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All HBS Web
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- Faculty Publications (41)
- Article
What Makes a Critic Tick? Connected Authors and the Determinants of Book Reviews
By: Loretti I. Dobrescu, Michael Luca and Alberto Motta
This paper investigates the determinants of expert reviews in the book industry. Reviews are determined not only by the quality of the product, but also by the incentives of the media outlet providing the review. For example, a media outlet may have the incentive to...
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Dobrescu, Loretti I., Michael Luca, and Alberto Motta. "What Makes a Critic Tick? Connected Authors and the Determinants of Book Reviews." Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 96 (December 2013): 85–103.
- Article
Consumers' Misunderstanding of Health Insurance
By: George Loewenstein, Joelle Y. Friedman, Barbara McGill, Sarah Ahmad, Suzanne Linck, Stacey Sinkula, John Beshears, James J. Choi, Jonathan Kolstad, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian, John A. List and Kevin G. Volpp
We report results from two surveys of representative samples of Americans with private health insurance. The first examines how well Americans understand, and believe they understand, traditional health insurance coverage. The second examines whether those insured...
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Keywords:
Behavioral Economics;
Simplification;
Insurance;
Consumer Behavior;
Health Care and Treatment;
Cognition and Thinking;
Insurance Industry;
Health Industry;
United States
Loewenstein, George, Joelle Y. Friedman, Barbara McGill, Sarah Ahmad, Suzanne Linck, Stacey Sinkula, John Beshears, James J. Choi, Jonathan Kolstad, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian, John A. List, and Kevin G. Volpp. "Consumers' Misunderstanding of Health Insurance." Journal of Health Economics 32, no. 5 (September 2013): 850–862.
- Article
Assent-maximizing Social Choice
By: Katherine A. Baldiga and Jerry R. Green
We take a decision theoretic approach to the classic social choice problem, using data on the frequency of choice problems to compute social choice functions. We define a family of social choice rules that depend on the population's preferences and on the probability...
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Keywords:
Decision Choices and Conditions;
Theory;
Measurement and Metrics;
Mathematical Methods;
Society
Baldiga, Katherine A., and Jerry R. Green. "Assent-maximizing Social Choice." Social Choice and Welfare 40, no. 2 (February 2013): 439–460.
- 2014
- Working Paper
Search-Based Peer Firms: Aggregating Investor Perceptions Through Internet Co-Searches
By: Charles M.C. Lee, Paul Ma and Charles C.Y. Wang
Applying a "co-search" algorithm to Internet traffic at the SEC's EDGAR web-site, we develop a novel method for identifying economically-related peer firms and for measuring their relative importance. Our results show that firms appearing in chronologically adjacent...
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Keywords:
Peer Firm;
EDGAR Search Traffic;
Revealed Preference;
Co-search;
Industry Classification;
Analytics and Data Science;
Internet and the Web;
Mathematical Methods;
Corporate Finance
Lee, Charles M.C., Paul Ma, and Charles C.Y. Wang. "Search-Based Peer Firms: Aggregating Investor Perceptions Through Internet Co-Searches." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 13-048, November 2012. (Revised September 2013, March 2014, June 2014, July 2014.)
- October 2012
- Article
The Preference for Potential
By: Zakary L. Tormala, Jayson Jia and Michael I. Norton
When people seek to impress others, they often do so by highlighting individual achievements. Despite the intuitive appeal of this strategy, we demonstrate that people often prefer potential rather than achievement when evaluating others. Indeed, compared with...
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Keywords:
Preferences;
Persuasion;
Uncertainty;
Risk and Uncertainty;
Performance Expectations;
Attitudes
Tormala, Zakary L., Jayson Jia, and Michael I. Norton. "The Preference for Potential." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 103, no. 4 (October 2012): 567–583.
- September 2012
- Article
The Relationship Between Economic Preferences and Psychological Personality Measures
By: Anke Becker, Thomas Deckers, Thomas Dohmen, Armin Falk and Fabian Kosse
Although both economists and psychologists seek to identify determinants of heterogeneity in behavior, they use different concepts to capture them. In this review, we first analyze the extent to which economic preferences and psychological concepts of personality, such...
