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Preference Signaling in Matching Markets
Many labor markets share three stylized facts: employers cannot give full attention to all candidates, candidates are ready to provide information...
Investment as the Opportunity Cost of Dividend Signaling
We provide evidence that firms with weak investment opportunities (those whose current earnings justify a greater valuation than firms with strong...
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  • 2021
  • Working Paper

Risk Sensitivity or Social Signaling? Unmasking Behaviors with Video Analytics
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Kaiquan Xu and Kannan Srinivasan
In 2020, as the novel coronavirus spread globally, face masks were recommended in public settings to protect against and slow down the spread of the coronavirus. Why did people comply, or not, while shopping in 2020? Do these motivations relate to their shopping...  View Details
Keywords: Video Analytics; In-store Shopping; Mask; Sensitivity To Risk; Social Perception; COVID-19; Health Pandemics; Consumer Behavior; Risk and Uncertainty; Attitudes
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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...  View Details
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; Technology
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  • May, 2021
  • Article

Emotional Acknowledgment: How Verbalizing Others' Emotions Fosters Interpersonal Trust
By: Alisa Yu, Justin M. Berg and Julian Zlatev
People often respond to others’ emotions using verbal acknowledgment (e.g., “You seem upset”). Yet, little is known about the relational benefits and risks of acknowledging others’ emotions in the workplace. We draw upon Costly Signaling Theory to posit how emotional...  View Details
Keywords: Emotion; Costly Signaling; Interpersonal Trust; Emotional Valence; Interpersonal Relationships; Empathic Accuracy; Emotions; Relationships; Trust; Interpersonal Communication
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  • May 2021
  • Article

The Firm Next Door: Using Satellite Images to Study Local Information Advantage
By: Jung Koo Kang, Lorien Stice-Lawrence and Forester Wong
We use novel satellite data that track the number of cars in the parking lots of 92,668 stores for 71 publicly listed U.S. retailers to study the local information advantage of institutional investors. We establish car counts as a timely measure of store-level...  View Details
Keywords: Satellite Images; Store-level Performance; Institutional Investors; Local Advantage; Overweighting; Processing Costs; Alternative Data; Big Data; Emerging Technologies; Information; Quality; Institutional Investing; Decision Making; Behavioral Finance
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  • 2021
  • Working Paper

Companies' Responses to Social Activism: A Resource Reconfiguration Perspective
By: Yanhua Bird, Jodi L. Short and Michael W. Toffel
Private politics scholarship portrays companies’ organizational vulnerabilities as opportunities for social activists because they signal openness to change. But meaningful organizational change requires not only openness to change, but capacity to mobilize resources...  View Details
Keywords: Monitoring; Apparel Manufacturing; Protests; Activism; Union; Compensation; Operations; Supply Chain Management; Quality; Safety; Social Issues; Labor Unions; Wages; Compensation and Benefits; Retail Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; China
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  • 2021
  • Working Paper

Harbinger Categories
By: Eric Anderson, Chaoqun Chen, Ayelet Israeli and Duncan Simester
Past spending by a customer is generally a positive signal of future spending at the same retailer. We show that there exist “Harbinger Categories” for which the reverse is true. The more purchases customers make in these categories, the less likely these customers are...  View Details
Keywords: Churn; Churn Management; Churn/retention; Retention; Assortment Planning; Retail; Retailing; Retailing Industry; Preference Heterogeneity; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior; Retail Industry; United States
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  • 2021
  • Book

Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World That Never Stops Changing
By: Frank V. Cespedes
Selling is changing, but the impact on sales of megatrends like ecommerce, big data, and AI is often misunderstood and not supported by empirical data. Managers who fail to separate fact from hype will make decisions based on bad assumptions and, in a competitive...  View Details
Keywords: Sales; Strategy; Salesforce Management; Change; Adaptation
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  • 2021
  • Working Paper

False Signaling and Personal Moral Failings: Two Distinct Pathways to Hypocrisy with Unequal Moral Weight
By: Jillian J. Jordan and Roseanna Sommers
Moral engagement is a key feature of human nature: we hold moral values, condemn those who violate those values, and attempt to adhere to them ourselves. Yet moral engagement can make us appear hypocritical if we fail to behave morally. When does moral engagement risk...  View Details
Keywords: Moral Engagement; Hypocrite; Dishonesty; Moral Values; Moral Sensibility; Behavior; Values and Beliefs
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  • 2020
  • Working Paper

Reputation Drives Morally Questionable Punishment
By: Jillian J. Jordan and Nour Kteily
Critics of outrage culture allege that reputation fuels morally questionable punishment, but is this actually true? Across three studies, we investigated the willingness of liberal subjects to punish a university professor facing sexual harassment allegations. In our...  View Details
Keywords: Outrage; Signaling; Ideology; Moralistic Punishment; Reputation; Moral Sensibility
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  • 2020
  • Working Paper

Institutional Corporate Bond Demand
By: Ishita Sen, Lorenzo Bretscher, Lukas Schmid and Varun Sharma
We compile a rich dataset that links institutional investors' position level holdings with corporate bond characteristics and estimate demand elasticities with respect to critical sources of risk. Persistence in institutions' holdings provide us with an instrument to...  View Details
Keywords: Corporate Bonds; Demand Systems; Insurance Companies; Mutual Funds; Liquidity; Bonds; Insurance; Investment Funds; Financial Liquidity
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  • 2020
  • Working Paper

