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- February 2023
- Case
Roblox: Virtual Commerce in the Metaverse
By: Ayelet Israeli and Nicole Tempest Keller
In 2022, Roblox had 58.8 million daily active users, including over half of all children and teens under the age of 16 in the United States. Roblox, a free-to-use “co-experience platform”, allowed users to come together in immersive 3D experiences to socialize, work,...
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Keywords:
Entertainment;
Games, Gaming, and Gambling;
Market Design;
Marketing;
Brands and Branding;
Marketing Channels;
Marketing Strategy;
Business Strategy;
Economics;
Economy;
Economic Systems;
Advertising;
Advertising Campaigns;
Digital Platforms;
Markets;
Price;
Innovation and Management;
Entertainment and Recreation Industry;
Video Game Industry;
Technology Industry;
United States;
California;
North America;
South America;
Asia;
Europe
- December 2022
- Case
Mission Produce in 2022
By: Forest Reinhardt, Jose B. Alvarez and Natalie Kindred
Founded by CEO Steve Barnard in 1983, California-based Mission Produce was a leading supplier of Hass avocados with a global sourcing, marketing, and distribution network and $892 million in 2021 sales. Barnard had been influential in the global avocado trade’s...
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- November 2022
- Article
The Sharp Spikes of Poverty: Financial Scarcity Is Related to Higher Levels of Distress Intensity in Daily Life
By: Jon M. Jachimowicz, Erin L. Frey, Sandra C. Matz, Bertus F. Jeronimus and Adam D. Galinsky
Although income is an important predictor of life satisfaction, the precise forces that drive this relationship remain unclear. We propose that financial resources afford individuals a path to reducing the distressing impact of everyday hassles, in turn increasing...
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Keywords:
Distress;
Affect;
Control;
Financial Scarcity;
Life Satisfaction;
Income;
Poverty;
Well-being
- 2022
- Working Paper
Consumer Demand with Social Influences: Evidence from an E-Commerce Platform
By: El Hadi Caoui, Chiara Farronato, John J. Horton and Robert Schultz
For some kinds of goods, rarity itself is valued. "Fashionable'" goods are demanded in part because they are unique. In this paper, we explore the economics of rare goods using auctions of limited-edition shoes held by an e-commerce platform. We model endogenous entry...
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- March 2022
- Article
Targeting High Ability Entrepreneurs Using Community Information: Mechanism Design in the Field
Identifying high-growth microentrepreneurs in low-income countries remains a challenge due to a scarcity of verifiable information. With a cash grant experiment in India we demonstrate that community knowledge can help target high-growth microentrepreneurs; while the...
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- Article
How Market Power Affects Dynamic Pricing: Evidence from Inventory Fluctuations at Car Dealerships
By: Ayelet Israeli, Fiona Scott-Morton, Jorge Silva-Risso and Florian Zettelmeyer
This paper investigates empirically the effect of market power on dynamic pricing in the presence of inventories. Our setting is the auto retail industry; we analyze how automotive dealerships adjust prices to inventory levels under varying degrees of market power. We...
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- 2022
- Article
Alleviating Time Poverty Among the Working Poor: A Pre-Registered Longitudinal Field Experiment
By: A.V. Whillans and Colin West
Poverty entails more than a scarcity of material resources—it also involves a shortage of time. To examine the causal benefits of reducing time poverty, we conducted a longitudinal feld experiment over six consecutive weeks in an urban slum in Kenya with a sample of...
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Keywords:
Time;
Subjective Well Being;
Administrative Costs;
Friction;
Poverty;
Well-being;
Money;
Perception;
Kenya
- 2021
- Working Paper
Alleviating Time Poverty among the Working Poor
By: Ashley Whillans and Colin West
Poverty entails more than a scarcity of material resources—it also involves a shortage of time. To examine the causal benefits of reducing time poverty, we conducted a longitudinal field experiment over six consecutive weeks in an urban slum in Kenya with a sample of...
