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- September 16, 2022
- Article
A Causal Test of the Strength of Weak Ties
By: Karthik Rajkumar, Guillaume Saint-Jacques, Iavor I. Bojinov, Erik Brynjolfsson and Sinan Aral
The authors analyzed data from multiple large-scale randomized experiments on LinkedIn’s People You May Know algorithm, which recommends new connections to LinkedIn members, to test the extent to which weak ties increased job mobility in the world’s largest...
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- 2022
- Working Paper
Automating Short-Term Payroll Savings: Initial Evidence from a Large U.K. Experiment
By: Sarah Holmes Berk, John Beshears, James J. Choi and David Laibson
Automatic enrollment is often used to increase retirement plan participation. Can it be used to increase short-term savings as well? We evaluate preliminary data from an experiment at a large U.K. employer. After years of offering opt-in short-term payroll savings via...
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- 2022
- Working Paper
Moral Deteriorations Sever Firm Identity
By: Julian De Freitas, Zarema Khon, Pechthida Kim and Samuel G.B. Johnson
Firms change over time. Which changes are so damaging that consumers believe the firm’s very
identity ceases to exist? We explored this question using Twitter data and eight experiments
involving nearly 3,000 subjects. Consumers judged that moral deteriorations were...
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- Article
Multitasking While Driving: A Time Use Study of Commuting Knowledge Workers to Assess Current and Future Uses
By: Thomaz Teodorovicz, Andrew L. Kun, Raffaella Sadun and Orit Shaer
Commuting has enormous impact on individuals, families, organizations, and society. Advances in vehicle automation may help workers employ the time spent commuting in productive work-tasks or wellbeing activities. To achieve this goal, however, we need to develop a...
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- May 2022
- Article
Can Gambling Increase Savings? Empirical Evidence on Prize-Linked Savings Accounts
By: Shawn A. Cole, Benjamin Iverson and P. Tufano
This paper studies the adoption and impact of prize-linked savings (PLS) accounts, which offer lottery-like payouts to individual account holders in lieu of interest. Using microlevel data from a bank in South Africa, we show that PLS is attractive to a broad group of...
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- Article
Eliminating Unintended Bias in Personalized Policies Using Bias-Eliminating Adapted Trees (BEAT)
By: Eva Ascarza and Ayelet Israeli
An inherent risk of algorithmic personalization is disproportionate targeting of individuals from certain groups (or demographic characteristics such as gender or race), even when the decision maker does not intend to discriminate based on those “protected”... View Details
- March 2022
- Case
In Data We Trust: Be Mobile Africa and Furthering Financial Inclusion Across the African Continent
By: Lauren Cohen, Grace Headinger and Pierre Marchesseault
To Cédric Jeannot, leveraging technology to promote financial inclusion was personal. After no established financial institution would accept his technology platform to lower transaction costs for free, Jeannot launched FinTech company Be Mobile Africa in May 2020....
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Keywords:
Finance;
Fintech;
Emerging Market;
Fundraising;
Financial Inclusion;
Strategy;
Expansion;
Management;
Entrepreneurship;
Personal Finance;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Financial Services Industry;
Banking Industry;
Africa;
Togo;
Nigeria;
Ghana
- 2022
- Working Paper
Can a Website Bring Unemployment Down? Experimental Evidence from France
By: Aïcha Ben Dhia, Bruno Crépon, Esther Mbih, Louise Paul-Delvaux, Bertille Picard and Vincent Pons
We evaluate the impact of an online platform giving job seekers tips to improve their search and recommendations of new occupations and locations to target, based on their personal data and labor market data. Our experiment used an encouragement design and was...
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- February 2022
- Article
Taxation and Innovation in the 20th Century
By: Ufuk Akcigit, John Grigsby, Tom Nicholas and Stefanie Stantcheva
This paper studies the effect of corporate and personal taxes on innovation in the United States over the twentieth century. We build a panel of the universe of inventors who patent since 1920, and a historical state-level corporate tax database with corporate tax...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
What Drives Variation in Investor Portfolios? Evidence from Retirement Plans
We study empirical patterns in investment behavior using a comprehensive data set of defined contribution plans. Using plan-level portfolio allocation data for the near universe of 401(k) plans over the period 2009–2019, we document substantial differences in...