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Keywords:
Risk Preference;
Time Preference;
Social Preferences;
Locus Of Control;
Big Five;
Economics;
Behavior;
Personal Characteristics
Becker, Anke, Thomas Deckers, Thomas Dohmen, Armin Falk, and Fabian Kosse. "The Relationship Between Economic Preferences and Psychological Personality Measures." Annual Review of Economics 4 (September 2012): 453–478.
- 2013
- Working Paper
What Makes a Critic Tick? Connected Authors and the Determinants of Book Reviews
By: Loretti I. Dobrescu, Michael Luca and Alberto Motta
This paper investigates the determinants of expert reviews in the book industry. Reviews are determined not only by the quality of the product, but also by the incentives of the media outlet providing the review. For example, a media outlet may have the incentive to...
View Details
Dobrescu, Loretti I., Michael Luca, and Alberto Motta. "What Makes a Critic Tick? Connected Authors and the Determinants of Book Reviews." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 12-080, March 2012. (Revise and Resubmit, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization; Revised August 2013.)
- 2014
- Working Paper
De Gustibus non est Taxandum: Heterogeneity in Preferences and Optimal Redistribution
By: Benjamin B Lockwood and Matthew Weinzierl
The prominent but unproven intuition that preference heterogeneity reduces redistribution in a standard optimal tax model is shown to hold under the plausible condition that the distribution of preferences for consumption relative to leisure rises, in terms of...
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Lockwood, Benjamin B., and Matthew Weinzierl. "De Gustibus non est Taxandum: Heterogeneity in Preferences and Optimal Redistribution." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 12-063, January 2012. (Updated September 2014. NBER Working Paper Series, No. 17784. Published in Journal of Public Economics.)
- Article
Market Heterogeneity and Local Capacity Decisions in Services
By: Dennis Campbell and Frances X. Frei
We empirically document factors that influence how local operating managers use discretion to balance the tradeoff between service capacity costs and customer sensitivity to service time. Our findings, using data from one of the largest financial services providers in...
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Keywords:
Customer Satisfaction;
Cost;
Standards;
Service Delivery;
Service Operations;
Performance Capacity;
Performance Productivity;
Financial Services Industry;
United States
Campbell, Dennis, and Frances X. Frei. "Market Heterogeneity and Local Capacity Decisions in Services." Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 13, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 2–19. (Lead Article.)
- 2010
- Working Paper
Trade Policy and Firm Boundaries
By: Laura Alfaro, Paola Conconi, Harald Fadinger and Andrew F. Newman
We study how trade policy affects firms' ownership structures. We embed an incomplete contracts model of vertical integration choices into a standard perfectly-competitive international trade framework. Integration decisions are driven by a trade-off between the...
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- 2009
- Other Paper
Trade Policy and Firm Boundaries
By: Laura Alfaro, Paola Conconi, Andrew F. Newman and Harald Fadinger
We examine how trade policy affects firms' organizational choices. We embed a model of firms' vertical integration decisions into a standard perfectly-competitive international trade framework. In the model, integration decisions are driven by a trade-off...
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Keywords:
Trade;
Policy;
Ownership;
Business and Government Relations;
Vertical Integration;
Boundaries
Alfaro, Laura, Paola Conconi, Andrew F. Newman, and Harald Fadinger. "Trade Policy and Firm Boundaries."
- 2009
- Other Unpublished Work
Choice-based Measures of Conflict in Preferences
By: Katherine Baldiga and Jerry R. Green
We propose a family of measures of difference between ordinal preference relations. The difference between two preferences is the probability that they would disagree about the optimal choice from a random available set. It is in this sense that these measures are...
