Data Integrated Operations Management with Operational Data Analytics

Host(s): Professor Shuya Yin
Speaker(s): J. George Shanthikumar, Professor of Management
University: Purdue University, Krannert School of Management
Time: Friday, December 13, 2019, 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

This talk will review the current data integrated approaches for prescriptive solution to stochastic optimization problems in operations management. In particularly we will review approaches such as Multi-Armed Bandit, Regularization in Sample Average Approximation and Data Driven Robust Optimization for generating prescriptive solutions to operations management problems. We will then provide a framework for data integrated methodology for prescriptive analytics for stochastic systems. Specific attention will be paid to overcoming structural and statistical errors. This is achieved through Operational Statistics and Objective Operational Learning which are built on the basis of data integration and cross validation. We will illustrate how, 1) regularization in sample approximation approaches and data driven robust optimization with cross validation relates to Operational Statistics, and 2) multi-armed bandit and machine learning approaches compares to Objectives Operational Learning. Applications in pricing and revenue management, inventory control, queueing systems design and staffing in service systems will be demonstrated.

Why Are Investors Paying More Attention to Free Cash Flows?

Host(s): Assistant Professor Chuchu Liang
Speaker(s): Sarah McVay, Professor of Accounting
University: University of Washington, Foster School of Business
Time: Friday, December 6, 2019, 3:15 PM – 4:30 PM
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

We document an upward trend in investor responsiveness to free cash flow surprises over time. We investigate whether the information content of free cash flow increases for the entire market or only various subsets of firms and whether the responsiveness varies with the voluntary disclosure of free cash flow in the earnings announcement. Although we provide some evidence of a general increase in the information content of free cash flow for all firms, the market response is especially strong for firms with high levels of goodwill. Finally, we provide some evidence that the market response is incrementally associated with a firm’s decision to disclose free cash flow, where the proportion of firms disclosing free cash flow is increasing over time.

Proactive and Reactive Cost Cutting: International Evidence on Modern Cost Management

Host(s): Assistant Professor Chuchu Liang
Speaker(s): Shannon W. Anderson, Professor of Management
University: University of California, Davis, Graduate School of Business
Time: Friday, November 22, 2019, 3:15 PM – 4:30 PM
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

This paper examines cost management practices using survey data collected in 2016 from 1023 senior managers with primary cost management responsibility in large companies in 20 countries. The study is descriptive, but guided by economic theory of adjustment costs and prior studies of cost behavior. The survey focuses on cost reduction associated with efficiency improvement. Fewer than two percent of firms have no annual cost reduction target and most report targets of 5 to 20 percent. Thus, cost reduction is a continual rather than an episodic activity. Cost reduction targets exhibit a U-shape relation with revenue change in the prior 24 months; that is, targets are highest for firms that have experienced steep revenue decreases or increases. The U-shape relation is striking in light of classical economics’ fixed and variable cost function and in relation to prior research that finds that costs are less responsive to revenue decline than growth. Revenue changes are associated with different motivations for and modes of cost cutting: 1) reactive cost reduction, to “right-size” in the face of diminished demand, and 2) proactive cost reduction, to fund growth that is expected to persist. Firms with revenue declines often institute mandatory across-the-board, fixed-percentage cost reduction, and focus more on reducing operating and administrative costs. Growing firms instead employ targeted and enterprise-wide cost reduction programs and focus more on reducing working capital. Target achievement is unrelated to target level, approaches undertaken, or costs targeted, but relates positively to investments in capabilities that facilitate cost reduction.

The Earnings Announcement Return Cycle

Speaker(s): Juhani Linnainmaa, Professor of Business Administration
University: Dartmouth College, Tuck School of Business
Time: Friday, November 22, 2019, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

Stocks earn significantly negative abnormal returns before earnings announcements and positive after them. This “earnings announcement return cycle" (EARC) is unrelated to the earnings announcement premium, and it is a feature of stocks widely covered by analysts. Analysts’ forecasts follow the same pattern as returns: analysts' forecasts become more optimistic after an earnings announcement and more pessimistic as the next one draws near. We attribute one-half of the earnings announcement return cycle to this optimism cycle. The EARC may stem from mispricing: both the return and optimism patterns are stronger among high-uncertainty and difficult-to-arbitrage stocks, and the EARC strategy is more profitable on days when it would accommodate larger amounts of arbitrage capital.

