Working Papers

According to what criteria do citizens make political decisions, and what do these criteria say about democratic competence? An impressive body of evidence suggests that voters competently evaluate diagnostic information such as macroeconomic…

This paper offers a perspective on how Ilya Prigogine‘s theoretical ideas rooted in the physical sciences can inform and inspire organization theory and strategic management scholars. To that end, the next section of this paper provides a brief…

The paper reports the research done in the Stanford University Graduate School of Business 2008 Bass Seminar Strategic Thinking in Action - In Business and Beyond: The United States Quest for Energy Resilience, taught by Professors Robert A.…

This paper estimates a three-equation structural model based on a theory that relates corporate financial performance (CFP), corporate social performance (CSP), and social pressure. CFP is found to be independent of CSP and decreasing in social…

Recent research argues that differences in the structure of top executive compensation plans and/or corporate culture explain cross-sectional variation in tax avoidance. However, this research does not link tax planning to the incentives of the…

An examination of emotions reported on 12 million personal blogs along with the results of three experiments reveal that the meaning of happiness is not fixed; instead, it shifts as people age. Whereas younger people are more likely to associate…

We calculate learning rates when agents are informed through both public and private observation of other agents actions. We provide an explicit solution for the evolution of the distribution of posterior beliefs. When the private learning…

We examine how the practice of accounting for ones times that work can be billed or charged to specific clients or projects affects the decision to allocate time to volunteer activities. Using longitudinal data collected from law students…

A number of recent marketing studies examine the stock markets response to the release of American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) scores. The broad purpose of these studies is to investigate the stock markets valuation of customer…

The results of five field and laboratory experiments reveal a time vs. money effect whereby activating time (vs. money) leads to a favorable shift in product attitudes and decisions. Because time increases focus on product experience, activating…

We develop a unifying framework to integrate two of organizational sociologys theory fragments on categorization: typecasting and form emergence. Typecasting is a producer-level theory that considers the consequences producers face for…

We argue that the strength of the relationship between income and happiness can be influenced by exposure to organizational practices, such as being paid by the hour, that promote an economic evaluation of time use. Using cross-sectional data…

Why do people give to others? One principal driver involves ones identity: who one is and how they view themselves. The degree to which identities are malleable, involve a readiness to act, and help make sense of the world have significant…

We quantify the impact of social interactions and peer effects in the context of prescription choices by physicians. Using detailed individual-level prescription data, along with self-reported social network information, we document that…

We analyze the differences between companies owned by private equity (PE) investors and similar public companies. We document that PE-owned companies use much stronger incentives for their top executives and have substantially higher debt levels…

Social interactions occur when agents in a network affect other agents’ choices directly, as opposed to via the intermediation of markets. The study of such interactions and the resultant outcomes has long …

Three axioms from decision theory select sets of Nash equilibria of signaling games in extensive form with generic payoffs. The axioms require undominated strategies (admissibility), inclusion of a sequential equilibrium (backward induction), and…

In this paper, we take a first step toward exploring empirically the product assortment strategies of oligopolistic firms. Our starting point is a discrete- choice demand model for differentiated products. We incorporate the demand model into an…

We use a panel data set that combines annual brand-level advertising expenditures for over three hundred brands with measures of brand awareness and perceived quality from a large-scale consumer survey to study the effect of advertising.…

One consequence of the proliferation of vote-by-mail (VBM) in certain areas of the United States is the opportunity for voters to cast ballots weeks before Election Day. Understanding the ensuing effects of VBM on late campaign information loss…