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- October 2021
- Article
Communicating Resource Scarcity and Interpersonal Connection
By: Grant E. Donnelly, Anne V. Wilson, Ashley V. Whillans and Michael I. Norton
Consumers often cite insufficient time or money as an excuse for rejecting social invitations. We explore the effectiveness of these excuses in preserving interpersonal relationships. Six studies—including perceptions of couples planning their wedding—demonstrate that...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Saving for a Dry Day: Coal, Dams, and the Energy Transition
By: Michele Fioretti and Jorge Tamayo
Renewable generation creates a tradeoff between current and future energy production as generators produce energy by releasing previously stored resources. Studying the Colombian market, we find that diversified firms strategically substitute fossil fuels for...
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- October 2020 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
Automercados Plaza's: Surviving Venezuela's Hyperinflation
By: Alberto Cavallo, Mariana Cal and Carla Larangeira
Under the rule of presidents Hugo Chávez and Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela experienced one of the worst economic and political meltdowns in modern history, culminating with a massive hyperinflation. Remarkably, during this dramatic times Automercados Plaza's had grown to...
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- October 2020
- Article
Overcoming Resource Scarcity: Consumers' Response to Gifts Intending to Save Time and Money
By: Alice Lee-Yoon, Grant Donnelly and A.V. Whillans
Consumers feel increasingly pressed for time and money. Gifts have the potential to reduce scarcity in recipients’ lives, yet little is known about how recipients perceive gifts given with the intention of saving them time or money. Across four studies (N=1,403), we...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Reverse Information Sharing: Reducing Costs in Supply Chains with Yield Uncertainty
By: Pavithra Harsha, Ashish Jagmohan, Retsef Levi, Elisabeth Paulson and Georgia Perakis
Supply uncertainty in produce supply chains presents major challenges to retailers. Supply shortages create frequent disruptions in terms of promised delivery times, quantity and quality delivered. To alleviate these challenges, dual sourcing--a strategy in which...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
EMEs and COVID-19: Shutting Down in a World of Informal and Tiny Firms
By: Laura Alfaro, Oscar Becerra and Marcela Eslava
Emerging economies are characterized by an extremely high prevalence of informality, small-firm employment and jobs not fit for working from home. These features factor into how the COVID-19 crisis has affected the economy. We develop a framework that, based on...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Capital Regulation and Product Market Outcomes
By: Ishita Sen and David Humphry
We present evidence of product market adjustments and asset reorganizations from the largest ever shift in risk regulation in a developed insurance market. Using proprietary data on insurance risk exposures from the Bank of England, we develop a measure of regulatory...
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- 2019
- Working Paper
Communicating Resource Scarcity
By: Grant E. Donnelly, Anne Wilson, A.V. Whillans and Michael I. Norton
The development and maintenance of interpersonal relationships require investments of both money and time—resources that are often limited in supply, but in great demand. Indeed, consumers are regularly asked to dedicate their money and time to social engagements, and...
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- 2018
- Working Paper
Alleviating Time Poverty among the Working Poor: A Pre-Registered Longitudinal Field Experiment
By: Ashley V. Whillans and Colin West
Poverty entails more than a scarcity of material resources—it also involves a shortage of time. To examine the causal benefits of reducing time poverty, we will conduct a longitudinal field experiment in an urban slum in Kenya with a sample of working mothers, a...
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Keywords:
Time;
Money;
Subjective Well-being;
Administrative Costs;
Friction;
Poverty;
Welfare;
Perception
- 2020
- Working Paper
Sex Selection and the Indian Marriage Market
I consider the widespread phenomenon of sex ratios skewed by parental preference. Edlund (1999) proposes that if parents prefer sons and permit only women to marry up in social class, sexes will segregate by wealth in equilibrium. Using data on 30,000 Indian children,...
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- 2017
- Working Paper
Equality and Equity in Compensation
By: Jiayi Bao and Andy Wu
Equity compensation is widely used for incentivizing skilled employees, particularly in new technology businesses. Traditional theories explaining why firms offer equity suggest that workers with higher rank should receive compensation packages more heavily weighted in...
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- November 2015
- Article
Cannibalization and Option Value Effects of Secondary Markets: Evidence from the U.S. Concert Industry
By: Victor Manuel Bennett, Robert Seamans and Feng Zhu
We examine how reducing search frictions in secondary markets affects the value appropriated by firms in primary markets. We characterize two effects on primary market firms caused by intermediaries entering secondary markets: the "cannibalization" and "option value"...
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