ENGINEERING VALUE: THE RETURNS TO TECHNOLOGICAL TALENT AND INVESTMENT IN ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE

Host(s): Associate Professor Vibhansu Abhishek
Speaker(s): Daniel Rock, PhD Candidate
University: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Initiative on the Digital Economy
Time: Thursday, November 21, 2019, 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

Engineers, as implementers of technology, are highly complementary to the intangible knowledge assets that firms accumulate. This paper seeks to address whether technical talent is a source of rents for corporate employers, both in general and in the specific case of the surprising open-source launch of TensorFlow, a deep learning software package, by Google. First, I present a simple model of how employers can use job design as a tool to exercise monopsony power by partially allocating employee time to firm-specific tasks. Then, using over 180 million position records and over 52 million skill records from LinkedIn, I build a panel of firm-level investment in technological human capital (information technology, research, and engineering talent quantities) to measure the market value of technological talent. I find that on average, an additional engineer at a firm is correlated with approximately $854,000 more market value. Firm fixed effects and instrumental variables analyses provide mixed evidence on the marginal causal value of engineers in general. Specifically for AI talent, the value of engineering skills is clearer. AI skills are strongly correlated with market value, though variation in AI skills from 2014-2017 does not explain contemporaneous revenue productivity within firms. AI-intensive companies rapidly gained market value following the launch of TensorFlow, while companies with opportunities to automate relatively larger quantities of labor with machine learning did not. Using a differencein-differences approach, I show that the TensorFlow launch is associated with an approximate market value increase of 4-7% for AI-using firms. Firms outside the top quintile of AI use (as measured by skill counts on LinkedIn) grow by approximately $3.56 million for a 1% increase in AI skill. AI superstar firms in the top quintile also appear to benefit, but show pre-trends in market value growth.

Firms of a Feather Merge Together: The Coordination Benefits of Compatible Cultures

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luke Rhee
Speaker(s): Arianna Marchetti, PhD Candidate in Strategy
University: INSEAD Knowledge
Time: Wednesday, November 20, 2019, 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

In this paper, I argue that the culture compatibility acquirer and target exhibit at the time of a deal announcement—defined as the strength of the overall culture they would form, if combined—entails coordination benefits, positively affecting M&A outcomes. By parsing the recombination and coordination effects of an organizational culture and theorizing about the coordination benefits that strong cultures engender (while controlling for the recombination potential), this paper reconciles the mixed evidence found so far when studying the effect of cultural differences on M&A performance. I measure organizational culture using text reviews employees post on Glassdoor.com about their companies. I develop an approach based on topic modeling, a machine learning algorithm for natural language processing, to measure culture compatibility based on the distribution of reviews in the space of topics that individuals consider important when writing about their companies. Using a sample of 349 technology acquisitions, matched to counterfactual “pseudo-deals,” and about 780,000 Glassdoor text reviews, I find that pre-deal acquirer-target culture compatibility is positively associated with the likelihood of a deal to be announcement and with superior stock returns. The effect is stronger for crossborder deals, in which coordination is more challenging to achieve than in domestic deals.

Which Of These Things Are Not Like The Others? Comparing The Rational, Emotional, And Moral Aspects of Reputation, Status, Celebrity And Stigma

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luke Rhee
Speaker(s): Jung-Hoon Han, PhD Student
University: Pennsylvania State University, Smeal College of Business
Time: Wednesday, November 20, 2019, 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Location: SB1 4410 Center for Global Leadership Room (CGL)

In this review of the literature on reputation, status, celebrity, and stigma we develop an overarching theoretical framework based on the rational, emotional, and moral aspects of each construct’s unique sociocognitive content and the mechanisms through which it affects audience evaluations. We use this framework to assess the construct definitions and empirical measures used in existing research and offer our assessments of how well they reflect each construct’s sociocognitive content, distinguish the constructs from other constructs, and distinguish the constructs from their antecedents and consequences. We then articulate the implications of our framework and analyses for future research.