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- 2007
- Working Paper
Choice, Rationality and Welfare Measurement
By: Jerry R. Green and Daniel A. Hojman
We present a method for evaluating the welfare of a decision maker, based on observed choice data. Unlike the standard economic theory of revealed preference, our method can be used whether or not the observed choices are rational. Paralleling the standard theory we...
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Green, Jerry R., and Daniel A. Hojman. "Choice, Rationality and Welfare Measurement." HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series, No. 2144, November 2007.
- June 2004
- Article
A Catering Theory of Dividends
By: Malcolm Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler
We propose that the decision to pay dividends is driven by prevailing investor demand for dividend payers. Managers cater to investors by paying dividends when investors put a stock price premium on payers, and by not paying when investors prefer nonpayers. To test...
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Keywords:
Dividends;
Catering;
Financial Instruments;
Investment Return;
Business and Shareholder Relations
Baker, Malcolm, and Jeffrey Wurgler. "A Catering Theory of Dividends." Journal of Finance 59, no. 3 (June 2004): 1125–1165.
- February 1995 (Revised June 1999)
- Case
Chemical Bank: Implementing the Balanced Scorecard
By: Robert S. Kaplan and Norman Klein
The retail bank division of Chemical Bank faces declining margins and increased competition in its credit and deposit gathering and processing business. It wishes to implement a new strategy to become a preferred financial service provider to target customer groups....
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Keywords:
Balanced Scorecard;
Adoption;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Communication Strategy;
Customer Relationship Management;
Management Systems;
Performance Evaluation;
Banks and Banking;
Measurement and Metrics;
Banking Industry
Kaplan, Robert S., and Norman Klein. "Chemical Bank: Implementing the Balanced Scorecard." Harvard Business School Case 195-210, February 1995. (Revised June 1999.)
- May 1994
- Article
The Work Preference Inventory: Assessing Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivational Orientations
By: T. M. Amabile, K. G. Hill, B. A. Hennessey and E. M. Tighe
The Work Preference Inventory (WPI) is designed to assess individual differences in intrinsic and extrinsic motivational orientations. Both the college student and the working adult versions aim to capture the major elements of intrinsic motivation (self-determination,...
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Keywords:
Creativity;
Motivation and Incentives;
Measurement and Metrics;
Higher Education;
Employees;
Personal Characteristics
Amabile, T. M., K. G. Hill, B. A. Hennessey, and E. M. Tighe. "The Work Preference Inventory: Assessing Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivational Orientations." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 66, no. 5 (May 1994): 950–967.
- March 1990 (Revised June 1993)
- Case
Analog Devices, Inc.: The Half-Life System
By: Robert S. Kaplan
The company has committed to major improvements in quality, cost, and on-time delivery performance. Despite strong senior management support, however, the actual rate of improvement was disappointing until a new measurement philosophy was introduced. The new approach...
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Keywords:
Quality;
Performance Improvement;
Earnings Management;
Financial Reporting;
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Performance Productivity;
Business or Company Management;
Cost Management;
Measurement and Metrics;
Management Teams;
Semiconductor Industry
Kaplan, Robert S. "Analog Devices, Inc.: The Half-Life System." Harvard Business School Case 190-061, March 1990. (Revised June 1993.)
- Research Summary
Choice, Rationality and Welfare Measurement
By: Jerry R. Green
For the past century, economists have used the hypothesis that individual choice is based on rationality in their calculations of individual and collective welfare. The central ideas are that actual market choice reveal underlying preferences, and with a good set of...
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- Research Summary
Growth and the Quality of Foreign Direct Investment: Is All FDI Equal? (joint with Andrew Charlton)
By: Laura Alfaro
In this paper we distinguish different qualities of FDI to re-examine the relationship between FDI and growth. Establishing the quality of FDI, however, is a difficult concept. Quality, that is the effect of a unit of FDI on economic growth, is a combination and...
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- Research Summary
Overview
Professor MacKay combines theory and measurement to deliver new insights about price competition and consumer preferences. In current and published papers, his research addresses how strategic pricing decisions may be influenced by algorithms, long-term contracts,... View Details