Publications

We consider a cheap talk setting with two senders and a continuum of receivers with heterogeneous preferences. Receivers listen to just one sender, but can choose which sender to listen to. We determine that: (i) full communication is possible…

This study examines the factors contributing to a striking increase in information content of quarterly earnings announcements, measured as the absolute magnitude of stock price revision at earnings announcements relative to price revision at…

A growing number of studies have linked facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) with various antisocial or violent behavioral tendencies. However, those studies have predominantly been laboratory based and low powered. This work reexamined the links…

When it comes to driving social progress, good intentions and a big heart are not enough to guide good decisions. Moving the needle requires skilled professionals who have experience creating social change. Unfortunately, our research shows that…

The board of directors is expected to ensure that management has identified and developed processes to mitigate risks facing the organization, including risks arising from data theft and the loss of information. Unfortunately, recent experience…

Exploiting variation in the timing of resets of adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs), we find that a sizable decline in mortgage payments (up to 50 percent) induces a significant increase in car purchases (up to 35 percent). This effect is attenuated…

People are exposed to persuasive communication across many different contexts: Governments, companies, and political parties use persuasive appeals to encourage people to eat healthier, purchase a particular product, or vote for a specific…

This Research Spotlight provides a summary of the academic literature on shareholder activism, including:

• The impact of union activism on corporate outcomes.
• The performance of socially responsible investment funds.
…

Social norms are a powerful force in organizations. While different literatures across fields have developed differing definitions and categories, social norms are commonly defined as and divided into descriptive norms, i.e., the most commonly…

In this survey, more than 3,000 stakeholders from the nonprofit sector—including nonprofit executives and staff, board members, and donors—provided detailed information about the leadership and management practices of a nonprofit organization…

This study shows that initiation of credit default swap (CDS) trading for an entity’s debt increases the share of loans retained by loan syndicate lead arrangers and increases loan spread. These findings are consistent with CDS initiation…

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 extend the emergent lens on strategy formulation by arguing that great strategies arise from insurgent identity movements. In motivating the paper, we depict Steve Jobs as an activist constituted by the personal computing movement that…

We study how debt frictions and demand affect corporate investment using administrative data from a large temporary investment tax credit in Portugal. We obtain exogenous variation in demand for exporting firms from product-destination-level…

This paper contributes to a recent thrust in the OM literature on how various sorts of transparency influence social and environmental responsibility in a supply chain. In practice, companies are under pressure to publish their supplier lists and…

Dominant theories of legislative organization in the U.S. rest on the notion that the majority party arranges legislative matters to enhance its electoral fortunes. Yet, we find little evidence for a short-term electoral advantage for the…

This paper finds evidence of return predictability across technology-linked firms.  Employing a classic measure of technological closeness between firms, we show that the returns of technology-linked firms have strong predictive power for…

In empirical work in economics it is common to report standard errors that account for clustering of units. Typically, the motivation given for the clustering adjustments is that unobserved components in outcomes for units within clusters are…

We examine the long-term consequences of teacher discretion in grading of high stakes tests. Bunching in Swedish math test score distributions reveal that teachers inflate students who have “a bad test day,” but do not discriminate based on…