Co-Creators Vs. Co-Founders: How Solo-Founded Ventures Can Perform As Well As Or Even Better Than Co-Founded Ventures

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luke Rhee
Speaker(s): Travis Howell, PhD Candidate
University: University of North Carolina, Strategy and Entrepreneurship
Time: Monday, November 18, 2019, 2019, 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room and Executive Terrace

The choice of whether to remain solo or find co-founders is one of the most important and fundamental decisions each entrepreneur must make. Yet, while past empirical research finds that larger founding teams outperform smaller teams on average, the existing literature is not clear regarding how and when solo founding might be possible or even preferable to finding cofounders. Using in-depth qualitative data on 70 entrepreneurial ventures, I address this gap. My findings reveal how solo-founders strategically use co-creators rather than co-founders to overcome liabilities, retain control, and mobilize resources in unique and unexpected ways. Further, my findings reveal how co-founders, though often beneficial, are not always necessary (and sometimes even detrimental) to building a successful venture. More broadly, my findings add fresh contributions to the fields of entrepreneurship and strategy.

Discipline Audiences: The Demand for Disinterestedness in the Market for Contemporary Art

Host(s): Associate Professor Ming Leung
Speaker(s): James Riley, PhD Candidate
University: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management
Time: Monday, November 18, 2019, 2:30 PM – 4:00 PM
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

Art worlds have strong norms that enjoin artists to avoid the naked pursuit of profit and instead affect an air of “disinterestedness” (Bourdieu 1993). But why might art dealers and collectors similarly face such norms? This paper draws on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork to examine the puzzle of why galleries discipline collectors – who provide much-needed financial capital – for appearing too motivated by profit. The fieldwork also suggests a paradoxical resolution. Galleries enforce conformity to the norm of disinterestedness among collectors as part of an array of tactics they deploy to “protect” their artists from price volatility that could depress demand for the artist’s work. Although galleries framed such discipline as a moral imperative, a key implication of this study is that enforcing a norm that disavows extrinsic rewards such as fortune and fame ultimately supports a profitable business and investment strategy.

Text Selection

Host(s): Assistant Professor Jinfei Sheng
Speaker(s): Asaf Manela, Assistant Professor of Finance
University: Washington University in St. Louis, Olin Business School
Time: Friday, November 15, 2019, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia & Executive Terrace

Text data is inherently ultra-high dimensional, which makes machine learning techniques indispensable for textual analysis. Text also tends to be a highly selected outcome—journalists, speechwriters, and others carefully craft messages to target the limited attention of their audiences. We develop an economically motivated high dimensional selection model that improves machine learning from text (and from sparse counts data more generally). Our model is especially useful in cases where the cover/no-cover choice is separate or more interesting than the coverage quantity choice. Our design allows for parallel estimation, making the model highly computationally scalable. We apply our framework to backcast, nowcast, and forecast financial variables using newspaper text, and find that it substantially improves out-of-sample fit relative to alternative state-of-the-art approaches.

The Ambassador Effect: How Inducing an Ambassador Role Increases Consumers’ Prosocial Behavior

Host(s): Associate Professor Kevin Bradford
Speaker(s): Maura Scott, Madeline Duncan Rolland Professor of Business Administration
University: Florida State University, College of Business
Time: Friday, November 15, 2019, 9:15 AM – 10:45 AM
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

This research introduces the ambassador effect as a novel, socially-induced form of pre-commitment that influences consumers’ prosociality and patronage intentions. A series of experiments demonstrates that inducing an ambassador role (by asking consumers to both (a) engage in a prosocial behavior and (b) to involve another person in the same prosocial behavior) increases consumers’ prosocial behavior, beyond what mere personal pre-commitments can achieve. This research also examines the moderating role of environmental consciousness, demonstrating that inducing an ambassador role increases real prosocial behavior among consumers low (vs. high) in environmental consciousness.

