Publications

Changes in the values and careers of particularly younger employees and changes in organizations, including the reduction of hierarchical levels and greater use of teams and matrix structures — combined with new communication technologies and…

This paper constructs an efficient, budget-balanced, Bayesian incentive-compatible mechanism for a general dynamic environment with quasi linear payoffs in which agents observe private information and decisions are made over countably many…

We discuss “Mandatory IFRS Reporting and Changes in Enforcement” by Christensen, Hail, and Leuz (CHL, 2013). We begin by discussing CHL in the context of prior literature, and subsequently discuss the research design, results, and inferences. CHL…

Anat Admati argues that the banking system is too fragile and inefficient, and that reform efforts have been flawed. The fragility of the system causes booms and busts, and busts lead to bailouts when authorities fear the alternatives are worse.…

Nike’s approach to managing supplier responsibility has greatly evolved since the 1990s, when the media uncovered claims of child labor, underpaid workers, and poor working conditions in several Asian countries. This report explores how Nike’s…

This paper examines the economic consequences associated with the board of director’s choice of whether to adhere to proxy advisory firm policies in the design of stock option repricing programs. Proxy advisors provide research and voting…

Despite multinational firms’ continued investments in factory audits and other practices aimed at tackling social and environmental issues in their supply chains, lapses in employee labor standards, health and safety standards and environmental…

We test for a ‘hot hand’ (i.e., short-term streakiness in performance) in Major League Baseball using panel data. We find strong evidence for its existence in all ten statistical categories we consider. The magnitudes are significant; being…

In 3 experiments using 2 different paradigms, people were less likely to cheat for personal gain when a subtle change in phrasing framed such behavior as diagnostic of an undesirable identity. Participants were given the opportunity to claim…

We examine the pervasive view that “equity is expensive,” which leads to claims that high capital requirements are costly for society and would affect credit markets adversely. We find that arguments made to support this view are fallacious,…

In this study of the impact of protests against Walmart (a first entrant) on Target (a second entrant) from 1998 to 2008 in U.S. geographic markets, we develop and test a theory of information spillovers from protests against corporations…

Will fast growing emerging economies sustain rapid growth rates until they “catch-up” to the technology frontier? Are there incentives for some developed countries to free-ride off of innovators and optimally “fall-back” relative to the…

We provide an overview of the empirical literature on the politics of accounting standard setting, focusing on the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). Although it is clear from casual observation that politics sometimes plays a…

This paper shows the importance of correcting for sample selection when investing in illiquid assets with endogenous trading. Using a large sample of 20,538 paintings that were sold repeatedly at auction between 1972 and 2010, we find that…

How do political predispositions shape the social relationships individuals create? To address these issues, we leverage the domain of online dating, in which we can observe people’s political identities and preferences before they express a…

Individual differences in personality affect users’ online activities as much as they do in the offline world. This work, based on a sample of over a third of a million users, examines how users’ behaviour in the online environment, captured by…

There are at least three potential ways in which a CEO divorce might impact a corporation and its shareholders:

1. It might reduce the executive’s control or influence over the organization.
2. It might affect his or her…

Proxy advisory firms have long been known to influence the voting decisions of institutional investors. Now, a growing body of evidence suggests that they also influence company decisions in equity plan design. Should shareholders and the SEC be…

We introduce a model in which agents in a network can trade via bilateral contracts. We find that when continuous transfers are allowed and utilities are quasilinear, the full substitutability of preferences is sufficient to guarantee the…

As employees increasingly interact with their professional contacts in online social networks that are personal in nature, such as Facebook or Twitter, they are likely to experience a collision of their professional and personal identities…