Working Papers

In collaboration with three companies selling a diverse set of products, we conduct randomized field experiments in which experimentally tailored email messages are sent to millions of individuals. We find consistently that personalizing the…

Over the past decade, online social media has had a tremendous impact on the way people engage in social activism. For instance, about 26M Facebook users expressed their support in upholding the cause of marriage equality by overlaying their…

In collaboration with BuildDirect.com, an online seller of home-improvement products, we conduct a large-scale randomized field experiment to study the effects of retargeted advertising — a form of internet advertising in which banner ads are…

We analyze the role of benchmarks in over-the-counter markets subject to search frictions. The publication of a benchmark can, under conditions, raise total social surplus by (i) increasing the volume of beneficial trade, (ii) reducing total…

We study firm’s incentives to build and maintain reputation for quality, when quality is persistent and can be certified at a cost. We characterize all Markov-perfect equilibria where the timing of certification and investment depend only on firm…

The policy of net metering allows operators of residential- and commercial solar PV systems to sell surplus electricity back to their utility at the going retail rate. This policy has recently been criticized on the grounds that it provides a…

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I characterize the optimal financial regulation policy in an economy where financial intermediaries trade capital assets on behalf of households, but must retain an equity stake for…

This paper examines the relation between political connections and informed trading by corporate insiders in the context of the Financial Crisis. The unprecedented magnitude of government intervention, the substantial impact of this intervention…

We consider a two-sided assignment market with agent types and a stochastic structure, similar to models used in empirical studies. We characterize the size of the core in such markets. Each agent has a randomly drawn productivity with respect to…

We study whether the corporate tax system provides incentives for risky firm investment. We analytically and empirically show two main findings: first, risk-taking is positively related to the length of tax loss periods because the loss rules…

We use a new dataset that links the TV ad consumption behavior of a panel of consumers with their product choice behavior to measure the co-determination of demand for products and advertising. Leveraging the variation in the data, we assess how…

Framework agreements (FAs) are procurement mechanisms commonly used by buying agencies around the world to satisfy demand that arises over a certain time horizon. This paper is one of the first in the literature that provides a formal…

We analyze the classic problem of sustaining trust when cheating and leaving trading partners is easy, and outside enforcement is difficult. We construct equilibria where individuals are loyal to smaller groups– communities– that allow…

This paper develops a model of user adoption and use of virtual currency (such as Bitcoin), and focusing on the dynamics of adoption in the presence of frictions arising from exchange rate uncertainty. The theoretical model can be used…

We survey 885 institutional venture capitalists (VCs) at 681 firms to learn how they make decisions across eight areas: deal sourcing; investment selection; valuation; deal structure; post-investment value-added; exits; internal firm organization…

Based on two samples of high quality personality data for chief executive officers (CEOs), we use linguistic features extracted from conferences calls and statistical learning techniques to develop a measure of CEO personality in terms of the Big…

Size discovery is the use of trade mechanisms by which large quantities of an asset can be exchanged at a price that does not respond to price pressure. Primary examples of size discovery include “workup” in Treasury markets, “matching sessions”…

Rural electrification rates in India lag behind government goals, in part due to the inability of distribution companies (discoms) to fund central grid expansion. In the absence of central grid electrification, mini-grids offer significant…

We propose a new source of cross-sectional variation that may identify causal impacts of government spending on the economy. We use the fact that a large number of federal spending programs depend on local population levels. Every ten years, the…

Bargaining power allows equity holders to recover a fraction of residual assets in bankruptcy, therefore reducing their exposure to default risk. We develop an agency-based model and provide the first evidence via structural estimation that…