Publications

System innovation is a signature feature of agri-food system transformation. Such system innovation often occurs in niches. However, how the “green shoots” of transformation can be detected and appraised through time remains ambiguous. This paper…

Governments increasingly use randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to test innovations, yet we know little about how they incorporate results into policymaking. We study 30 US cities that ran 73 RCTs with a national nudge unit. Cities adopt a nudge…

I highlight how mutual negative feedback between ethnic divisions, under-investment in public goods and violent conflict imply the presence of ethnic growth traps in many developing societies. I then identify important…

Obesity and excess weight are major global health challenges. A number of technological solutions, including mobile apps, have been developed to help people lose weight. Many such applications provide access to human coaches who help consumers…

Effective information sharing is critical for the success of organizations and governments. Because information that is easy to access is more likely to be adopted, leaders often minimize friction in information delivery. However, one type of…

Economists routinely make functional form assumptions on demand curves to derive welfare conclusions. How sensitive are these conclusions to such assumptions? In this paper, we develop robustness measures that quantify the extent to which the…

In the evolving landscape of healthcare, hospital medicine is expanding beyond traditional boundaries to address social drivers of health (SDOHs), which necessitates increased community partnership and engagement. At Stanford Medicine, the…

This article extends the canonical harm reduction approach to a wider set of applications, including conservation. The authors develop an economic model to illustrate the trade-offs inherent to harm reduction, weighing the benefits of reducing…

We examine how judicial efficiency, defined as a court’s ability to resolve patent cases quickly and in a manner that is mutually agreeable to both parties in the lawsuit, impacts corporate innovation. To do so, we exploit the Patent Pilot…

Measured as yield spreads against Treasury securities and AAA corporate bonds, the convenience premium of newly-issued agency MBS averages more than half of the long-term Treasury convenience premium. Agency MBS convenience premium and issuance…

We identify a model of early-stage company growth persistence. Using seven commercial high-growth company lists (either a Top 100 or 500 list), we find that 30% of companies remain on these lists for two consecutive years. This figure also…

People frequently perceive a trade-off between health and taste, leading to poor dietary choices. This research identifies a novel pathway to healthier eating: seeking beauty in food. Across seven preregistered field and lab studies, pursuing…

Small business owners play a central role in all advanced economies. Nonetheless, they are an understudied occupational group politically, particularly compared to groups that represent smaller portions of the population (e.g., union members,…

We explore debt and debt management among older Americans (ages 51–61 years) using the 2018 National Financial Capability Study. Though these individuals should have been at the peak of their retirement savings, we show that many were heavily…

Can metaphorical reasoning involving embodied experience—such as color perception—be learned from the statistics of language alone? Recent work finds that colorblind individuals robustly understand and reason abstractly about color, implying that…

In a nationwide examination of commercial prices for transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) and surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR), we observed substantial markups and variability across hospitals, payers, and plan types—including…

Work from home (WFH) surged worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic, then partially receded as the pandemic subsided. Using our Global Survey of Working Arrangements covering dozens of countries, we find that average WFH rates among college-…

Customer journey mapping (CJM) is a product and service design method that is widely used by design researchers and practitioners. It tracks the customer’s or user’s interactions with products and services during experiences and maps out…

Computational models of reinforcement learning (RL) have significantly contributed to our understanding of human behavior and decision-making. Traditional RL models, however, often adopt a linear approach to updating reward expectations,…

Responding to economic and environmental pressures, a growing number of companies seek to repurpose products (assets) that retain functional capacity beyond their initial first life. This paper examines a generic valuation model for used capacity…