Faculty & Research

Publications

Publications

Filter Results : (129) Arrow Down

Show Results For

Causality Remove Causality →

Page 1 of 129 Results →

Are you looking for?

→ Search All HBS Web
  • October 2021
  • Article

Board Design and Governance Failures at Peer Firms
By: Shelby Gai, J. Yo-Jud Cheng and Andy Wu
Our study introduces board committees as a crucial determinant of board actions. We examine how directors who structurally link different board committees—referred to as multi-committee directors (MCDs)—explain why some board actions are merely symbolic while others...  View Details
Keywords: Board Committees; Board Monitoring; New Director Nomination; Peer Financial Restatements; Governing and Advisory Boards; Corporate Governance; Performance Effectiveness
Related
  • 2021
  • Working Paper

The Luck of the Draw: The Causal Effect of Physicians on Birth Outcomes
By: Arlen Guarin, Christian Posso, Estefania Saravia and Jorge Tamayo
We estimate the effect of physicians on health outcomes by exploiting a Colombian government program that randomly assigns newly graduated physicians to hospitals across the country. Using administrative data from the program, vital statistics records, and individual...  View Details
Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; Colombia
Related
  • 2021
  • Working Paper

Consumer Choice and Corporate Bankruptcy
By: Samuel Antill and Megan Hunter
Using an incentivized randomized experiment, we estimate the causal effect of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing on consumer demand for the bankrupt firm's products. Knowledge of Hertz's Chapter 11 bankruptcy reduces consumers' willingness-to-pay for Hertz by 35%. We show...  View Details
Keywords: Consumer Choice; Bankruptcy; Financial Distress; Structural Estimation; Experimental Economics; Hertz; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Consumer Behavior
Related
  • July 2021
  • Article

Consumers—Especially Women—Avoid Buying from Firms with Higher Gender Pay Gaps
By: Tobias Schlager, Bhavya Mohan, Katherine DeCelles and Michael I. Norton
We document a unique driver of consumer behavior: the public disclosure of a firm’s gender pay gap. Four experiments provide causal evidence that when firms are revealed to have gender pay gaps, consumers are less willing to pay for their goods, a reaction driven by...  View Details
Keywords: Pay Gap; Perceived Wage Fairness; Purchase Intention; Gender; Wages; Fairness; Perception; Consumer Behavior
Related
  • 2021
  • Working Paper

Dirty Money: How Banks Influence Financial Crime
By: Joseph Pacelli, Janet Gao, Jan Schneemeier and Yufeng Wu
On September 21st, 2020, a consortium of international journalists leaked nearly 2,500 suspicious activity reports (SAR) obtained from the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, exposing nearly $2 trillion of money laundering activity. The event raises important...  View Details
Related
  • July 2021
  • Article

How Trust and Distrust Shape Perception and Memory
By: Ann-Christin Posten and Francesca Gino
Trust is a key ingredient in decision making, as it allows us to rely on the information we receive. Although trust is usually viewed as a positive element of decision making, we suggest that its effects on memory are costly rather than beneficial. Across nine studies...  View Details
Keywords: Distrust; Memory; Similarity; Misinformation; Trust; Perception; Decision Making
Related
  • July–August 2021
  • Article

Surfacing the Submerged State: Operational Transparency Increases Trust in and Engagement with Government
By: Ryan W. Buell, Ethan Porter and Michael I. Norton
Problem definition: As trust in government reaches historic lows, frustration with government performance approaches record highs. Academic/practical relevance: We propose that in co-productive settings like government services, peoples’ trust and...  View Details
Keywords: Government Services; Behavioral Operations; Operational Transparency; Government Administration; Service Operations; Programs; Perception; Attitudes; Behavior; Trust
Related
  • 2021
  • Working Paper

Which Markets (Don't) Drive Pharmaceutical Innovation? Evidence From U.S. Medicaid Expansions
By: Craig Garthwaite, Rebecca Sachs and Ariel Dora Stern
Pharmaceutical innovation policy involves managing a tradeoff between high prices for new products in the short-term and stronger incentives to develop products for the future. Prior research has documented a causal relationship between market size and pharmaceutical...  View Details
Keywords: Pharmaceuticals; Medicaid; Innovation and Invention; Policy; Markets; Research and Development; Pharmaceutical Industry
Related
  • 2021
  • Working Paper

Diversity and Performance in Entrepreneurial Teams
By: Sophie Calder-Wang, Paul A. Gompers and Kevin Huang
We study the role of diversity and performance in the entrepreneurial teams. We exploit a unique dataset of MBA students who participated in a required course to propose and start a real micro-business that allows us to examine horizontal diversity (i.e., within the...  View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Groups and Teams; Diversity; Performance
Related
  • 2021
  • Working Paper

Population Interference in Panel Experiments
By: Iavor I Bojinov, Kevin Wu Han and Guillaume Basse
The phenomenon of population interference, where a treatment assigned to one experimental unit affects another experimental unit's outcome, has received considerable attention in standard randomized experiments. The complications produced by population interference in...  View Details
Keywords: Finite Population; Potential Outcomes; Dynamic Causal Effects; Mathematical Methods
Related
  • 2021
  • Working Paper

