Funded Research Proposals

We propose and test a novel decision-making bias called “outlier neglect.” In general, when evaluating people, places, and opportunities with many features, people focus on the average of those features. For example, when hiring a team, people want the average performance of the team to be high, so they try to hire individuals who perform ...Read More

Consumers who want access to renewable energy have two main options: install renewable energy generation equipment “behind” the electrical meter (e.g., solar panels on the roof) or buy energy from a utility company, which would then source energy from generation companies. The first approach has obvious diseconomies of scale. It is only available to ...Read More

Grid-scale electricity storage technologies play a vital role in balancing electricity supply and demand, particularly as renewable energy sources like wind and solar introduce greater variability into power systems. Lithium-ion batteries, accounting for 90% of U.S. electricity storage capacity, are widely regarded as essential to the clean energy transition. By storing excess electricity during periods ...Read More

The private equity industry has grown significantly in the past decades, and this explosive growth has generated much interest on the impact of private equity’s footprint on the economy and the labor market. Using career history data from nearly 11 million employees at 16,137 private equity-backed firms from 2000 to 2024, I find that firms ...Read More

Corporate reputation is a vital strategic asset for organizations. Yet, its socially constructed nature has made it challenging for scholars to agree on a precise definition or develop a reliable measurement strategy for it. Historically, scholars have relied on measures that are useful for assessing reputation earned but fail to capture its dynamic nature or ...Read More

This proposal presents two innovative research projects designed to harness the transformative power of AI to enhance healthcare outcomes. In close collaboration with the Somaliland Ministry of Health and Development (MoHD), the Taiwan International Cooperation Development Fund (ICDF), and Penn researchers, we aim to tackle critical healthcare challenges in Somaliland, one of East Africa’s most ...Read More

Consumers are increasingly turning to large language models (LLMs) as an aid to everyday writing (i.e., email, text). While it is clear that LLMs can enhance the grammatical and syntactical structure of written communication, might they also lead people to communicate things that depart from their original intentions? We explored this question through an experimental ...Read More

Prescription drug spending has increased rapidly over the last two decades. Prior authorization represents an innovative strategy in Medicaid’s prescription drug benefit management, using administrative tools to influence prescribing behaviors and control expenses. State Medicaid programs have widely adopted prior authorization policies to curb spending and enhance the targeting of treatments. Despite the importance of ...Read More

Most of the prior research on the topic of commercializing academic science approaches the topic from the supply side (innovations from academic institutions and scientists). The needs and behavior of firms are rarely considered in this literature. We aim to do so by using a variety of data sources, both proprietary and public, to characterize ...Read More

Rising healthcare costs remain a significant challenge in the U.S., with one major contributor being the increasing incidence of amputations due to vascular diseases. The number of vascular disease-related amputations in the U.S. is projected to double by 2050, reaching an estimated 3.6 million cases. In 2023 alone, Medicare’s annual expenditure exceeded $900 billion, with ...Read More