Pride Without Prejudice: The Unbearable Burden Of Under-Recognition

Host(s): Associate Professor Ming Leung
Speaker(s): Brittany Bond, PhD Candidate
University: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management
Time: Thursday, November 14, 2019, 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

Public recognition is a powerful motivator. High status recognition derives its desirability from scarcity. Thus public recognition inevitably invites social comparisons. Since status recognition commonly corresponds with performance and accompanies tangible rewards, it is challenging to isolate pure social comparison costs. Leveraging a natural experiment in a large multinational organization, I provide novel evidence that employees are distinctly sensitive to status recognition beyond any material, career, or reputation concerns. Rather, the preservation of self-image motivates seemingly self-damaging reactions to nominal status under-recognition. When denied status recognition, employees are much more likely to exit the organization, despite receiving higher monetary rewards as recompense for nominal under-recognition. This study demonstrates the serious productivity risks of using status recognition as an employee performance motivator. The analysis, more broadly, holds implications for understanding how status conferral affects motivation and how organizations should manage reward systems.

Going Off Script: The Level of Spontaneity of Executive Talks and Divergence of Investors’ Opinions

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luke Rhee
Speaker(s): Metin Sengul, Assistant Professor of Management and Organization
University: Boston College, Carroll School of Management
Time: Friday, November 8, 2019, 2:15 PM – 3:45 PM
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

This study examines the influence of executives’ verbal communications on the divergence of investors’ opinions. Prior research has shown that publicly available information about a company increases investors’ ability to assess the company’s fundamental value and reduces differences in investors’ valuations. Hence, opinions of investors converge (diverge) when differences of opinion decrease (increase) with more (less) publicly available information. Whether and to what extent the manner in which executives deliver their talks influences investor opinion divergence remains unexplored. Focusing on the spontaneity of talks delivered by executives, we argue that greater spontaneity increases the chances of inadvertent information disclosure to investors and hence is negatively associated with investor opinion divergence. We also argue that the effect of talk spontaneity on investors’ opinion divergence will be amplified when investors have a greater demand for information (as would be the case for firms with higher earnings uncertainty), but the opposite will be true if there are other reliable sources of information (as would be the case for firms covered by more analysts). Using a unique research design and second-by-second intraday stock trading data from 10,642 conference calls of publicly listed firms between 2002 and 2012, we found strong support of our predictions.

Title Cultural Code Switching In A Post-Merger Organization

Host(s): Associate Professor Ming Leung
Speaker(s): Anjali Bhatt, PhD Candidate
University: Stanford University, Graduate School of Business
Time: Friday, November 8, 2019, 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

What explains differences in how individual employees culturally adapt following an organizational merger? While prior research on post-merger integration has largely focused on organizational characteristics that foreshadow post-merger cultural dynamics and performance, this paper explores individual-level variation in cultural adaptation following mergers. I propose that individuals’ post-merger cultural adaptation— specifically, the tendency to switch cultural codes—can be explained by the combination of their pre-merger conformity, which reflects their dexterity with perceiving and enacting multiple cultural codes, and their social status, which determines the rewards to code switching. I test these ideas by applying the tools of computational linguistics to a unique dataset of 1.5 million employee emails and personnel records from an organizational merger of two U.S. regional banks. I develop a novel approach to measuring cultural code switching by exploiting a machine learning classifier to categorize the linguistic styles of messages as either breaching or conforming to existing cultural codes. Consistent with predictions, across five theoretically distinct sources of status, I find that lower status individuals are more likely to culturally code switch than higher status individuals. Moreover, greater pre-merger conformity is associated with higher rates of cultural code switching for low status individuals, but lower rates of code switching for high status individuals. I discuss implications for status-based theories of cultural boundary work, socialization processes in polycultural contexts, and post-merger cultural dynamics.

