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- November 2021
- Article
Ratings, Reviews, and the Marketing of New Products
By: Itay P. Fainmesser, Dominique Olié Lauga and Elie Ofek
We study how user-generated content (UGC) about new products impacts a firm's advertising and pricing decisions and the effect on profits and market dynamics. We construct a two-period model where consumers value quality and are heterogeneous in their taste for the new...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Rising Markups and the Role of Consumer Preferences
By: Hendrik Döpper, Alexander MacKay, Nathan H. Miller and Joel Stiebale
We characterize the evolution of markups for consumer products in the United States from 2006 to 2019. We use detailed data on prices and quantities for products in more than 100 distinct product categories to estimate demand systems with flexible consumer preferences....
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Shared Models in Networks, Organizations, and Groups
By: Joshua Schwartzstein and Adi Sunderam
Why did the market rise yesterday? What are the implications of the latest school shooting? Why did a particular employee get promoted? To answer such questions, we often exchange models, stories, narratives, and interpretations with others. This paper provides a...
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- 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...
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- 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...
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Keywords:
Pay Gap;
Perceived Wage Fairness;
Purchase Intention;
Gender;
Wages;
Fairness;
Perception;
Consumer Behavior
- July 2021
- Article
Information Transparency, Multihoming, and Platform Competition: A Natural Experiment in the Daily Deals Market
By: Hui Li and Feng Zhu
Platform competition is shaped by the likelihood of multi-homing (i.e., complementors or consumers adopt more than one platform). To take advantage of multi-homing, platform firms often attempt to motivate their rivals’ high-performing complementors to adopt their own...
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- July 2021
- Article
The Effect of Price on Firm Reputation
By: Michael Luca and Oren Reshef
While a business's reputation can affect its pricing, prices can also affect its reputation. To explore the effect of prices on reputation, we investigate daily data on menu prices and online ratings from a large rating and ordering platform. We find that a price...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Once Bitten, Twice Shy: Learning from Corporate Fraud and Corporate Governance Spillovers
By: Trung Nguyen
This paper finds that investors learn from their experience with corporate fraud and financial misconduct and modify their investment behavior to avoid suspicious firms and increase corporate governance efforts. More specially, mutual funds that experienced corporate...
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- June 23, 2021
- Article
Research: When A/B Testing Doesn't Tell You the Whole Story
By: Eva Ascarza
When it comes to churn prevention, marketers traditionally start by identifying which customers are most likely to churn, and then running A/B tests to determine whether a proposed retention intervention will be effective at retaining those high-risk customers. While...
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Keywords:
Customer Retention;
Churn;
Targeting;
Market Research;
Marketing;
Investment Return;
Customers;
Retention;
Research
- May 2021
- Article
The Firm Next Door: Using Satellite Images to Study Local Information Advantage
By: Jung Koo Kang, Lorien Stice-Lawrence and Forester Wong
We use novel satellite data that track the number of cars in the parking lots of 92,668 stores for 71 publicly listed U.S. retailers to study the local information advantage of institutional investors. We establish car counts as a timely measure of store-level...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Absenteeism, Productivity, and Relational Contracts Inside the Firm
By: Achyuta Adhvaryu, Jean-François Gauthier, Anant Nyshadham and Jorge Tamayo
We study relational contracts among managers using a unique dataset that tracks transfers of workers across teams in Indian ready-made garment factories. We focus on how relational contracts help managers cope with worker absenteeism shocks, which are frequent, often...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Information Spillovers in Experience Goods Competition
By: Zhuoqiong Charlie Chen, Christopher Stanton and Catherine Thomas
When experience goods compete, consuming one product can be informative about value for similar untried products. We study a two-period model of duopoly competition in markets that have this feature and where firms can price discriminate between consumers based on...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
How Does Going Public Affect Employee Behavior? Evidence from Brokerage IPOs
By: Joseph Pacelli, Mark Bradshaw, Michael Drake and Brady Twedt
We provide new evidence on how initial public offerings (IPOs) influence employee behavior using the brokerage industry as an empirical setting. We examine whether IPOs influence the objectivity of equity research analysts. Contrary to conventional wisdom suggesting...