The Market for Healthcare in Low Income Countries
By: Reshmaan Hussam, Abhijit Banerjee, Jishnu Das, Jeffrey Hammer and Aakash Mohpal
New research clearly identifies trust as an important driver of the demand for healthcare. However, doctors who realize that patients may not trust them may also alter their behavior in response. We assemble a large dataset that assesses clinical performance using...  View Details
Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Quality; Developing Countries and Economies; Trust
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  • 2020
  • Working Paper

Biased Sampling of Early Users and the Direction of Startup Innovation
By: Ruiqing Cao, Rembrand Koning and Ramana Nanda
Using data from a prominent online platform for launching new digital products, we document that the composition of the platform's ‘beta testers’ on the day a new product is launched has a systematic and persistent impact on the venture's success. Specifically, we use...  View Details
Keywords: Online Platforms; User Research; Market Platforms; Business Startups; Product Launch; Gender
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  • October 2020
  • Case

Unison Capital Korea: Gong Cha
By: Victoria Ivashina and Sangyun Lee
In the Spring of 2017, Soomin Kim, Founding Partner of Unison Capital Korea, and his team were debating the potential exit of Unison Capital Korea’s investment in Gong Cha Korea, the sole local franchisor of the premium milk tea brand that they proprietarily sourced...  View Details
Keywords: Exit; Strategic Decision Making; Private Equity; Investment; Strategy; Investment Return; Decision Making
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  • September–October 2020
  • Article

When It's Time to Pivot, What's Your Story?: How to Sell Stakeholders on a New Strategy
By: Rory McDonald and Robert Bremner
To succeed, a new company must rally investors, staff, customers, and the media around a good story. But often that narrative turns out to be wrong, and entrepreneurs realize they need to change direction. How that shift is communicated can have a huge impact on a...  View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Model; Strategy; Change Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Communication Strategy; Business and Stakeholder Relations
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  • Article

Forgoing Earned Incentives to Signal Pure Motives
By: Erika L. Kirgios, Edward H. Chang, Emma E. Levine, Katherine L. Milkman and Judd B. Kessler
Policy makers, employers, and insurers often provide financial incentives to encourage citizens, employees, and customers to take actions that are good for them or for society (e.g., energy conservation, healthy living, safe driving). Although financial incentives are...  View Details
Keywords: Incentives; Motivation Laundering; Self-signaling; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Perception
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  • 2021
  • Working Paper

Can Shared Service Delivery Increase Customer Engagement? A Study of Shared Medical Appointments
By: Ryan W. Buell, Kamalini Ramdas and Nazlı Sönmez
Problem Definition: Customers and providers alike often consider one-on-one service delivery to be ideal, assuming – perhaps unquestioningly – that devoting individualized attention maximizes customer engagement and improves outcomes. Alternatively, shared...  View Details
Keywords: Customer Engagement; Shared Service Delivery; Shared Medical Appointments; Healthcare Operations; Service Delivery; Health Care and Treatment; Service Operations; Customers; Behavior
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  • 2020
  • Working Paper

The Pursuit of Passion Propagates Privilege
By: Josephine Tan and Jon M. Jachimowicz
For many graduating college students entering the workforce, “pursue your passion” is not only a frequently repeated graduation mantra but also a commonly embraced ideal. In line with this view, prior academic research finds that passion connotes work-related benefits,...  View Details
Keywords: Passion; Careers; Socioeconomic Status; Discrimination; Emotions; Personal Development and Career; Status and Position; Prejudice and Bias
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  • June 2020
  • Article

Lazy Prices
By: Lauren Cohen, Christopher J. Malloy and Quoc Nguyen
We explore the implications of a subtle "default" choice that firms make in their regular reporting practices, namely that firms typically repeat what they most recently reported. Using the complete history of regular quarterly and annual filings by U.S. corporations...  View Details
Keywords: Default Behavior; Inertia; Firms; Disclosure; Information; Business or Company Management; Behavior; Annual Reports; Corporate Disclosure; Financial Reporting; United States
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  • March 2020
  • Case

Forbidden City: Launching a Craft Beer in China
By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Carole Carlson
This case describes a difficult choice faced by Victor Wang, Managing Director of Singapore-based Eurasian Brewing Company (EBC), concerning the competing product launch plans of Le Jie, Vice President of EBC's China and East Asian operations, and Vivian Chin, EBC's...  View Details
Keywords: Subsidiary Management; Craft Brewing; Strategy; Decision Making; Organizational Structure; Business Model; Growth and Development Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Management Style; Food and Beverage Industry; China; East Asia
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  • 2020
  • Working Paper

The Effects of Hierarchy on Learning and Performance in Business Experimentation
By: Sourobh Ghosh, Stefan Thomke and Hazjier Pourkhalkhali
Do senior managers help or hurt business experiments? Despite the widespread adoption of business experiments to guide strategic decision-making, we lack a scholarly understanding of what role senior managers play in firm experimentation. Using proprietary data of live...  View Details
Keywords: Experimentation; Innovation; Search; New Product Development; Innovation and Invention; Organizational Design; Learning; Performance
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Are you looking for?

Preference Signaling in Matching Markets
Many labor markets share three stylized facts: employers cannot give full attention to all candidates, candidates are ready to provide information...
Investment as the Opportunity Cost of Dividend Signaling
We provide evidence that firms with weak investment opportunities (those whose current earnings justify a greater valuation than firms with strong...
→ Search All HBS Web