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• Case | HBS Case Collection | February 2019

  Innovate Safely—CT Scanners and Radiation Risk

  Hong Luo and Alberto Galasso

  Citation:

  Luo, Hong, and Alberto Galasso. "Innovate Safely—CT Scanners and Radiation Risk." Harvard Business School Case 719-486, February 2019.  View Details

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• Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2019

  Judgment Aggregation in Creative Production: Evidence from the Movie Industry

  Hong Luo, Jeffrey T. Macher and Michael Wahlen

  This paper studies judgment aggregation from a large number of industry experts in the selection and development of early-stage ideas. Our context is the movie industry, in which customer appeal is difficult to predict and investment costs are high. The Black List, an annual publication, ranks unproduced scripts based on anonymous nominations from film executives. We find that listed scripts are twice as likely to be released as unlisted scripts and, conditional on release, generate a higher return on investment. Further evidence supports a causal interpretation of these differences in outcomes and suggests that by aggregating expert judgment, the List is able to discern good ideas from poor ones. We also find that scripts from less-experienced writers are more likely to be listed and to rank higher if listed. Yet in terms of release probability, even though being listed has a large and positive effect on less-experienced writers, the discrepancy relative to experienced writers remains large (even for the top-ranked scripts). These results on writer experience suggest a simple, albeit important, determinant of the data-generating process of such aggregations—the visibility of an idea among potential evaluators.

  Keywords: judgment aggregation; Creativity; Film Entertainment; Judgments; Motion Pictures and Video Industry;

  Citation:

  Luo, Hong, Jeffrey T. Macher, and Michael Wahlen. "Judgment Aggregation in Creative Production: Evidence from the Movie Industry." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-082, January 2019.  View Details

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• Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2018

  Infringing Use as a Path to Legal Consumption: Evidence from a Field Experiment

  Hong Luo and Julie Holland Mortimer

  Copyright infringement may result from frictions preventing legal consumption, but may also reveal demand. Motivated by this fact, we run a field experiment in which we contact firms that are caught infringing on expensive digital images. Emails to all firms include a link to the licensing page of the infringed image; for treated firms, we add links to a significantly cheaper licensing site. Making infringers aware of the cheaper option leads to a fourteen-fold increase in the ex-post licensing rate. Two additional experimental interventions are designed to reduce search costs for (i) price and (ii) product information. Both intervention—immediate price comparison and recommendation of images similar to those infringed—have large positive effects. Our results highlight the importance of mitigating user costs in small-value transactions.

  Keywords: copyright infringement; field experiment;

  Citation:

  Luo, Hong, and Julie Holland Mortimer. "Infringing Use as a Path to Legal Consumption: Evidence from a Field Experiment." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-081, January 2019.  View Details

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