Working Papers

These papers are working drafts of research which often appear in final form in academic journals. The published versions may differ from the working versions provided here.

SSRN Research Paper Series

The Social Science Research Network’s Research Paper Series includes working papers produced by Stanford GSB the Rock Center.

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Operational Volatility and Synergistic Value in Vertically Integrated Energy Systems

Gunther Glenk, Stefan J. Reichelstein
April2018

We examine the magnitude of synergistic effects in vertically integrated energy systems that arise when the external market for an intermediate input (electricity) is imperfect and the two subsystems are subject to operational volatility in terms…

The Performative Power of Words: How Business Model Innovators Use Framing for Strategic Advantage

Yuliya Snihur, Llewellyn D.W. Thomas, Robert A. Burgelman
April2018

Despite increasing interest in business model innovation, there is only limited scholarship that examines how business model innovators present and explain their innovations to various stakeholders. As business model innovation often involves the…

The Role of the General Manager in the New Economy: Can We Save People from Technology Dysfunctions?

Jeffrey Pfeffer
April2018

Artificial intelligence may destroy and transform millions of jobs, possibly exacerbating the shift in power from labor to capital.  Low birth rates, aging populations, and budgetary stringency leave countries ill-prepared to provide the…

Firm Communication and Investor Response: A Framework and Discussion Integrating Social Media

Elizabeth Blankespoor
March202018

I provide a general framework of firms’ financial communication process and investor response to information, moving from disclosure through dissemination to investor response and management response. I then discuss the entrance of social media…

Foreign Safe Asset Demand and the Dollar Exchange Rate

Zhengyang Jiang, Arvind Krishnamurthy, Hanno Lustig
March152018

We develop a theory that links the U.S. dollar’s valuation in FX markets to foreign investors’ demand for U.S. safe assets. When the convenience yield that foreign investors derive from holding U.S. safe assets increases, the U.S. dollar…

Funding Value Adjustments

Darrell Duffie, Leif Andersen, Yang Song
March132018

We demonstrate that the funding value adjustments (FVAs) of major dealers are debt-overhang costs to their shareholders. In order to maximize shareholder value, dealer quotations therefore adjust for FVAs. Our case examples include interest-rate…

Empirical Analysis of Corporate Tax Reforms: What is the Null and Where Did it Come from?

Chris Hennessy, Akitada Kasahara, Ilya A. Strebulaev
March122018

Absent theoretical guidance, empiricists have been forced to rely upon numerical comparative statics from constant tax rate models in formulating testable implications of tradeoff theory in the context of natural experiments. We fill the…

A Copycat Penalty: Micro Evidence From an Online Crowdsourcing Platform

Reto Hofstetter, Harikesh S. Nair, Sanjog Misra
March32018

Crowdsourced innovation platforms that enable organizations to outsource ideation to parties external to the firm are proliferating. In many cases, the platforms use open contests that allow the free exchange of ideas with the goal of improving…

Beyond "Social Contagion": Associative Diffusion and the Emergence of Cultural Variation

Amir Goldberg, Sarah K. Stein
March2018

Network models of diffusion predominantly think about cultural variation as a product of social contagion. But culture does not spread like a virus. In this paper, we propose an alternative explanation which we refer to as associative diffusion.…

Coalition Loyalty Program Not Working? Maybe You're Doing It Wrong

Pedro M. Gardete, James M. Lattin
March2018

In this paper we explore the determinants of profitability for coalition loyalty programs. We consider a setting in which each of two firms competing in one market may form a coalition loyalty program with one of two firms in a different market.…

Comments On: Understanding and Misunderstanding Randomized Controlled Trials By Cartwright and Deaton

Guido W. Imbens
March2018

Deaton and Cartwright (DC2017 from hereon) view the increasing popularity of randomized experiments in social sciences with some skepticism. They are concerned about the quality of the inferences in practice, and fear that researchers may not…

How Investors Can (and Can’t) Create Social Value

Paul Brest, Mark A. Wolfson, Ronald J. Gilson
March2018

Most investors have a single goal: to earn the highest financial return. These socially-neutral investors maximize their risk-adjusted returns and would not accept a lower financial return from an investment that also produced social benefits. An…

The Road Ahead for Solar PV Power

Stephen D. Comello, Stefan J. Reichelstein, Anshuman Sahoo
March2018

Over the past decade, solar photovoltaic (PV) power has experienced dramatic deployment growth coupled with substantial decreases in system prices. This article examines how solar PV power is currently positioned in the electricity marketplace…

Carpooling and the Economics of Self-Driving Cars

Michael Ostrovsky, Michael Schwarz
February122018

We study the interplay between autonomous transportation, carpooling, and road pricing. We discuss how improvements in these technologies, and interactions among them, will affect transportation markets. Our main results show how to achieve…

The Return Expectations of Institutional Investors

Aleksandar Andonov, Joshua D. Rauh
February2018

Institutional investors rely on past performance in setting future return expectations, and these extrapolative expectations affect their target asset allocations. Drawing on newly-required disclosures for U.S. public pension funds, a group that…

Radical Decentralization: Does community driven development work?

Katherine Casey
January192018

Classic arguments for decentralization, augmented by ideas about how participation empowers the poor, motivate the widely used approach in foreign aid called community-driven development.  CDD devolves control over the selection,…

Spatial Pricing in Ride-Sharing Networks

Kostas Bimpikis, Ozan Candogan, Daniela Saban
January112018

We explore spatial price discrimination in the context of a ride-sharing platform that serves a network of locations. Riders are heterogeneous in terms of their destination preferences and their willingness to pay for receiving service. Drivers…

The Geography of Poverty and Nutrition: Food Deserts and Food Choices Across the United States

Hunt Allcott, Rebecca Diamond, Jean-Pierre Dubé
January22018

We study the causes of “nutritional inequality”: why the wealthy tend to eat more healthfully than the poor in the U.S. Using two event study designs exploiting entry of new supermarkets and households’ moves to healthier neighborhoods, we reject…

Accrual Accounting and Resource Allocation: A General Equilibrium Analysis

Jung Ho Choi
January2018

I evaluate the role of accrual accounting in improving rms’ production decisions and resource allocation across rms. I introduce both cash ow and accounting earnings as imperfect measures of performance into a general equilibrium model with…

Distinguishing Round from Square Pegs: Predicting Hiring Based on Pre-hire Language Use

Sarah K. Stein, Amir Goldberg, Sameer B. Srivastava
January2018

This article examines how cultural matching relates to a job applicant’s likelihood of getting hired into an organization and identifies the components of cultural similarity that matter most for hiring success. Cultural compatibility at…