Publications

Memory failures are frustrating and often the result of ineffective encoding. One approach to improving memory outcomes is through direct modulation of brain activity with electrical stimulation. Previous efforts, however, have reported…

Mental accounting research suggests that consumers prefer borrowing for longer-lasting purchases in order to receive benefits from the purchases as they pay for them. In contrast, two sets of archival data and five lab studies show that consumers…

We show that faces contain much more information about sexual orientation than can be perceived and interpreted by the human brain. We used deep neural networks to extract features from 35,326 facial images. These features were entered into a…

This paper quantitatively assesses time inconsistency, moral hazard, and political ideology in monopoly regulation of electricity distribution. We specify and estimate a dynamic model of utility regulation featuring investment and moral hazard.…

We combine annual stock market data for the most important equity markets of the last four centuries: the Netherlands/U.K. (1629-1812), U.K. (1813-1870) and U.S. (1871-2015). We show that dividend yields are stationary and consistently forecast…

Research by psychologists and economists demonstrates that many non-cognitive skills are malleable in both children and adolescents, but we have limited knowledge on what schools can do to foster these skills. In a field experiment requiring real…

Many institutions—including American federal bureaucracies and legislatures world-wide—are characterized by one set of actors who possess the right to determine which policies will be enacted and an opposing set of actors who possess the right to…

This paper constructs a liquidity mismatch index (LMI) to gauge the mismatch between the market liquidity of assets and the funding liquidity of liabilities, for 2,882 bank holding companies over 2002 to 2014. The aggregate LMI decreases from +$4…

We propose a simple model of the international monetary system. We study the world supply and demand for reserve assets denominated in different currencies under a variety of scenarios: a hegemon versus a multipolar world; abundant versus scarce…

A ‘chilly’ environment limits women’s advancement through the educational pipeline leading to jobs in science and technology. However, we know relatively little about the environment women encounter after making it through the educational…

We explore the effects of television advertising in the setting of the National Football League’s Super Bowl telecast. The Super Bowl is well suited for evaluating advertising because viewers pay attention to the ads, more than 40% of households…

Firms’ inability to commit to future funding choices has profound consequences for capital structure dynamics. With debt in place, shareholders pervasively resist leverage reductions no matter how much such reductions may enhance firm value.…

We document the economywide extent of misconduct among financial advisers and the associated labor market consequences. Seven percent of advisers have misconduct records, and this share reaches more than 15 percent at some of the largest firms.…

Institutional investors rely on past performance in setting future return expectations, and these extrapolative expectations affect their target asset allocations. Drawing on newly-required disclosures for U.S. public pension funds, a group that…

Classic arguments for decentralization, augmented by ideas about how participation empowers the poor, motivate the widely used approach in foreign aid called community-driven development.  CDD devolves control over the selection,…

We explore spatial price discrimination in the context of a ride-sharing platform that serves a network of locations. Riders are heterogeneous in terms of their destination preferences and their willingness to pay for receiving service. Drivers…

We study the causes of “nutritional inequality”: why the wealthy tend to eat more healthfully than the poor in the U.S. Using two event study designs exploiting entry of new supermarkets and households’ moves to healthier neighborhoods, we reject…

This paper provides a dynamic theory of a parliamentary government system with proportional-representation elections, policy-motivated parties and voters, and an endogenous status-quo policy. The theory identifies the representation of parties in…

I evaluate the role of accrual accounting in improving rms’ production decisions and resource allocation across rms. I introduce both cash ow and accounting earnings as imperfect measures of performance into a general equilibrium model with…

Psychological certainty has been the subject of a great deal of research across a number of different literatures. This review focuses on prior and ongoing research on attitude certainty—the subjective sense of confidence of conviction a…