Withholdings Taxes and Foreign Portfolio Investment (Joint with Martin Jacob, WHU)

Host(s): Assistant Professor Chuchu Liang
Speaker(s): Maximilian Todtenhaupt, Assistant Professor of Management Science
University: Norwegian School of Economics
Time: Friday, October 25, 2019, 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

We examine the role of the dividend withholding tax system for Foreign Portfolio Investment (FPI). Overpayments for withholding taxes must often be reclaimed by investors from foreign tax authorities. Building on a large data set of bilateral withholding and dividend tax rates from 2008-2015 and bilateral FPI data from the Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey, we show that there are substantial compliance hurdles in claiming tax credits across borders around which has a negative effect on FPI. Using pricing data on American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) we also show that, before the ex-dividend day, withholding tax reclamations are reflected in the return spread between ADRs and the underlying stock in its respective home market. In the final step, we show that FPI is important domestic corporate investment.

Estimating the Cost of Control Rights in the Corporate Loan Market

Host(s): Assistant Professor Chuchu Liang
Speaker(s): Thomas Ruchti, Assistant Professor of Accounting
University: Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business
Time: Friday, October 18, 2019, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

Financial covenants transfer control rights to lenders when borrowers’ metrics breach pre-set thresholds. Contingent control rights allow lenders to extract monetary concessions (e.g., fees and renegotiation) and behavioral concessions (e.g., CEO turnover and reduced investment, R&D, and payroll). We develop a simple tradeoff theory that allows us to estimate the cost of control. Our estimates suggest that the cost of control is 46.1 basis points. On average, control payments correspond to a 13.4% discount on the total cost of borrowing (Berg, Steffen, and Saunders 2016). This finding has implications for our understanding of loan pricing and the value of control rights in the private loan market.

Transfer Learning for Predictive Analytics and Pricing

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luyi Gui
Speaker(s): Hamsa Bastani, Assistant Professor of Operations, Information, and Decision
University: University of Pennsylvania, The Wharton School
Time: Friday, October 11, 2019, 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

Despite the big data revolution, “small data” problems are ubiquitous in healthcare, marketing, and pricing. Transfer learning is a promising approach to improve prediction accuracy by incorporating data from closely related proxy outcomes. For example, e-commerce platforms often use abundant customer click data (proxy) to make product recommendations rather than sparse customer purchase data (true outcome of interest); firms may use price/demand data from related products (proxy) to set prices for new products (true outcome of interest). I will discuss two papers addressing the challenge of efficiently combining true and proxy data to improve decision-making.

The first paper considers personalized recommendations in high dimension, with a large amount of proxy data and a small amount of true data. We propose a novel two-step estimator that provably achieves the same accuracy as common heuristics used by data scientists with exponentially less true data. We demonstrate its effectiveness on e-commerce and healthcare datasets. The second paper considers personalized dynamic pricing across many related products, where the demand parameters for each product come from an unknown distribution that is shared across products. We propose a meta dynamic pricing algorithm that learns this distribution online while solving a sequence of Thompson sampling pricing experiments. Numerical experiments demonstrate that our algorithm significantly speeds up learning.

Based on joint work with David Simchi-Levi (MIT) and Ruihao Zhu (MIT).

Competition Network Lens on Competitor Awareness and New Product Innovation (Joint Work With Sruthi Thatchenkery)

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luke Rhee
Speaker(s): Riitta Katila, Professor of Management Science and Engineering
University: Stanford University
Time: Friday, September 27, 2019, 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

We extend the innovation-networks literature to examine how a firm’s positioning in competition networks relates to a significant organizational outcome, i.e. product innovation. Using a data set on 121 enterprise infrastructure software firms over an 18-year period, we find that selective awareness of competitors in competition networks is related with a firm’s ability to innovate: The focal firm’s positioning to span structural holes is positively associated with innovation. In contrast, network churn in which particular competitors are paid attention to, and the centrality of those competitors, is negatively associated with product innovation. Our findings contribute to competitive dynamics research by unpacking a networks perspective. We also show that not all competitor awareness is positive for innovation, and that watching particular competitors can lead the firm astray.

