Funded Research Proposal Archives

Career Effects of Venture Capital on High-Technology Startup Employees

Venture capital (VC) significantly contributes to job creation and innovation in high-tech startups, with around 50% of tech companies reaching IPOs in the past three decades having VC backing. While the benefits of VC on startups and regional economies are well-documented, its impact on individual career trajectories remains underexplored. This research proposal investigates how VC financing influences employee turnover and career progression within startups. VC investment can lead to higher wages and faster promotions, enhancing employee value. However…Read More

How vs. How and Why Nudges: When Stating Your Case Isn’t as Effective

Marketers and policymakers often use nudges to help consumers make welfare-increasing decisions, such as encouraging physically and mentally healthy choices. This research explores when one nudge is more effective than another. More specifically, it demonstrates nudges focusing on telling consumers how to do something are more effective than nudges telling consumers how and why to do something. This is because listing the reasons why a consumer should do something creates the potential for a mismatch between the listed reasons and a consumer’s personal reasons for considering engaging in a behavior. This mismatch, in turn, leads consumers to believe said behavior will benefit their quality of life less than they might have believed otherwise. These findings…Read More

Hiring Dilemmas: Assembling Human Capital in High-Growth Startups

How do high-growth, knowledge-based startups acquire human capital against the backdrop of the challenges and dilemmas that come with rapid organizational expansion? Human capital is a critical resource for these startups, allowing for increased production, knowledge, and resources. However, the dynamic nature of high-growth periods also poses significant challenges. Against the backdrop of a growing firm’s temporal change, these firms face dilemmas in who and when to hire. In my dissertation, am interested in understanding how growing startups attract, motivate, and retain human capital.…Read More

Electric Vehicle (EV) Fleet and Charging Infrastructure: Decision-Making by Drivers

The gig economy is rapidly integrating electric vehicles (EVs) into its infrastructure, particularly within ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft. Algorithms play a crucial role in this ecosystem, determining customer pricing, driver compensation, and matching drivers with customers. While these algorithms have enabled efficient matching of supply and demand, they also face criticisms, including a lack of transparency, potential bias, and inefficiency. This study investigates the decision-making processes of EV drivers within the gig economy, focusing on how charging infrastructure and fleet size impact…Read More

Enabling Personalized Learning in Large Language Models via Reinforcement Learning

This project combines GPT-4 and reinforcement learning to develop a personalized learning platform for an introductory Python programming class. In collaboration with the National Taiwan University, this project will deploy and conduct a randomized control trial (RCT) to understand how to effectively use generative AI to improve student’s learning outcomes and skill development…Read More

Vertical Integration in the Video Streaming Market

Vertical integration in the video streaming market has become increasingly prevalent in recent years. Notable examples include Amazon’s merger with MGM, Walt Disney’s acquisition of Hulu, and the launch of streaming platforms by various studios such as Paramount and NBCUniversal. Many studios now license most of their shows to their vertically integrated streaming platforms, which has led to consumer complaints about the need for multiple subscriptions to access content that they…Read More

Artificial Intelligence, innovation, and product market dynamics

This research project aims to investigate the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) investments by non-tech firms (AI-adopters) on product market competition, innovation, and industry dynamics. By leveraging novel datasets, including firm-level AI-workers, product-level pricing and quantities, and textual information from company filings, this study seeks to provide new insights into how AI adoption…Read More

Commercialization and Scaling Strategies of Deeptech Ventures

This study explores the commercialization and growth strategies of deeptech startups. Deeptech or Hardtech start-ups are a unique set of ventures whose offerings are grounded in breakthrough science and/or engineering innovation (MIT report, 2023). They typically span sectors such as the life sciences, clean technology, advanced materials, robotics, chemicals and quantum computing.…Read More

Private Equity, Corporate Acquirers, & Product Innovation: An Investigation of Corporate Science Acquisitions 1990-2022

Private equity has become an increasingly active player in technology acquisitions in recent years, yet most strategy scholarship has focused on the effects of corporate acquirer ownership on innovation outcomes, providing little guidance to managers on how to choose between the two M&A options. To remedy this gap, I examine how private equity and corporate acquirers differentially affect product innovation at acquired targets using hand-collected new product introduction announcements.…Read More

When Uber Comes to Town: Transportation and Health Care Inequality

Transportation is a critical factor in accessing healthcare services, but its role in shaping health disparities remains understudied. This research project investigates the impact of transportation on healthcare access and health inequality. Using large-scale datasets, the study aims to identify the causal effects of improved local accessibility on healthcare utilization…Read More

Exploring the Dynamics of Hashtag Use and Comment Toxicity on Social Media

The advent of social media has revolutionized how information is disseminated and discussed globally. This project explores the role of informational cues, such as hashtags used by content creators, in fostering safe online communities, with a particular focus on comment toxicity in social media discussions.…Read More

Intermediation Dynamics in Emerging Markets: The Strategic Role of Local Agents in Overcoming Market Constraints

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

Price Regulation in Centralized College Admission Systems: Evidence from India

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

The Effect of Economic and Social Conditions on Music Consumption

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

Examining Effects of Company Pages on Job Ad Effectiveness

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

Cash or Equity? Employees’ Compensation and the Gender of the Startup Founder

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

Quality in the Generic Pharmaceutical Market

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

Opportunities and Risks in Belief Distribution Elicitations

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

Learning by Monitoring: The Impact of Monitoring on VC Re-Investment Performance

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

Leveraging Analytics to Maximize Innovation

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