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- Article
Financial Shame Spirals: How Shame Intensifies Financial Hardship
By: Joe J. Gladstone, Jon M. Jachimowicz, Adam Eric Greenberg and Adam D. Galinsky
Financial hardship is an established source of shame. This research explores whether shame is also a driver and exacerbator of financial hardship. Six experimental, archival, and correlational studies (N = 9,110)—including data from customer bank account histories and...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Friends and Family Money: P2P Transfers and Financially Fragile Consumers
By: Tetyana Balyuk and Emily Williams
We assess the impact that real time money transfer technology has on consumer outcomes, particularly during periods of financial fragility. We do this by developing a new data set that documents use of Zelle—the most widely used P2P money transfer technology in the...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Channeled Attention and Stable Errors
We develop a framework for assessing when a person will notice that a theory she has about the world is wrong, premised on the idea that people neglect information that they view (through the lens of their misconceptions) to be irrelevant. Focusing on the question of...
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- August 2021
- Case
Orchadio’s First Two Split Experiments
By: Iavor I. Bojinov, Marco Iansiti and David Lane
Orchadio, a direct-to-consumer grocery business, needs to conduct its first two A/B tests—one to evaluate the effectiveness and functioning of its newly redesigned website, and one to market-test four versions of a new banner for the website. To do so, it will rely on...
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Keywords:
Information Management;
Technological Innovation;
Knowledge Use and Leverage;
Resource Allocation;
Marketing;
Measurement and Metrics;
Customization and Personalization;
Information Technology;
Internet and the Web;
Digital Platforms;
Information Technology Industry;
Food and Beverage Industry
- 2021
- Working Paper
Going to Extremes: Crucibles, Multiple Sensitive Periods, and Career Progression
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Sunasir Dutta, Hise O. Gibson and Eric Lin
We study the effects of crucible experiences along multiple sensitive periods on career progression. While prior literature has hinted that individuals can be imprinted during multiple sensitive periods, not just during the early career, there has been scant attention...
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- August 2021
- Article
Crowdsourcing Memories: Mixed Methods Research by Cultural Insiders-Epistemological Outsiders
By: Tarun Khanna, Karim R. Lakhani, Shubhangi Bhadada, Nabil Khan, Saba Kohli Davé, Rasim Alam and Meena Hewett
This paper examines the role that the two lead authors’ personal connections played in the research methodology and data collection for the Partition Stories Project—a mixed-methods approach to revisiting the much-studied historical trauma of the Partition of British...
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- Article
Are They Useful? The Effects of Performance Incentives on the Prioritization of Work Versus Personal Ties
By: Julia Hur, Alice Lee-Yoon and Ashley V. Whillans
Most working adults report spending very little time with friends and family. The current research explores the aspects of work that encourage employees to spend less time with personal ties. We show that incentive systems play a critical role in shaping how people...
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- 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...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
The Old Boys' Club: Schmoozing and the Gender Gap
By: Zoë B. Cullen and Ricardo Perez-Truglia
Offices are social places. Employees and managers take breaks together and talk about
family and hobbies. In this study, we show that employees’ social interactions with their managers
can be advantageous for their careers, and that this phenomenon contributes to the...
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- 2021
- Article
To Thine Own Self Be True? Incentive Problems in Personalized Law
By: Jordan M. Barry, John William Hatfield and Scott Duke Kominers
Recent years have seen an explosion of scholarship on “personalized law.” Commentators foresee a world in which regulators armed with big data and machine learning techniques determine the optimal legal rule for every regulated party, then instantaneously disseminate...
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Keywords:
Personalized Law;
Regulation;
Regulatory Avoidance;
Regulatory Arbitrage;
Law And Economics;
Law And Technology;
Law And Artificial Intelligence;
Futurism;
Moral Hazard;
Elicitation;
Signaling;
Privacy;
Law;
Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms;
Information Technology;
AI and Machine Learning