Publications

The dramatic drop in water levels in the Kinneret Lake (Sea of Galilee) during the past years is evaluated. Recently published measurements of temperature, precipitation and other hydrological data support the position that climate change is…

While previously polarization was primarily seen only in issue-based terms, a new type of division has emerged in the mass public in recent years: Ordinary Americans increasingly dislike and distrust those from the other party. Democrats and…

Studies have shown that participants can adequately take into account several cues regarding the weight they should grant majority opinions, such as the absolute and relative size of the majority. However, participants do not seem to consistently…

The welfare effects of vertical integration are ambiguous. Cost efficiencies and the elimination of double marginalization may offset increases in market power and incentives to raise rivals’ costs. To study the effects of vertical…

Partnering with the US Census Bureau, we implement a new survey of “structured” management practices in two waves of 35,000 manufacturing plants in 2010 and 2015. We find an enormous dispersion of management practices across plants, with 40…

We take issue with claims that the funding mix of banks, which makes them fragile and crisis-prone, is efficient because it reflects special liquidity benefits of bank debt. Even aside from neglecting the systemic damage to the economy that banks…

This chapter presents a selective review of a literature in marketing that analyzes diffusion and pricing over the product life-cycle. I primarily focus on empirical work, and on papers that deal with the dynamics of pricing over time. I discuss…

Conventional wisdom suggests that firms can benefit from coordinating pricing and production decisions. One way firms can coordinate such decisions is through private communication. However, private communication between competing firms is…

We develop a theory explaining how collectivism causes people to “blur” demographic differences, that is, to see less diversity than actually exists in a group, and reconciling contradictions in how collectivistic norms influence group…

This paper presents five facts on the behavior of U.S. banks between 2007 and 2015 that impose useful restrictions on the formulation of a bank problem. (1) Market to book leverage ratio diverged significantly during the crisis. (2) Book values…

Data from U.S. public firms show that in booms large firms finance with debt and payout equity, whereas small firms issue both equity and debt. Therefore, large firms generally substitute between debt and equity financing over the business cycle…

We compare health care spending in public and private Medicare using newly available claims data from Medicare Advantage (MA) insurers. MA insurer revenues are 30 percent higher than their health care spending. Adjusting for enrollee mix, health…

People seek to spend time in positive experiences, enjoying and savoring. Yet there is no escaping negative experiences, from the mundane (e.g., arguing) to the massive (e.g., death of a child). Might negative experiences confer a hidden benefit…

What makes an asset a “safe asset”? We study a model where two countries each issue sovereign bonds to satisfy investors’ safe asset demands. The countries differ in the float of their bonds and their resources/fundamentals available to rollover…

We develop a tractable and versatile model of pretrial negotiation in which the negotiating parties are optimistic about the judge’s decision and anticipate the possible arrival of public information about the case prior to the trial date. The…

Firms have an incentive to test competitors’ products to reveal violations of safety and environmental standards, in order to have competitors’ products blocked from sale. This paper shows that testing by a regulator crowds out testing by…

Although the aggregate capital share of U.S. firms has increased, capital share at the firm‐level has decreased. This divergence is due to mega‐firms that produce a larger output share without a proportionate increase in labor compensation. We…

When multiple firms are simultaneously running experiments on a platform, the treatment effects for one firm may depend on the experimentation policies of others. This paper presents a set of causal estimands that are relevant to such an…

Pre‐college advising programs exist in most disadvantaged high schools throughout the United States. These programs supplement traditional advising by high school guidance counselors and attempt to help underrepresented and disadvantaged students…