Mack Institute Research Archives

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

Market Design and Returns to Data in Mobile Advertising

Advertising supports a significant fraction of the internet, enabling free web search and news services. These ads are intermediated by advertising networks, which assign ad slots to potential advertisers through auctions. In this project, we will collaborate with a large mobile advertising intermediation network to investigate (i) to what extent a reduction in available data (e.g., due to Apple’s new privacy policies) lowers the value created by mobile advertising and (ii) whether more decentralized markets are desirable after accounting for the trade-off between this decrease in value and having a more competitive market.…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

Exerting Effort to Choose Increases Generosity

Recently in the gifting industry, websites allow consumers to set up cash registries (e.g., honeymoon and baby fund registries) to elicit gifts in different ways. For example, consumers may set up a cash registry that lists a lump sum expense (e.g., $5,000 for a honeymoon). Alternatively, they may set up an itemized registry, that breaks up the total expense into smaller expenses, such as travel, lodging, and activities during the honeymoon.…Read More

Firm Scaling and the Structure of Career Opportunities

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

Building Business Foresight Capabilities

The objective of this research is to study how organizations can develop superior business foresight capabilities, defined as capabilities to develop accurate beliefs about future business opportunities and threats in an industry undergoing significant disruptive change. These capabilities will be embedded among people and processes that will include the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as Large Language Models (LLMs).…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

Research Spotlight: David Hsu on Effective Industry-University Collaboration

A person in a formal suit standing in a modern, brightly lit office hallway, with large windows in the background.

Collaboration between industry and academia drives innovation forward, but creating a successful partnership—and measuring its impact—is more challenging than it might appear. We spoke to Wharton’s David Hsu about his new paper, forthcoming in Management Science, on what makes industry-university collaboration successful, the importance of viewing innovation as a long-term…Read More

The Role of Large Language Models in Educational Simulations

Mack Institute Research Assistant Lennart Meincke and Wharton Associate Professor of Management Andrew Carton have released a new working paper in our series of working papers on ChatGPT spearheaded by Mack Faculty Director Christian Terwiesch. The new paper, entitled “Beyond Multiple Choice: The Role of Large Language Models in Educational…Read More

Increasing AI Idea Variance

Hands arranging blank sticky notes on a dark surface, with one hand holding a marker.

Mack Institute Research Assistant Lennart Meincke, Wharton Professor Ethan Mollick and Mack Institute Co-Director and Wharton Professor Christian Terwiesch have published the next in Terwiesch’s series of working papers on ChatGPT. The new paper evaluates how LLMs can be used for idea generation and explores methods to increase the novelty,…Read More

Will EFTs Drive Mutual Funds Extinct?

I study investors’ trade-off between ETFs and open-ended mutual funds in the presence of idiosyncratic liquidity risk and aggregate uncertainty. Based on a portfolio choice model, I show that ETFs and mutual funds provide liquidity at different maturities. Mutual funds (ETFs) are preferred by investors facing high (low) idiosyncratic liquidity risk and shorter (longer) investment horizons. In equilibrium, the pooling of investors into fund types based on their expected investment horizon directly emerges from the differential frictions of ETFs and mutual funds. Over the long-term, payoff complementarities in mutual funds dilute investors fund holdings and generate underperformance vis-à-vis ETFs. Yet, in the short-run, ETFs can be mispriced due to intermediary arbitrage constraints. The optimal size of the mutual fund sector relative to ETFs decreases in the illiquidity of portfolio assets but increases in the proportion of mutual fund shares held via retirement accounts.…Read More

Consumer Preferences and Firm Technology Choice

Advances in technology change the way consumers search and shop for products. Emerging is the trend of home-shopping devices such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home, which allow consumers to search or order products. We investigate how consumer brand and technology preferences may interact with the functionalities of technology-enabled shopping (TES) devices to determine the channel structure and market competition.…Read More

Can AI Provide Ethical Advice?

Silhouette of a human head with a digital circuit pattern, representing artificial intelligence or technology integration.

Christian Terwiesch, Mack Institute co-director and Wharton Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions, continues his exploration of Generative AI with a new paper entitled “Can AI Provide Ethical Advice?” Co-authored with Lennart Meincke, the paper details an experiment that pits advice from the New York Times famous “The Ethicist” column…Read More

Preparing Organizations for Greater Turbulence

Vigilant organizations excel at seeing looming threats and embryonic opportunities sooner than rivals, which prepares them to act faster when needed. Four drivers distinguish vigilant from vulnerable organizations, which can be used to design a roadmap to improve organizational acuity and preparedness.…Read More

Private Equity as an Intermediary in the Market for Corporate Assets

We examine the role of non-venture private equity (PE) firms as intermediaries in the market for corporate assets. We argue that in order to create and capture value by acquiring established businesses and selling them to corporate buyers, PE firms must possess at least one of three potential advantages: they must be able to identify businesses that are currently undervalued (valuation advantage), they must be able to enhance the intrinsic value of the business (governance advantage), or they must be able to match the business to a more synergistic corporate owner than is immediately available (timing advantage).…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

Algorithmic Governance: The Case of Decentralized Exchanges on Blockchains

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