Employees were offered the opportunity to opt into a payroll deduction program that auto-deposits funds from each paycheck into a short-term savings account from which withdrawals are possible at any time. We find that employees who opted into the program kept using it. Among employees whose accounts were created early enough to be observed over the first 12 months after their account activation and who did not separate from employment during this period, 96% still had a balance greater than £1 and 87% received an automatic payroll contribution in month 12. However, product take-up was very low: no more than 0.7% of eligible employees ever activated an account. Opt-in access to short-term savings programs does not elicit widespread participation.
- 2025
- Chapter
Employer-Based Short-Term Savings Accounts
By: Sarah Holmes Berk, John Beshears, Jay Garg, James J. Choi and David LaibsonWe study the introduction of a choice architecture design intended to increase short-term savings among employees at five U.K. firms. Employees were offered the opportunity to opt into a payroll deduction program that auto-deposits funds from each paycheck into a short-term savings account from which withdrawals are possible at any time. We find...
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- May 2025
- Article
Imagining the Future: Memory, Simulation and Beliefs
By: Pedro Bordalo, Giovanni Burro, Katherine B. Coffman, Nicola Gennaioli and Andrei ShleiferHow do people form beliefs about novel risks, with which they have little or no experience? Motivated by survey data on beliefs about Covid we collected in 2020, we build a model based on the psychology of selective memory. When a person thinks about an event, different experiences compete for retrieval, and retrieved experiences are used to simulate the event based on how similar they are to it. The model predicts that different experiences interfere with each other in recall and that non domain-specific experiences can bias beliefs based on their similarity to the assessed event. We test these predictions using data from our Covid survey and from a primed-recall experiment about cyberattack risk. In line with our theory of similarity-based retrieval and simulation, experiences and their measured similarity to the cued event help account for experience effects, priming effects, and the interaction of the two in shaping beliefs.
- May 2025
- Article
Imagining the Future: Memory, Simulation and Beliefs
By: Pedro Bordalo, Giovanni Burro, Katherine B. Coffman, Nicola Gennaioli and Andrei ShleiferHow do people form beliefs about novel risks, with which they have little or no experience? Motivated by survey data on beliefs about Covid we collected in 2020, we build a model based on the psychology of selective memory. When a person thinks about an event, different experiences compete for retrieval, and retrieved experiences are used to...
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- 2025
- Working Paper
The Invention of Corporate Governance
By: Yueran Ma and Andrei ShleiferThe analysis of corporate governance begins with a central feature of modern capitalism—the separation of ownership and control in large corporations—first empirically documented by Berle and Means (1932). Such separation entails several agency problems reflecting conflicts between managers and shareholders, such as self-dealing by managers, low effort, consumption of perquisites, and excessive growth and diversification. Berle and Means saw self-dealing as the central agency problem and stressed the law as the fundamental mechanism of addressing it. Jensen and Meckling (1976) considered the consumption of perquisites and emphasized private mechanisms, such as financial incentives for managers, to counter wasteful perks. Jensen (1986) instead focused on excessive growth and diversification, which led him to count on leverage and takeovers. The combination of public corporate governance mechanisms, mostly the law, and market governance shaped both theory and practice.
- 2025
- Working Paper
The Invention of Corporate Governance
By: Yueran Ma and Andrei ShleiferThe analysis of corporate governance begins with a central feature of modern capitalism—the separation of ownership and control in large corporations—first empirically documented by Berle and Means (1932). Such separation entails several agency problems reflecting conflicts between managers and shareholders, such as self-dealing by managers, low...
About the Unit
The NOM Unit seeks to understand and improve the design and management of systems in which people make decisions: that is, design and management of negotiations, organizations, and markets. In addition, members of the group share an abiding interest in the micro foundations of these phenomena.
Our work is grounded in the power of strategic interaction to encourage individuals and organizations to create and sustain value (in negotiations, in organizations, and in markets). We explore these interactions through diverse approaches: Although many of us have training in economics, we also have members with backgrounds in social psychology, sociology, and law.
NOM seeks to apply rigorous scientific methods to real-world problems -- producing research and pedagogy that is compelling to both the academy and practitioners.
Recent Publications
Dungeons & Dragons: Repairing Ecosystem Trust (B)
- May 2025 |
- Supplement |
- Faculty Research
Dungeons & Dragons: Repairing Ecosystem Trust (A) and (B)
- May 2025 |
- Teaching Note |
- Faculty Research
Employer-Based Short-Term Savings Accounts
- 2025 |
- Chapter |
- Faculty Research
Imagining the Future: Memory, Simulation and Beliefs
- May 2025 |
- Article |
- Review of Economic Studies
The Invention of Corporate Governance
- 2025 |
- Working Paper |
- Faculty Research
Gender and Preferences for Performance Feedback
- April 2025 |
- Article |
- Management Science
Buying (Quality) Time Predicts Relationship Satisfaction
- April 2025 |
- Article |
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Bidding for the Bunker: Crown Wine Cellars’ Complex Negotiations
- March 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
Harvard Business Publishing
Seminars & Conferences
There are no upcoming events.