Publications

Under pressure, people often prefer what is familiar, which can seem safer than the unfamiliar. We show that such favoring of familiarity can lead to choices precisely contrary to the source of felt pressure, thus exacerbating, rather than…

Price controls lead to misallocation of goods and encourage rent-seeking. The misallocation effect alone is enough to ensure that consumer surplus is always reduced by a price control in an otherwise-competitive market with convex demand if…

This paper examines the relationship between firm performance and the recommendations provided by Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), the largest proxy advisory firm in the United States, regarding shareholder votes in stock option exchange…

We study games in which the decision to exercise an option is a signal of private information to outsiders, whose beliefs affect the utility of the decision-maker. Signaling incentives distort the timing of exercise, and the direction of…

Previous research shows that masculine (agentic) women suffer from a backlash effect in which they are sanctioned for violating the feminine gender role stereotype. We examine the impact of self-monitoring on the promotion rates of MBA men and…

In two experiments, we investigate how individuals’ levels of power and status interact to determine how they are perceived by others. We find that power and status have similar, positive, effects on judged dominance. We also find that power has…

After reading a newspaper article that predicted the spread of HIV through medical syringes, Marc Koska committed himself to addressing the threat of unsafe injections. He spent nearly 10 years in the field, investigating all aspects of the…

After reading a newspaper article that predicted the spread of HIV through medical syringes, Marc Koska committed himself to addressing the threat of unsafe injections. He spent nearly 10 years in the field, investigating all aspects of the…

I study a dynamic model of trial-and-error search in which agents do not have complete knowledge of how choices are mapped into outcomes. Agents learn about the mapping by observing the choices of earlier agents and the outcomes that are realized…

Recent research has demonstrated the malleability of self-views to subtle situational influence but has not uncovered features of the self-concept representation that make it susceptible to such change. Using research on attitude ambivalence as a…

We evaluate the effect of the Federal Reserve’s purchase of long-term Treasuries and other long-term bonds (QE1 in 2008–09 and QE2 in 2010–11) on interest rates. Using an event-study methodology, we reach two main conclusions. First, it is…

We use a proprietary data set with detailed executive compensation information to examine the relationship between the incentives of the tax director and GAAP and cash effective tax rates, the book-tax gap, and measures of tax aggressiveness. We…

An examination of emotions reported on 12 million personal blogs along with a series of surveys and laboratory experiments shows that the meaning of happiness is not fixed; instead, it systematically shifts over the course of one’s lifetime.…

An interview with the former U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, is presented. When asked about the difficulty of coping with racism during her career, she says that the U.S. is very open about race but the country still has a long way to…

Across two field studies, we investigate the impact of team power on team conflict and performance. Team power is based on the control of resources that enables a team to influence others in the company. We find across both studies that low…