Publications

This article reviews how objects can serve as indicators of one’s identity and signals of important life events. Objects carry both personal and social meaning, and ownership or usage increases the linkage between the object and the self. Owned…

The current research introduces the concept of psychological ownership of borrowed money, a construct that represents how much consumers feel that borrowed money is their own. We observe both individual-level and contextual-level…

Flexible estimation of heterogeneous treatment effects lies at the heart of many statistical challenges, such as personalized medicine and optimal resource allocation. In this paper, we develop a general class of two-step algorithms for…

The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated response have delivered a recessionary shock to the global economy. As with prior downturns, these forces have collided with a leveraged corporate sector and spurred an increase in financial restructuring…

Policy feedbacks take place when public policies change mass participation and mobilize key constituencies. This can influence future rounds of policymaking and solidify government programs. We explore policy feedback in the context of a…

Understanding how differences in management ‘best practices’ affect organizational outcomes has been a focus of both theoretical and empirical work in the fields of management, sociology, economics, and public policy. The World Management Survey…

One of the hallmarks of the SEC’s investigative process is that it is shrouded in secrecy––only the SEC staff, high-level managers of the company being investigated, and outside counsel are typically aware of active investigations. We obtain…

On June 3, 2021, the Value Chain Innovation Initiative hosted the executive workshop “Value Chains in a Post-COVID World,” to explore the long-term impacts of the pandemic on companies’ value chains. Examples of topics covered include changes in…

In e-commerce platforms, sponsored and non-sponsored content are jointly displayed to users and both may interactively influence their engagement behavior. The former content helps advertisers achieve their marketing goals and provides a stream…

In the 1990s, interest in biomedical technologies blossomed among students across disciplines. In parallel, there was a push in academia to develop courses enabling interdisciplinary problem solving and more holistic, practice-oriented education…

Conditionally accepted at Journal of Marketing Research.

This paper studies the impact of business modernization on the sales performance of traditional retailers. We define modernization as adopting tangible structures and…

Purpose: Small farmers, being the primary producers of crops, are the key players in the food supply chain. Yet, they remain the most marginalized in the value chain. The marginalization of small farmers can affect food sustainability. The…

We show that lenders face more uncertainty when assessing default risk of historically under-served groups in US credit markets and that this information disparity is a quantitatively important driver of inefficient and unequal credit market…

We characterize optimal asset management contracts in a classic portfolio-investment setting. When the agent has access to hidden savings, his incentives to misbehave depend on his precautionary saving motive. The contract dynamically distorts…

In this paper we study methods for estimating causal effects in settings with panel data, where some units are exposed to a treatment during some periods and the goal is estimating counterfactual (untreated) outcomes for the treated unit/period…

This research brief leverages multiple datasets from the U.S. Census Bureau to provide a summary of the state of Black-owned businesses in the United States. It is important to understand and measure these pre-pandemic trends in order to pinpoint…

In 2020, the Securities and Exchange Commission revised human capital disclosure rules to improve shareholder understanding of how human capital management contributes to corporate value and strategy. In this Closer Look, we examine early…

Cancer pain is highly prevalent and often managed in primary care or by oncology providers in combination with primary care providers. To understand interdisciplinary provider experiences coordinating opioid pain management for patients with…

Are ordinary citizens or political party leaders better positioned to select candidates? While the American primary system lets citizens choose, most democracies rely instead on party officials to appoint or nominate candidates. The…