Working Papers

When asked about the impact of unit manufacturing cost reductions on gross profit, many managers and academics assume that returns will be diminishing, i.e., that the first cent of unit cost reduction will generate more incremental gross profit…

This research examines the dynamic process of inference updating. We present a framework that delineates two mechanisms that guide the updating of personality trait inferences about brands. The results of three experiments show that chronics (…

We focus on three critical areas of future research on regulatory fit. The first focuses on how regulatory orientation gets sustained. We argue that there are two distinct approaches that bring about the just right feeling: (1) process-based (…

Even as employees are increasingly disengaged and distrustful of their employers, organizations have moved to become less like communities and adopt more arms-length and distant relationships with their people. Organizations that are more…

This review is not structured in the usual way — a departure from tradition that merits an explanation. Literature reviews generally have a linear, often chronological structure, with attention to “who was first?” The tone is apparently objective…

We study the identification and estimation of Gorman-Lancaster style hedonic models of demand for differentiated products for the case when one product characteristic is not observed. Our identification and estimation strategy is a two-step…

Discrete choice models of aggregate demand, such as the random coefficients logit, can handle large differentiated products categories parsimoniously while still providing flexible substitution patterns. However, the discrete choice assumption…

Traditional economic analysis of markets with asymmetric information assumes that uninformed agents account for the incentives of informed agents to distort information. We analyze whether investors in the stock market internalize such incentives…

This paper uses detailed weekly data on sales of hardcover fiction books to evaluate the impact of the New York Times bestseller list on sales and product variety. In order to circumvent the obvious problem of simultaneity of sales and bestseller…

We study security-bid auctions in which bidders compete for an asset by bidding with securities. That is, they offer payments that are contingent on the realized value of the asset being sold. Such auctions are commonly used, both formally and…

This research demonstrates that people’s goals associated with regulatory focus moderate the effect of message framing on persuasion. The results of six experiments show that appeals presented in gain frames are more persuasive when the message…

This paper describes a dynamic analysis of technological advances among hard disk drive (HDD) manufacturers in the areal density of their products across the history of the industry. The study provides (additional) evidence supporting a view of…

In the context of introducing new products around the world, it is important to understand the relative attractiveness of various countries in terms of maximum penetration potential and diffusion speed. In this paper, we examine these market…

We develop a new approach to measuring changes in consumer welfare due to changes in the price of owner-occupied housing. In our approach, an agents welfare adjustment is defined as the transfer required to keep expected discounted utility…

Which of the democratic checks and balancesopposition parties, the judiciary, a free pressis the most critical? Peru has the full set of democratic institutions. In the 1990s, the secret-police chief Montesinos systematically undermined them all…

A manufacturer writes supply contracts with N buyers. Then, the buyers invest in innovation, and the manufacturer builds capacity. Finally, demand is realized, and the firms renegotiate the supply contracts to achieve an efficient allocation of…

After entering into supply contracts, firms often later renegotiate the terms of those contracts. For example, firms that obtain market demand information after signing supply contracts may benefit by renegotiating the contracts to allow buyers…

We confront the two opposing views of capital account liberalization in developing countries with a new firm-level dataset on investment, stock prices, and sales. In the three-year period following liberalizations, the growth rate of the typical…

The minority party is rarely featured in empirical research on parties in legislatures, and recent theories of parties in legislatures are rarely neutral and balanced in their treatment of the two parties. This paper makes a case for redressing…

While leaders need analytical competencies such as those associated with strategy, finance and all the planning processes, research on Emotional Intelligence (as reported by Goleman, “What Makes a Leader?”, HBR, 1998) suggests it is increasingly…