This study examines how local agents – intermediaries that connect firms such as digital platforms to last mile customers – respond to increased value capture by the firm and the heterogeneity in their responses to different customer segments. Utilizing a proprietary dataset of over 400,000 transactions on a digital platform in rural India I examine how agents, pivotal in bridging infrastructure and capability gaps, react to incentive changes.…Read More
Our research delves into the evolution of startups into established organizations, focusing on how gender diversity influences this transition. Startups typically shift from informal management to formal bureaucratic structures as they grow. This study investigates the impact of increasing female employment on this process.…Read More
This project explores the effect of government price intervention on student enrollment decisions and education quality in private higher education markets with centralized admissions. In particular, the emphasis will be on understanding changes in the enrollment patterns and educational outcomes of historically underrepresented ethnic groups (Backward Castes, Scheduled Castes, and Scheduled Tribes).…Read More
This project seeks to bridge this gap by investigating how circumstances that shape different facets of people’s identity affect their music consumption choices. These experiences may affect multiple dimensions of music consumption. The likelihood, frequency, time spent listening to music, likelihood of subscribing to a paid music account. For example, do people turn more to music during hard times? What type of music do they tune in to? Does music help people cope with these challenges?…Read More
In this study, we aim to quantify the impact of information provision on jobseeker attention and applications. We explore how firms may improve job ad effectiveness through obtaining and maintaining a “company page” on an online job search platform. We study the implications of these firm actions on job ad performance and for jobseekers’ search. We also explore if information provision yields heterogeneous effects across firms of different sizes.…Read More
This project studies how algorithmic governance affect economic coordination in the context of blockchain-based organizations. Specifically, the project studies the algorithmic governance structures adopted among decentralized exchange protocols deployed on blockchains. The project documents and develops frameworks to understand variation in the kinds of structures adopted. In addition, the project examines how the adoption of different kinds of governance structures affect the decentralized coordination among individuals.…Read More
We extend recent studies on how gender shapes subordinate-supervisor interactions by documenting that employees may, under some conditions, negatively stereotype female supervisors in ways that make them more risk averse when choosing the form of compensation. we use employer-employee matched data from Sweden for the period 1991-2021 to assess whether an employee’s chosen compensation in the form of equity (at a given pay) varies with its founder’s gender.…Read More
Asymmetric information about quality characterizes many important markets, including in healthcare, banking, real estate, and used goods. Without intervention, quality in these markets can easily deteriorate. Vertical intermediaries, such as distributors and retailers, may play a powerful role in disciplining quality when consumers are difficult to inform. I study the effects of informed intermediaries on quality and welfare in the context of US generic pharmaceuticals. This market is economically important, characterized by extreme levels of asymmetric information, and experienced a sharp increase in recalls and shortages after 2009. …Read More
Researchers and practitioners have increasingly embraced the novel practice of eliciting the entire belief distributions, as it provides a more thorough understanding of stakeholders’ beliefs. My recent paper (co-authored with Professor Joe Simmons) suggests that constructing belief distributions can sometimes inadvertently exacerbate people’s overconfidence in their predictions.…Read More
This project aims to investigate the impact of monitoring on VC reinvestment performance. Using novel data sources, I construct a proxy for monitoring and test the causal relationship between monitoring and investment outcomes. To address the endogeneity issue regarding monitoring, I use the traveling population as an instrumental variable for VC’s monitoring intensity.…Read More
Academics and practitioners will log onto an intuitive user interface and type in features of their own company (e.g., its size and industry). They will immediately be greeted with an “instant meta-analysis” that summarizes decades of academic findings related to the most important predictors of creativity and innovation in organizations.…Read More
Tsai-Hsuan (Angel) Chung, Phd Candidate at the Wharton School; Osbert Bastani, Penn School of Engineering; Francis Smart, PhD Candidate at the University of Montana; Jatu Abdulai*; Patrick Bayoh*; Musa Komeh*; Vahid Rostami* Abstract: This proposal aims to develop and deploy novel methods that integrate machine learning and optimization to improve…Read More
In explaining variation in productivity in microenterprise, research has focused primarily on the adoption of effective business practices and access to capital, with little focus on strategic positioning. In archival evidence, we find that offering a differentiated product or service is strongly correlated with firm performance. Using a combined sample of nearly 10,000 microenterprises across eight developing countries, we estimated that a standard deviation increase in differentiation is associated with approximately an 11 percent increase in revenues and an eight percent increase in profit…Read More
The US government recently required healthcare price transparency from hospitals and insurers in an attempt to control spiraling healthcare costs. On the one hand, price transparency and online search tools have been very effective in increasing competition for other products in the e-commerce space. On the other hand, healthcare is a complex product, often bought through insurance, which makes it unclear how much transparency will affect realized prices. Further, public disclosure of prices might allow healthcare providers to better negotiate with insurance companies, which might even lead to an increase in healthcare prices. Our project uses a large-scale nationwide dataset of healthcare insurance claims to analyze the potential benefits and impact of these regulations, and inform policymakers and the public about the values and risks of these reforms.…Read More
In this project, we aim to investigate the extent to which acquiring AI capabilities can ease firms’ transition of innovation directions in uncertain times of leadership change. To achieve this goal, we plan to identify the challenges that firms face when they attempt to pivot the innovation direction during CEO turnover. Furthermore, we plan to examine how AI can help mitigate these challenges and provide new opportunities for certain types of innovation development. Our study will provide a roadmap for firms to make optimal decisions when allocating AI resources for strategic changes in innovation.…Read More
In this project, we adapt a classic philosophical method (Nozick’ 1974 “experience machine”) to understand the ways in which people think about the types of alternate realities presented by the metaverse, and with it, the type of value it may offer in the marketplace.…Read More
Can companies providing goal-tracking technology innovate their products to better enable consumers to keep going when they inevitably fail (i.e., skip a workout or overeat calories)? Our research aims to fill this gap by testing the effectiveness of one type of goal tracking design: dynamic goal setting. Most traditional goal tracking apps focus on static goals – goals where the consumer aims to complete the same amount of goal behavior each day (i.e., working out 30 minutes a day or walking 10,000 steps a day). However, we suggest behavior tracking apps that use AI technology to vary the amount of goal behavior the consumers engage in from day to day (i.e., work out an average of 30 minutes a day, with some days being 15, some days 45, etc.) will be more effective, a type of goal tracking we term dynamic goal setting.…Read More
The main goal of this project is to enhance our understanding of the role that exclusive contracts play in shaping market structure, consumer demand, and innovation. The effect of exclusivity on consumer welfare is ambiguous.…Read More
Nearly 3,000 local health departments (LHDs) across the United States are tasked with improving, maintaining, and monitoring population health. LHDs are an administrative or service unit of local or state government concerned with health, and carrying out the responsibility for the health of a jurisdiction smaller than a state.…Read More
Shifts are the dominant way to work in many contexts requiring 24/7 coverage, including call centers, police departments, and hospitals. While the detriments of shift work are well-documented both at the individual and organizational levels, its deployment is often unavoidable given round-the-clock staffing needs. We explore a potential organizational lever—incorporating heterogeneous preferences over shift design—to mitigate ramifications of shift work in the context of acute care bedside nurses. Using survey, administrative, and shift data, we examine whether and the extent to which individual choice over dimensions of their shifts mitigates the impact of shift work on work (dis)satisfaction and turnover of nurses.…Read More
