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- August 2023
- Article
Can Security Design Foster Household Risk-Taking?
By: Laurent Calvet, Claire Célérier, Paolo Sodini and Boris Vallée
This paper shows that securities with a non-linear payoff design can foster household risk-taking. We demonstrate this effect empirically by exploiting the introduction of capital guarantee products in Sweden from 2002 to 2007. The fast and broad adoption of these...
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- April 2023
- Article
The Preference Survey Module: A Validated Instrument for Measuring Risk, Time, and Social Preferences
By: Armin Falk, Anke Becker, Thomas Dohmen, David B. Huffman and Uwe Sunde
Incentivized choice experiments are a key approach to measuring preferences in economics but are also costly. Survey measures are a low-cost alternative but can suffer from additional forms of measurement error due to their hypothetical nature. This paper seeks to...
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- March 2023 (Revised May 2023)
- Technical Note
Technical Note: The Traits of Entrepreneurs
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
Why do some entrepreneurs succeed and others do not? Are there personality traits that lead someone to become an entrepreneur? Although many questions still remain, there has been significant research on the “entrepreneurial personality.” This note provides an...
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- December 2021
- Case
The Instant Payment Mandate: The Central Bank of Brazil and Pix
By: Lauren Cohen and Spencer C. N. Hagist
João M. P. De Mello and his team at the Central Bank of Brazil are preparing a move that would seek to tilt the scales in favor of financial inclusion for the entire country. The innovation at hand is the unprecedented nation-wide instant payment scheme: Pix. The fruit...
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- 2023
- Working Paper
What Drives Variation in Investor Portfolios? Estimating the Roles of Beliefs and Risk Preferences
We present an empirical model of portfolio choice that allows for nonparametric estimation
of investors’ (subjective) expectations and risk preferences. Using a comprehensive
dataset of 401(k) plans from 2009 through 2019, we explore the heterogeneity in asset...
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- June 2021
- Case
Acelero Learning
By: Mario Small, Kathleen L. McGinn, Amy Klopfenstein and Katherine Chen
In November 2020, Henry Wilde, co-founder and CEO of Acelero, Inc., must decide whether to change his company’s program model for delivering early childhood education to low-income children. One of the only for-profit Head Start providers in the United States, Acelero...
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- September 7, 2020
- Article
Remote Networking as a Person of Color
By: Laura Morgan Roberts and Anthony J. Mayo
In remote work situations, where people cannot rely on impromptu elevator conversations or water cooler chats with coworkers, the answer isn’t to turn inward. In fact, the need for networking is even more important. In particular, our interactions with people whose...
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- May 2020
- Article
Ancient Origins of the Global Variation in Economic Preferences
By: Anke Becker, Benjamin Enke and Armin Falk
This paper shows that contemporary population-level heterogeneity in risk aversion, time preference, altruism, positive reciprocity, negative reciprocity, and trust partly traces back to the structure of the migration patterns of our very early ancestors. To document...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Social Interactions in Pandemics: Fear, Altruism, and Reciprocity
By: Laura Alfaro, Ester Faia, Nora Lamersdorf and Farzad Saidi
In SIR models, homogeneous or with a network structure, infection rates are assumed to be exogenous. However, individuals adjust their behavior. Using daily data for 89 cities worldwide, we document that mobility falls in response to fear, as approximated by Google...
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- December 2019
- Article
Costly Concessions: An Empirical Framework for Matching with Imperfectly Transferable Utility
By: Alfred Galichon, Scott Duke Kominers and Simon Weber
We introduce an empirical framework for models of matching with imperfectly transferable utility and unobserved heterogeneity in tastes. Our framework allows us to characterize matching equilibrium in a flexible way that includes as special cases the classic fully- and...
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- 2010
- Article
Fretting About Modest Risks Is a Mistake
By: Matthew Rabin and Max Bazerman
Managers often engage in risk-averse behavior, and economists, decision analysts, and managers treat risk aversion as a preference. In many cases, acting in a risk-averse manner is a mistake, but managers can correct this mistake with greater reflection. This article...
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- 2022
- Working Paper
A Preference for Revision Absent Objective Improvement
By: Ximena Garcia-Rada, Leslie K. John, Ed O’Brien and Michael I. Norton
From downloading never-ending updates to tracking ever-newer releases, consumers today are surrounded by revised offerings that purport to have improved upon what was previously available. Although revising things often makes them better, the current research reveals...
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- November 2018
- Article
Global Evidence on Economic Preferences
By: Armin Falk, Anke Becker, Thomas Dohmen, Benjamin Enke, David Huffman and Uwe Sunde
This article studies the global variation in economic preferences. For this purpose, we present the Global Preference Survey (GPS), an experimentally validated survey data set of time preference, risk preference, positive and negative reciprocity, altruism, and trust...
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- June 2017
- Teaching Note
The U-Turns of National Truck Stops
By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Alexander W. Schultz
Raj Makam had spent months trying to restructure a 2006 investment he had made in National Truck Stops, Inc. (“NTS”) as a senior member of Oaktree Capital Management’s (“Oaktree”) Mezzanine finance business within their Corporate Debt platform. It was the first time...
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- April 2017 (Revised August 2020)
- Case
The U-Turns of National Truck Stops
By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Alexander W. Schultz
Raj Makam had spent months trying to restructure a 2006 investment he had made in National Truck Stops, Inc. (NTS) as a senior member of Oaktree Capital Management’s (Oaktree) Mezzanine finance business within their Corporate Debt platform. It was the first time they...
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- March 2017
- Article
Artful Paltering: The Risks and Rewards of Using Truthful Statements to Mislead Others
By: Todd Rogers, Richard Zeckhauser, F. Gino, Michael I. Norton and Maurice E. Schweitzer
Paltering is the active use of truthful statements to convey a misleading impression. Across two pilot studies and six experiments, we identify paltering as a distinct form of deception. Paltering differs from lying by omission (the passive omission of relevant...
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- Article
Experience Theory, or How Desserts Are Like Losses
By: Jolie M. Martin, Martin Reimann and Michael I. Norton
While many experiments have explored risk preferences for money, few have systematically assessed risk preferences for everyday experiences. We propose a conceptual model and provide convergent evidence from seven experiments that, in contrast to a typical “zero”...
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- January 28, 2016
- Article
Making Sense of the Many Kinds of Impact Investing
By: Brian Trelstad
The article discusses the factors to consider when seeking to practice impact investing, which include the kind of impact preferred by the investor, the intensity and immediacy of impact, and the impact risk profile.
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- Article
Guilt Enhances the Sense of Control and Drives Risky Judgments
By: Maryam Kouchaki, Christopher Oveis and F. Gino
The present studies investigate the hypothesis that guilt influences risk-taking by enhancing one's sense of control. Across multiple inductions of guilt, we demonstrate that experimentally induced guilt enhances optimism about risks for the self (Study 1), preferences...
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- Article
The Allure of Unknown Outcomes: Exploring the Role of Uncertainty in the Preference for Potential
By: Daniella Kupor, Zakary L. Tormala and Michael I. Norton
Influence practitioners often highlight a target's achievements (e.g., "she is the city's top-rated chef"), but recent research reveals that highlighting a target's potential (e.g., "she could become the city's top-rated chef") can be more effective. We examine whether...
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