Publications

We use data from eBay to identify hundreds of thousands of instances in which retailers posted otherwise identical product listings with targeted variation in pricing and auction design. We use these matched listings to measure the dispersion in…

We test for consumption smoothing using bankruptcy data on players in the National Football League (NFL), who typically earn several million dollars during an income spike that lasts a few years. The life-cycle hypothesis predicts that players…

We use an extensive data set of bilateral credit default swap (CDS) positions to estimate the impact on collateral demand of new clearing and margin regulations. The estimated collateral demands include initial margin and the frictional…

We develop a model of policy experimentation in federal systems in which heterogeneous districts choose both whether to experiment and the policies to experiment with. The prospect of informational spillovers implies that in the first best the…

We present a model where heterogeneous districts choose both whether to experiment and the policies to experiment with. Since districts learn from each other, the first-best requires that policy experiments converge so that innovations are useful…

People vary widely in their temporal orientation — how often they emphasize the past, present, and future — and this affects their finances, health, and happiness. Traditionally, temporal orientation has been assessed by self-report…

Financial market imperfections can have significant impact on employment decisions of firms. We illustrate the economic importance of this channel by showing that employment decisions are constrained by firms’ financial health and liquidity. Our…

Gary Becker was one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century. He advanced social science by introducing economic thinking into areas that were thought to be off limits. Because his theory was motivated by his desire to explain the world, his…

We examined the consequences of contractual or ownership relationships between hospitals and physician practices, often described as vertical integration. Such integration can reduce health spending and increase the quality of care by…

What will happen if a new tool is introduced to different cultures? What if the tool can potentially bridge those cultures? Will it be used in the same way across cultures and contribute to a decrease in cultural differences? Or will it be used…

A portion of the global wealth portfolio is directed towards a safe and liquid reserve asset, which recently has been the US Treasury bond. Our model links the determination of reserve asset status to relative fundamentals and relative debt sizes…

I develop a simple hold-up model of political risk, which can be used to explore firms’ strategic options when their investments are subject to the threat of government expropriation. In the model, a firm decides whether to invest and then the…

We present a theory in which the key driver of short-term debt issued by the financial sector is the portfolio demand for safe and liquid assets by the non-financial sector. This demand drives a premium on safe and liquid assets that the…

This chapter evaluates the nature, relative incidence, and drivers of software piracy. The authors measure piracy for a specific product — Windows 7 — which was associated with a significant level of private sector investment. Using…

A fixed cost investment in home automation technology can eliminate consumers’ marginal costs of responding to changing demand conditions. We estimate the welfare effects of a home automation technology using a field experiment run by a large…

In fall 2014, the Stanford Graduate School of Business, in collaboration with BoardSource and GuideStar, surveyed 924 directors of nonprofit organizations about the composition, structure, and practices of their boards.

The skills,…

Religiosity and participation in religious activities have been linked with decreased risky behavior. In the current research, we hypothesized that exposure to the concept of God can actually increase people’s willingness to engage in…

Social media can be beneficial in detecting early signs of emotional difficulty. We utilized the Satisfaction with Life (SWL) index as a cognitive health measure and presented models to predict an individual’s SWL. Our models considered ego,…

Corporate leaders pay considerable attention to the strategy and finances of their organizations but often less attention to organizational features that impact whether their strategy is successful, including the decision-making structure and the…