Achieving Reliable Causal Inference with Data-Mined Variables: A Random Forest Approach to the Measurement Error Problem
By: Mochen Yang, Edward McFowland III, Gordon Burtch and Gediminas Adomavicius
Combining machine learning with econometric analysis is becoming increasingly prevalent in both research and practice. A common empirical strategy involves the application of predictive modeling techniques to "mine" variables of interest from available data, followed...  View Details
Keywords: Machine Learning; Econometric Analysis; Instrumental Variable; Random Forest; Causal Inference
Related
  • January 2021
  • Article

Commuting and Innovation: Are Closer Inventors More Productive?
By: Hongyu Xiao, Andy Wu and Jaeho Kim
We estimate the causal effect of workplace–home commuting distance on inventor productivity. We construct a novel panel of U.S. inventors with precisely measured workplace–home distances and inventor-level productivity. Our identification strategy exploits firm office...  View Details
Keywords: Commuting; Proximity; Inventors; Innovation; Relocation; Telecommuting; Geographic Location; Technological Innovation; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; United States
Related
  • January 2021
  • Article

Machine Learning for Pattern Discovery in Management Research
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Ryan Allen and Michael G. Endres
Supervised machine learning (ML) methods are a powerful toolkit for discovering robust patterns in quantitative data. The patterns identified by ML could be used for exploratory inductive or abductive research, or for post-hoc analysis of regression results to detect...  View Details
Keywords: Machine Learning; Supervised Machine Learning; Induction; Abduction; Exploratory Data Analysis; Pattern Discovery; Decision Trees; Random Forests; Neural Networks; ROC Curve; Confusion Matrix; Partial Dependence Plots
Related
  • 2021
  • Working Paper

The Psychosocial Value of Employment
By: Reshmaan Hussam, Erin M. Kelley, Gregory Lane and Fatima Zahra
In settings where employment opportunities are scarce, the inability to work may generate psychosocial harm. This paper presents a causal estimate of the psychosocial value of employment in the Rohingya refugee camps of Bangladesh. We engage 745 individuals in a field...  View Details
Keywords: Psychosocial Wellbeing; Employment; Refugees; Social Psychology; Well-being
Related
  • 2020
  • Working Paper

Dog Eat Dog: Measuring Network Effects Using a Digital Platform Merger
By: Chiara Farronato, Jessica Fong and Andrey Fradkin
Digital platforms are increasingly the subject of regulatory scrutiny. In comparison to multiple competitors, a single platform may increase consumer welfare if network effects are large or may decrease welfare due to higher prices or reduction in platform variety. We...  View Details
Keywords: Digital Platforms; Market Platforms; Network Effects; Measurement and Metrics
Related
  • 2020
  • Working Paper

Income Volatility Increases Financial Impatience
By: Colin West, A.V. Whillans and Sanford DeVoe
Using a multi-method approach, we investigate whether income volatility is associated with financial impatience—the preference to receive a small sum of money immediately over a larger sum of money later. We find that experiencing more income volatility—including a...  View Details
Keywords: Income Volatility; Compensation; Impatience; Time Preferences; Income; Personal Finance; Behavior; Demographics; Policy
Related
  • 2020
  • Working Paper

The Effects of Temporal Distance on Intra-Firm Communication: Evidence from Daylight Savings Time
By: Jasmina Chauvin, Prithwiraj Choudhury and Tommy Pan Fang
Cross-border communication costs have plummeted and enabled the global distribution of work, but frictions attributable to distance persist. We estimate the causal effects of temporal distance stemming from time zone differences on intra-firm communication. We argue...  View Details
Keywords: Communication Patterns; Time Zones; Geographic Frictions; Knowledge Workers; Multinational Companies; Communication; Multinational Firms and Management; Geographic Location
Related
  • Article

The Importance of Being Causal
By: Iavor I Bojinov, Albert Chen and Min Liu
Causal inference is the study of how actions, interventions, or treatments affect outcomes of interest. The methods that have received the lion’s share of attention in the data science literature for establishing causation are variations of randomized experiments....  View Details
Keywords: Causal Inference; Observational Studies; Cross-sectional Studies; Panel Studies; Interrupted Time-series; Instrumental Variables
Related
  • 2020
  • Working Paper

When Do Experts Listen to Other Experts? The Role of Negative Information in Expert Evaluations for Novel Projects
By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Misha Teplitskiy, Gary Gray, Hardeep Ranu, Michael Menietti, Eva C. Guinan and Karim R. Lakhani
The evaluation of novel projects lies at the heart of scientific and technological innovation, and yet literature suggests that this process is subject to inconsistency and potential biases. This paper investigates the role of information sharing among experts as the...  View Details
Keywords: Project Evaluation; Innovation; Knowledge Frontier; Negativity Bias; Projects; Innovation and Invention; Information; Diversity; Judgments
Related
  • 2020
  • Working Paper

Open Source Software and Global Entrepreneurship
By: Nataliya Langburd Wright, Frank Nagle and Shane Greenstein
Does more activity in open source lead to more entrepreneurial activity and, if so, how much, and in what direction? This study measures how participation on the GitHub open source platform affects the founding of new ventures globally. We estimate these effects using...  View Details
Keywords: Open Source Software; GitHub; Software; Entrepreneurship; Global Range; Development Economics
Related

Are you looking for?

→ Search All HBS Web