Publications

The internet has facilitated the creation of new markets characterized by large scale, increased customization, rapid innovation and the collection and use of detailed consumer and market data. I describe these changes and some of the economic…

This research examined two hypotheses: 1) reflecting on foregone indulgences licenses people to indulge, and 2) to justify future indulgence, people will exaggerate the sinfulness of actions not taken, thereby creating the illusion of having…

The Conceptual Framework identifies comparability as a qualitative characteristic of useful financial reporting information. This paper explains what comparability is, why comparability is desirable, how comparability is achieved, and when we…

An important characteristic of most renewable energy sources is their intermittent pattern of electricity generation. Yet, intermittency is usually ignored in life-cycle cost calculations intended to assess the competitiveness of electric power…

We derive new estimates of total wealth, the returns on total wealth, and the wealth effect on consumption. We estimate the prices of aggregate risk from bond yields and stock returns using a no-arbitrage model. Using these risk prices, we…

We show that easily accessible digital records of behavior, Facebook Likes, can be used to automatically and accurately predict a range of highly sensitive personal attributes including: sexual orientation, ethnicity, religious and political…

Because of the health and economic costs of childhood obesity, coupled with studies suggesting the benefits of comprehensive (dietary, physical activity, and behavioral counseling) intervention, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force…

Firms with central boards of directors earn superior risk-adjusted stock returns. A long (short) position in the most (least) central firms earns average annual returns of 4.68%. Firms with central boards also experience higher future return-on-…

We provide evidence that firms with more transparent earnings enjoy a lower cost of capital. We base our earnings transparency measure on the extent to which earnings and change in earnings covary contemporaneously with returns. We find a…

A series of laboratory and field experiments reveals a detrimental effect of presenting options sequentially (one at a time) versus simultaneously (all at once) on choosers’ satisfaction with and commitment to their chosen option. This is because…

We model the dynamics of risk premia during crises in asset markets where the marginal investor is a financial intermediary. Intermediaries face an equity capital constraint. Risk premia rise when the constraint binds, reflecting the capital…

The vast majority of low-income, high-achieving students in the U.S. do not even apply to any selective colleges, in spite of the fact that attending those institutions would cost less than the ones the students do attend thanks to generous…

Social movement research has developed a rich tradition of using data on collective action and protest events (hereafter “events”) that are culled from various sources (e.g. news reports, police records). Event data have been used by scholars to…

This is part of a case series. In recent years, there has been growing interest in the entrepreneurial acquisitions sometimes known as ‘search funds.’ The concept, which was first referred to as a search fund in the United States, has been…

New solar Photovoltaic (PV) installations have grown globally at a rapid pace in recent years. We provide a comprehensive assessment of the cost competitiveness of this electric power source. Based on data available for the second half of 2011,…

We propose a model of firm volatility based on customer-supplier connectedness. We assume that customers’ growth rate shocks influence the growth rates of their suppliers, larger suppliers have more customers, and the strength of a customer-…

Psychologists have long observed that people conform to majority opinion, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as the “bandwagon effect.” In the political domain people learn about prevailing public opinion via ubiquitous polls, which may…

Only a minority of high-achieving, low-income students apply to colleges in the same way that other high-achieving students do: applying to several selective colleges whose curriculum is designed for students with a level of achievement…