Working Papers

This paper theoretically and empirically analyzes the trade-offs between consumption versus norm conformity and choosing from a menu of default (pre-selected) options versus opting to compute a preferred non-menu choice. In the theoretical model…

Income differences across US cities are well documented, but little is known about the level of standard of living in each city — defined as the amount of market-based consumption that residents are able to afford. In this paper we provide…

Transparency of quality in the healthcare sector primarily aims to facilitate patients’ care decisions, however, it also provides useful information to competing healthcare providers. We study how competitors respond to increased transparency…

I incorporate computational constraints into decision theory in order to capture how cognitive limitations affect behavior. I impose an axiom of computational tractability that only rules out behaviors that are thought to be fundamentally hard. I…

We study the hierarchy of communities in real-world networks under a generic stochastic block model, in which the connection probabilities are structured in a binary tree. Under such model, a standard recursive bi-partitioning algorithm is…

In this article we first summarize the specific plans articulated by seven major corporations for reducing their Corporate Carbon Footprints (abbreviated as CCF from hereon). Our sample is not intended to be representative of the broader…

We estimate a measure of segregation, experienced isolation, that captures individuals’ exposure to diverse others in the places they visit over the course of their days. Using Global Positioning System (GPS) data collected from smartphones, we…

I propose a new approach to mechanism design: rather than assume a common prior belief, assume access to a common dataset. I restrict attention to incomplete information games where a designer commits to a policy and a single agent responds. I…

This paper studies corporate venture capital (CVC) units of large US corporations to learn how they make decisions across several areas: internal organization of CVC units, relationships with parent companies, CVC unit objectives, investment…

Whom do individuals blame for intergroup conflict? Do people attribute responsibility for intergroup conflict to the in-group or the out-group? Theoretically integrating the literatures on intergroup relations, moral psychology, and judgment and…

This paper reviews the empirical methods used in the accounting literature to draw causal inferences. Similar to other social science disciplines, recent years have seen a burgeoning growth in the use of methods that seek to provide as-if random…

This paper demonstrates that investor base composition is an important determinant of bond price dynamics and capital allocation outcomes in response to aggregate credit cycle fluctuations. I use large-scale security-level holdings data and…

We study actual bidding behavior when a new auction format gets introduced into the marketplace. More specifically, we investigate this question using a novel data set on internet display ad auctions that exploits a staggered adoption by…

The availability of behavioral data on customers and advances in machine learning methods have enabled scoring and targeting of customers in a variety of domains, including pricing, advertising, recommendation and personal selling. Typically,…

I study the first modern global banking crisis that began in London in 1866 and provide causal evidence that financial sector disruptions can reshape international trade patterns for decades. Using newly collected archival loan records that link…

We find that financial reporting spurs consumer behavior. Using granular GPS data, we find that foot-traffic to firms’ commerce locations significantly increases in the days following their earnings announcements. Foot-traffic increases more for…

We develop new semiparametric methods for estimating treatment effects. We focus on a setting where the outcome distributions may be thick tailed, where treatment effects are small, where sample sizes are large and where assignment is completely…

Interest rate caps are widespread in consumer credit markets, yet there is limited evidence on their effects on market outcomes and welfare. The effects of this policy are ambiguous and depend on a trade-off between consumer protection…

Long-acting reversible contraceptives are highly effective in preventing unintended pregnancies, but take-up remains low. This paper analyzes a randomized controlled trial of interventions addressing two barriers to long-acting reversible…

We evaluate the quantitative effect of ESG divestitures on the cost of capital of affected firms. We derive a simple expression for the change in the cost of capital as a function of three inputs: (1) the fraction of socially conscious capital, (…