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Publications
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- November 2024
- Article
Preference Externality Estimators: A Comparison of Border Approaches and IVs
By: Xi Ling, Wesley R. Hartmann and Tomomichi Amano
This paper compares two estimators—the Border Approach and an Instrumental Variable (IV) estimator—using a unified framework where identifying variation arises from “preference externalities,” following the intuition in Waldfogel (2003). We highlight two dimensions in... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Does Private Equity Have Any Business Being in the Health Care Business?
By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Zirui Song
Private Equity (“PE”) has come under increased scrutiny by the press, academics, and policymakers, as well as the public, for its investments in health care delivery. This scrutiny has been exacerbated by recent high profile hospital bankruptcies following PE... View Details
- September 2024
- Article
Political Elite Cues and Attitude Formation in Post-Conflict Contexts
By: Natalia Garbiras-Díaz, Miguel Garcia-Sanchez and Aila M. Matanock
Civil conflicts typically end with negotiated settlements, but many settlements fail, often during the implementation stage when average citizens have increasing influence. Citizens sometimes evaluate peace agreements by voting on referendums or the negotiating... View Details
Keywords: Civil Unrest; Peace Process; Political Leadership; Peace; Politics; Policy Change; Policy; Government and Politics; Government Administration; Governance; Political Elections; Civil Society or Community; Negotiation; Negotiation Participants; Public Relations Industry; Colombia; Latin America; South America
- 2024
- Working Paper
The Consequences of Export Controls in Target Countries
By: Xueyue Liu, Yu Liu and Jaya Y. Wen
Export controls are a common instrument of national security, but their economic consequences
are not well understood. This paper evaluates how these controls affect firm performance
and adaptation in targeted countries. We use variation in a 2007 US policy,... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
What Makes Players Pay? An Empirical Investigation of In-Game Lotteries
By: Tomomichi Amano and Andrey Simonov
In 2020, gamers spent more than $15 billion on loot boxes, lotteries of virtual items in video
games. Paid loot boxes are contentious. Game producers argue that loot boxes complement
the gameplay and expenditures on loot boxes reflect players’ enjoyment of the game.... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Advancing Personalization: How to Experiment, Learn & Optimize
By: Aurelie Lemmens, Jason M.T. Roos, Sebastian Gabel, Eva Ascarza, Hernan Bruno, Elea McDonnell Feit, Brett Gordon, Ayelet Israeli, Carl F. Mela and Oded Netzer
Personalization has become the heartbeat of modern marketing. Advances in causal inference and machine learning enable companies to understand how the same marketing action can impact the choices of individual customers differently. This article provides an academic... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
The Cram Method for Efficient Simultaneous Learning and Evaluation
By: Zeyang Jia, Kosuke Imai and Michael Lingzhi Li
We introduce the "cram" method, a general and efficient approach to simultaneous learning and evaluation using a generic machine learning (ML) algorithm. In a single pass of batched data, the proposed method repeatedly trains an ML algorithm and tests its empirical... View Details
Keywords: AI and Machine Learning
- March 2024
- Article
When Are Social Protests Effective?
By: Eric Shuman, Amit Goldenberg, Tamar Saguy, Eran Halperin and Martijn van Zomeren
Around the world, people engage in social protests aimed at addressing major societal problems. Certain protests have led to significant progress, yet other protests have resulted in little demonstrable change. We introduce a framework for evaluating the effectiveness... View Details
- October 2023 (Revised February 2024)
- Technical Note
Design and Evaluation of Targeted Interventions
By: Eva Ascarza and Ta-Wei (David) Huang
Targeted interventions serve as a pivotal tool in business strategy, streamlining decisions for enhanced efficiency and effectiveness. This note delves into two central facets of such interventions: first, the design of potent decision guidelines, or targeting... View Details
- September 2023
- Supplement
Design and Evaluation of Targeted Interventions
By: Eva Ascarza
Targeted interventions serve as a pivotal tool in business strategy, streamlining decisions for enhanced efficiency and effectiveness. This note delves into two central facets of such interventions: first, the design of potent decision guidelines, or targeting... View Details
- September 2023 (Revised September 2024)
- Technical Note
Measuring and Managing Social Impact
By: Brian Trelstad, Gerald Chertavian and Susan Pinckney
A brief overview of how to measure social impact at nonprofits, social organizations, and impact investments. View Details