Empirically Estimating Strategic Behavior for Hotel Standby Upgrade Programs

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luyi Gui
Speaker(s): Mark Ferguson, Professor of Management Science
University: University of South Carolina
Time: Friday, June 14, 2019, 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

Problem Definition: Using a major hotel chain’s 16-month booking data, we empirically investigate the existence and extent of strategic customers in the context of standby upgrades, a popular program offering availability-based, discounted premium-room upgrades to customers. Academic/Practical Relevance: Customers, in particular loyalty members, may become knowledgeable about standby upgrades through repeated interactions with the hotel chain and act strategically, i.e., initially choose a standard room with the expectation of being offered a premium room discount through standby upgrades. Incorrect assumptions about customer behavior may have significant revenue implications. In order to adopt appropriate pricing strategies, hoteliers need to understand their customer mix. Methodology: Due to the sequential nature of customer decision-making for standby upgrades (original booking, clicking the standby upgrades banner ad, and requesting an upgrade), we first run a Sequential Logit Model to explore the differences between loyalty and non-loyalty customers. Next, we develop a Maximum Likelihood Estimator to estimate the percentage of customers who are strategic. Finally, we design and numerically test a new pricing policy based on our empirical findings. Results: We find evidence for strategic behavior in three (out of eight) hotels examined. Our estimates suggest that 22% to 42% of the loyalty customers (10% to 22% of the total customers) act strategically in these properties, which are close to major expressways or business areas. For these hotels, our pricing policy recommends a premium room discount for loyalty customers, but also a higher standby upgrade price, which can bring a revenue improvement of up to 19% over a policy ignoring the strategic behavior and 34% over a policy assuming that all customers are strategic. Managerial Implications: We provide empirical guidance for effective implementation of standby upgrade programs based on the customer mix that a hotel faces. Our numerical study further corroborates the importance of such empirical analysis before pricing the premium room differential and standby upgrades.

Water Pipe (Hookah) Smoking and Cardiovascular Disease Risk A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association

Host(s): Associate Professor of Teaching, Marketing Kevin Bradford
Speaker(s): Merlyn Griffiths, Associate Professor of Marketing
University: University of North Carolina, Greensboro, Bryan School of Business and Economics
Time: Friday, May 24, 2019, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

Tobacco smoking with a water pipe or hookah is increasing globally. There are millions of water pipe tobacco smokers worldwide, and in the United States, water pipe use is more common among youth and young adults than among adults. The spread of water pipe tobacco smoking has been abetted by the marketing of flavored tobacco, a social media environment that promotes water pipe smoking, and misperceptions about the addictive potential and potential adverse health effects of this form of tobacco use. There is growing evidence that water pipe tobacco smoking affects heart rate, blood pressure regulation, baroreflex sensitivity, tissue oxygenation, and vascular function over the short term. Long-term water pipe use is associated with increased risk of coronary artery disease. Several harmful or potentially harmful substances present in cigarette smoke are also present in water pipe smoke, often at levels exceeding those found in cigarette smoke. Water pipe tobacco smokers have a higher risk of initiation of cigarette smoking than never smokers. Future studies that focus on the long-term adverse health effects of intermittent water pipe tobacco use are critical to strengthen the evidence base and to inform the regulation of water pipe products and use. The objectives of this statement are to describe the design and operation of water pipes and their use patterns, to identify harmful and potentially harmful constituents in water pipe smoke, to document the cardiovascular risks of water pipe use, to review current approaches to water pipe smoking cessation, and to offer guidance to healthcare providers for the identification and treatment of individuals who smoke tobacco using water pipes.

