Publications

Across three studies, this research elucidates when loss- versus gain-framed messages are most effective in influencing consumer recycling by examining the moderating role of whether a more concrete or abstract mind-set is activated. First…

This case examines seven commonly accepted myths about corporate governance. How can we expect managerial behavior and firm performance to improve, if practitioners continue to rely on myths rather than facts to guide their decisions?

This case examines seven commonly accepted myths about executive compensation. Public perception is that executives are overpaid and that compensation contracts are not structured in the best interest of shareholders. Why don’t experts rely on…

This paper presents a dynamic model of elections, government formation, and legislation in a parliamentary democracy with proportional representation in which the policy chosen in one period becomes the status quo for the next period. The…

The disrupt-then-reframe (DTR) influence technique involves confusing consumers with a disruptive message and then reducing ambiguity by reframing the message. Experiment 1 shows that the DTR technique increases retail sales in a supermarket…

This paper develops a model of financing that jointly determines a firm’s capital structure, its voluntary disclosure policy, and its cost of capital. Investors who receive securities in return for supplying capital sometimes incur losses when…

Marketing researchers have used models of consumer demand to forecast future sales; to describe and test theories of behavior; and to measure the response to marketing interventions. The basic framework typically starts from microfoundations of…

This paper studies the optimal compensation problem between shareholders and the agent in the…

We study reputation dynamics in continuous-time games in which a large player (e.g., government) faces a population of small players (e.g., households) and the large player’s actions are imperfectly observable. The major part of our…

This case study examines prominent features of the governance system of Tesla Motors, as it has evolved from inception to IPO. Now that Tesla is public, how is its governance likely to change in the future?

We prove that there exist equilibrium payoffs arbitrarily close to the efficient payoff in the two-player prisoner’s dilemma with low discounting under imperfect private monitoring, provided that the monitoring structure is not too uninformative…

Theories of visionary leadership propose that groups bestow leadership on exceptional group members. In contrast, social identity perspectives claim that leadership arises, in part, from a person’s ability to be seen as representative of the…

The recommendations of Institutional Shareholder Services are influential in the proxy voting process, particularly in matters relating to equity compensation and exchange offers. What evidence is there that these recommendations increase…

We study the nature of sovereign credit risk using an extensive set of sovereign CDS data. We find that the majority of sovereign credit risk can be linked to global factors. A single principal component accounts for 64 percent of the variation…

What explains the enormous differences in incomes across countries? This paper returns to two old ideas: linkages and complementarity. First, linkages between firms through intermediate goods deliver a multiplier similar to the one associated…

The behavior and determinants of market-to-revenue ratios in public and private capital markets is examined. Three samples are analyzed: (1) all publicly traded stocks listed at some time on the New York Stock Exchange/American Stock Exchange/…

We calculate the present value of state pension liabilities under existing policies and separately under policy changes that would affect pension payouts. If promised payments are viewed as default free, then it is appropriate to use…

In 2011, David Sokol, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway’s energy subsidiary, purchased $10 million of Lubrizol stock days before recommending that Berkshire Hathaway acquire the firm. Did Sokol’s actions reflect a broad governance failure for the firm?…

A fast fashion system combines quick response production capabilities with enhanced product design capabilities to both design “hot” products that capture the latest consumer trends and exploit minimal production lead times to match supply with…