Publications

The board of directors has a responsibility to investigate credible allegations that management has engaged in activity that is not in the interest of the company or its shareholders. In the case of illegal activity, the appropriate response is…

In this paper, I examine the systemic effects of campaign spending, looking at outcomes at the level of the legislature rather than the individual seat. Using a difference-in-differences design, I show that state-level corporate campaign…

We propose a new measure of the economic importance of each innovation. Our measure uses newly collected data on patents issued to US firms in the 1926 to 2010 period, combined with the stock market response to news about patents. Our patent-…

Salient successes and failures, such as spectacular venture capital investments or agonizing bankruptcies, affect consensus beliefs about the viability of particular markets. We argue that collective sense making in the wake of such vital events…

U.S. government bonds are considered to be the world’s safe store of value, especially during periods of economic turmoil such as the events of 2008. But what makes U.S. government bonds “safe assets?” We highlight coordination among investors,…

We study the convergence of the predictive surface of regression trees and forests. To support our analysis we introduce a notion of adaptive concentration for regression trees. This approach breaks tree training into a model selection phase in…

Few topics in public opinion research have attracted as much attention in recent years as partisan polarization in the American mass public. Yet, there has been considerably less investigation into whether people perceive the electorate to…

We study the subgame perfect equilibria of two player stochastic games with perfect monitoring and geometric discounting. A novel algorithm is developed for calculating the discounted payoffs that can be attained in equilibrium. This algorithm…

There are many studies where researchers are interested in estimating average treatment effects and are willing to rely on the unconfoundedness assumption, which requires that treatment assignment is as good as random conditional on pre-treatment…

We develop a model of advertising markets in an environment where consumers may switch (or “multi-home”) across publishers. Consumer switching generates inefficiency in the process of matching advertisers to consumers, because advertisers may not…

This paper examines the approaches accounting researchers adopt to draw causal inferences using observational (or nonexperimental) data. The vast majority of accounting research papers draw causal inferences notwithstanding the well-known…

User reviews aggregate word of mouth and often greatly enhance consumers’ ability to estimate product quality. Consumers decide for themselves whether and how to incorporate user reviews with other sources when evaluating options (e.g., a small…

Presidential candidates purchase advertising based on each state’s potential to tip the election. The structure of the Electoral College concentrates spending in battleground states, such that a majority of voters are ignored. We estimate an…

Institutional investors pay considerable attention to the quality of a company’s governance. Unfortunately, it is difficult for outside observers to reliably gauge governance quality. Oftentimes, poor governance manifests itself only after…

Institutional investors pay considerable attention to the quality of a company’s governance. Unfortunately, it is difficult for outside observers to reliably gauge governance quality. Oftentimes, poor governance manifests itself only after…

Keller Williams is one of the most successful real estate franchises in the world. The leaders of the company attribute its growth in large part to a cultural model that emphasizes profit sharing, interdependence, and success through the efforts…

Most state and local governments in the United States offer retirement benefits to their employees in the form of guaranteed pensions. To fund these promises, the governments contribute taxpayer money to public systems. Even under states’ own…

We show that the allocation of failed banks in the Great Recession was likely distorted because potential acquirers of these banks were poorly capitalized. We illustrate this phenomenon within a model of auctions with budget constraints. In our…

This is part of a case series. In spring 2012, Jordi Alves was facing some tough decisions. A year earlier, after a process that had lasted longer than expected, he had successfully raised the first search fund in Spain. He had then dedicated a…

The litmus test for an effective compensation program is whether it provides “pay for performance.” While the concept of pay for performance is simple, its implementation is not. In particular, boards must consider not only whether a compensation…