Keywords: Analysis; Change; Transformation; Decision Making; Cost vs Benefits; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decisions; Forecasting and Prediction; Public Sector; Entrepreneurship; Social Entrepreneurship; Fairness; Entrepreneurial Finance; Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Policy; Innovation and Management; Knowledge Acquisition; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Goals and Objectives; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Management Practices and Processes; Resource Allocation; Measurement and Metrics; Standards; Strength and Weakness; Mission and Purpose; Success; Performance; Performance Evaluation; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Strategic Planning; Programs; Risk and Uncertainty; Social Enterprise; Non-Governmental Organizations; Social Issues; United States
- June 2023
- Simulation
Artea Dashboard and Targeting Policy Evaluation
By: Ayelet Israeli and Eva Ascarza
Companies deploy A/B experiments to gain valuable insights about their customers in order to answer strategic business problems. In marketing, A/B tests are often used to evaluate marketing interventions intended to generate incremental outcomes for the firm. The Artea... View Details
Keywords: Algorithm Bias; Algorithmic Data; Race And Ethnicity; Experimentation; Promotion; Marketing And Society; Big Data; Privacy; Data-driven Management; Data Analysis; Data Analytics; E-Commerce Strategy; Discrimination; Targeted Advertising; Targeted Policies; Pricing Algorithms; A/B Testing; Ethical Decision Making; Customer Base Analysis; Customer Heterogeneity; Coupons; Marketing; Race; Gender; Diversity; Customer Relationship Management; Marketing Communications; Advertising; Decision Making; Ethics; E-commerce; Analytics and Data Science; Retail Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; United States
- 2023
- Working Paper
Leadership and the Value of Persistence
By: James J. Anton, Alan Jaske and Dennis Yao
Consider a leader’s decision whether to persist with an unsuccessful R&D project
or to terminate the project in favor of a new project with an uncertain value. How
does that decision affect the effort exerted by the manager assigned to the project? To
study this... View Details
- 2023
- Article
Experimental Evaluation of Individualized Treatment Rules
By: Kosuke Imai and Michael Lingzhi Li
The increasing availability of individual-level data has led to numerous applications of individualized (or personalized) treatment rules (ITRs). Policy makers often wish to empirically evaluate ITRs and compare their relative performance before implementing them in a... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
The Limits of Decentralized Administrative Data Collection: Experimental Evidence from Colombia
By: Natalia Garbiras-Diaz and Tara Slough
States collect vast amounts of data for use in policymaking and public administration. To
do so, central governments frequently solicit data from decentralized bureaucrats. Because
central governments use these data in policymaking, decentralized bureaucrats may face... View Details
- September 15, 2022
- Article
Work-From-Anywhere as a Public Policy: 3 Findings from the Tulsa Remote Program
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Evan Starr and Thomaz Teodorovicz
The adoption of work-from-anywhere by organizations might help smaller towns and communities across the country attract talent and reverse brain drain, by incentivizing remote workers to migrate to such locations. We evaluate how the Tulsa Remote program, which... View Details
- 2022
- Article
Data Poisoning Attacks on Off-Policy Evaluation Methods
By: Elita Lobo, Harvineet Singh, Marek Petrik, Cynthia Rudin and Himabindu Lakkaraju
Off-policy Evaluation (OPE) methods are a crucial tool for evaluating policies in high-stakes domains such as healthcare, where exploration is often infeasible, unethical, or expensive. However, the extent to which such methods can be trusted under adversarial threats... View Details
- 2022
- Article
Towards Robust Off-Policy Evaluation via Human Inputs
By: Harvineet Singh, Shalmali Joshi, Finale Doshi-Velez and Himabindu Lakkaraju
Off-policy Evaluation (OPE) methods are crucial tools for evaluating policies in high-stakes domains such as healthcare, where direct deployment is often infeasible, unethical, or expensive. When deployment environments are expected to undergo changes (that is, dataset... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
What Triggers National Stock Market Jumps?
By: Scott R. Baker, Nicholas Bloom, Steven J. Davis and Marco Sammon
We examine newspapers the day after major stock-market jumps to evaluate the proximate cause, geographic source, and clarity of these events from 1900 in the US, 1930 in the UK and 1980 in 12 other countries. We find four main results. First, the United States plays an... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Talent Flows and the Geography of Knowledge Production: Causal Evidence from Multinational Firms
By: Dany Bahar, Prithwiraj Choudhury, Sara Signorelli and James M. Sappenfield
Leveraging a unique dataset merging patent data with all work-related migration reforms that took place in 15 countries over 26 years, we show that reforms discouraging inventor mobility decrease the patenting of MNE subsidiaries within a country, while reforms... View Details