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- December 2020 (Revised May 2021)
- Case
Riverstone
By: David E. Bell and Natalie Kindred
In 2020, Luke Minion and the leadership team at Riverstone, a hog producer founded in 2013 in Shandong, China, were evaluating Riverstone’s strategy as it rebounded from outbreaks of African Swine Fever (ASF) in two of its three farm complexes. Riverstone was a joint...
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Keywords:
Strategy;
Globalization;
Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues;
Animal-Based Agribusiness;
Consumer Behavior;
Demand and Consumers;
Disruption;
Risk and Uncertainty;
Risk Management;
Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry;
Food and Beverage Industry;
Consulting Industry;
United States;
China
- November 2020
- Article
Casting Conference Calls
By: Lauren Cohen, Dong Lou and Christopher J. Malloy
We explore a subtle but important mechanism through which firms can control information flow to the markets. We find that firms that “cast” their conference calls by disproportionately calling on bullish analysts tend to underperform in the future. Firms that call on...
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- November–December 2020
- Article
Lifting the Veil: The Benefits of Cost Transparency
By: Bhavya Mohan, Ryan W. Buell and Leslie K. John
Firms do not typically disclose information on their costs to produce a good to consumers. However, we provide evidence of when and why doing so can increase consumers’ purchase interest. Specifically, building on the psychology of disclosure and trust, we posit that...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Flight to Safety: How Economic Downturns Affect Talent Flows to Startups
By: Shai Benjamin Bernstein, Richard Townsend and Ting Xu
Using proprietary data from AngelList Talent, we study how individuals’ job search and application behavior changed during the COVID-19 downturn. We find that job seekers shifted their searches toward more established firms and away from early-stage startups, even...
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- October 2020
- Article
IQ from IP: Simplifying Search in Portfolio Choice
By: Huaizhi Chen, Lauren Cohen, Umit Gurun, Dong Lou and Christopher J. Malloy
Using a novel database that tracks web traffic on the SEC’s EDGAR servers between 2004 and 2015, we show that mutual fund managers gather information on a very particular subset of firms and insiders, and their surveillance is very persistent over time. This tracking...
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- September 2020
- Teaching Note
Uber: Competing Globally
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 720-404.
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Keywords:
Business Ventures;
Business Growth and Maturation;
Business Model;
Geography;
Geographic Location;
Geographic Scope;
Global Strategy;
Globalization;
Multinational Firms and Management;
Globalized Markets and Industries;
Governance;
Governance Controls;
Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms;
Innovation and Invention;
Disruptive Innovation;
Innovation Strategy;
Law;
Management;
Growth and Development;
Growth Management;
Markets;
Demand and Consumers;
Consumer Behavior;
Network Effects;
Emerging Markets;
Market Design;
Market Entry and Exit;
Market Participation;
Supply and Industry;
Industry Structures;
Planning;
Strategic Planning;
Relationships;
Business and Community Relations;
Business and Government Relations;
Business and Stakeholder Relations;
Labor and Management Relations;
Networks;
Adaptation;
Strategy;
Business Strategy;
Competition;
Competitive Advantage;
Competitive Strategy;
Expansion;
Technology;
Mobile Technology;
Technology Platform;
Transportation Networks;
Transportation;
Transportation Industry;
Technology Industry;
Africa;
Ghana;
Asia;
China;
Shanghai;
Shanghai Shi;
India;
New Delhi;
Europe;
United Kingdom;
London;
England;
Latin America;
North and Central America;
United States;
New York (city, NY);
New York (state, US);
South America;
Colombia
- 2020
- Working Paper
Consumers Punish Firms That Cut Employee Pay in Response to COVID-19
By: Bhavya Mohan, Serena Hagerty and Michael Norton
Two experiments, including one incentive compatible study, examine the impact of cutting pay for executives versus employees in response to COVID-19 on consumer behavior. Study 1 explores the effect of announcing cuts or no cuts to CEO and employee pay, and shows that...
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