More from the Author

• Article | Journal of Economics & Management Strategy | Spring 2013

  Salience in Quality Disclosure: Evidence from the U.S. News College Rankings

  Michael Luca and Jonathan Smith

  How do rankings affect demand? This paper investigates the impact of college rankings, and the visibility of those rankings, on students' application decisions. Using natural experiments from U.S. News and World Report College Rankings, we present two main findings. First, we identify a causal impact of rankings on application decisions. When explicit rankings of colleges are published in U.S. News, a one-rank improvement leads to a 1-percentage-point increase in the number of applications to that college. Second, we show that the response to the information represented in rankings depends on the way in which that information is presented. Rankings have no effect on application decisions when colleges are listed alphabetically, even when readers are provided data on college quality and the methodology used to calculate rankings. This finding provides evidence that the salience of information is a central determinant of a firm's demand function, even for purchases as large as college attendance.

  Keywords: Rank and Position; Demand and Consumers; Quality; Decisions; Newspapers; United States;

  Citation:

  Luca, Michael, and Jonathan Smith. "Salience in Quality Disclosure: Evidence from the U.S. News College Rankings." Journal of Economics & Management Strategy 22, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 58–77.

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• Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2011

  Salience in Quality Disclosure: Evidence from the U.S. News College Rankings

  Michael Luca and Jonathan Smith

  How do rankings affect demand? This paper investigates the impact of college rankings, and the visibility of those rankings, on students' application decisions. Using natural experiments from U.S. News and World Report College Rankings, we present two main findings. First, we identify a causal impact of rankings on application decisions. When explicit rankings of colleges are published in U.S. News, a one-rank improvement leads to a 1-percentage-point increase in the number of applications to that college. Second, we show that the response to the information represented in rankings depends on the way in which that information is presented. Rankings have no effect on application decisions when colleges are listed alphabetically, even when readers are provided data on college quality and the methodology used to calculate rankings. This finding provides evidence that the salience of information is a central determinant of a firm's demand function, even for purchases as large as college attendance.

  Keywords: Education; Quality; Information Publishing; Rank and Position; Demand and Consumers;

  Citation:

  Luca, Michael, and Jonathan Smith. "Salience in Quality Disclosure: Evidence from the U.S. News College Rankings." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 12–014, September 2011.

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• Mimeo | 2010

  An Analysis of the Impact of 'Substantially Heightened' Capital Requirements on Large Financial Institutions

  Anil Kashyap, Jeremy C. Stein and Samuel G. Hanson

  We examine the impact of "substantially heightened" capital requirements on large financial institutions, and on their customers. Our analysis yields three main conclusions. First, the frictions associated with raising new external equity finance are likely to be greater than the ongoing costs of holding equity on the balance sheet, implying that the new requirements should be phased in gradually. Second, the long-run steady-state impact on loan rates is likely to be modest, in the range of 25 to 45 basis points for a ten percentage-point increase in the capital requirement. Third, due to the unique nature of competition in financial services, even these modest effects raise significant concerns about migration of credit-creation activity to the shadow-banking sector, and the potential for increased fragility of the overall financial system that this might bring. Thus to avoid tilting the playing field in such a way as to generate a variety of damaging unintended consequences, increased regulation of the shadowbanking sector should be seen as an important complement to the reforms that are contemplated for banks and other large financial institutions.

  Keywords: Financial Institutions; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Capital; Equity; Financing and Loans; Credit;

  Citation:

  Kashyap, Anil, Jeremy C. Stein, and Samuel G. Hanson. "An Analysis of the Impact of 'Substantially Heightened' Capital Requirements on Large Financial Institutions." 2010. Mimeo.

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