Algorithms and the Org Chart

Host(s): Assistant Professor Maritza Salazar Campo
Speaker(s): Melissa Valentine, Assistant Professor of Management Science and Engineering
University: Stanford University
Time: Friday, May 24, 2019, 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

Prior research explains how algorithms reshape different jobs, but limited research has explored how increasing use of algorithms changes organizational structures. To examine this question, I conducted a 9-month field study in the algorithms and merchandising departments of a high-tech retail company, as they developed algorithms that profoundly reconfigured their organizational structure. I found that their organizational structure symbolically communicated and defined specific categories for understanding and making decisions about customers, products, or services -- it was these categorical structures that were called into question and seen as irrelevant and constraining as new and more algorithms were developed. This automation process was not simple work displacement, however. Instead, the merchandising department developed the new work of curating algorithmically-identified categories and recommendations and explored new organizational structures for this emerging work. My findings contrast with prior studies that theorize and focus on the division of labor encoded and communicated in organizational structure. In this paper, I integrate categorization and organizational design theories to explain this process and its implications for organizations.

Does Ownership Conversion from Nonprofit to For-Profit Benefit the Public? Evidence from U.S. Nursing Homes

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luyi Gui
Speaker(s): Lauren Lu, Associate Professor of Operations
University: University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School
Time: Friday, May 24, 2019, 9:30 AM – 11:00 AM
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room and Executive Terrace

In the last few decades, many healthcare institutions converted their ownership type from nonprofit to for-profit, contributing to an increased presence of for-profit ownership in the U.S. healthcare sector. There have been opposing views on whether such ownership conversions benefit the public. Employing a large panel dataset of U.S. nursing homes from 2006 to 2015, we conduct a difference-in-differences analysis on converted facilities’ financial performance, operating policies, and quality of care. We observe that converted facilities significantly increased their post-conversion profit margins, compared to propensity-score-matched controls. To explain the financial improvement, we hypothesize two operational mechanisms: revenue seeking and cost reduction. We find that converted facilities raised revenues by increasing the enrollment of Medicaid-covered residents, who have lower daily reimbursement rate but longer length of stay (LOS), and by keeping unchanged the enrollment of Medicare-covered residents, who have higher daily reimbursement rate but shorter LOS. These changes in resident enrollment were more pronounced in facilities with lower occupancy rate. As a result, unlike critics’ concerns, these ownership conversions from nonprofit to for-profit increased nursing home access by economically disadvantaged populations. Converted facilities also reduced costs by cutting the wage cost of non-nursing staff while keeping that of nursing staff unchanged. In addition, converted facilities kept their total nurse staffing unchanged, but changed the staffing mix. These operational changes led to lower quality of care in converted facilities only immediately after conversion but not in the long term. Interestingly, the post-conversion quality was kept unchanged when a facility was converted by a for-profit nursing home chain or when the pre-conversion occupancy rate was low. Taken together, these results suggest that ownership conversion from nonprofit to for-profit benefits the public in many instances. Two conditions are conducive to such positive outcomes: (1) low pre-conversion occupancy rate, and (2) conversion by a for-profit chain. To perform counterfactual analysis, we employ various machine learning methods to predict post-conversion financial and quality performance. Applying these prediction models to closed nursing homes during 2006-2015, we find that about 22% of the facilities could have achieved increased and positive profit margins if they were converted to for-profit, and roughly 38% of the facilities could have maintained or improved their quality performance.

Disclosure, Competition, and Learning From Asset Prices

Host(s): Assistant Professor David Yang
Speaker(s): Liyan Yang, Professor of Finance
University: University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management
Time: Friday, May 10, 2019, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

I study voluntary disclosure of duopoly firms when they learn information from asset prices. By disclosing information, a firm incurs a cost of losing competitive advantage to its rival firm but benefits from learning from a more informative asset market. Three types of equilibrium arise: nondisclosure, partial disclosure, and full disclosure. In a partial disclosure equilibrium, price informativeness and firm profits increase with the size of noise trading in the financial market. Firms' disclosure decisions can exhibit strategic complementarity, which leads to both a disclosure equilibrium and a nondisclosure equilibrium.

Network Hubs Cease to be Influential in the Presence of Low Levels of Advertising

Host(s): Assistant Professor Sharon Koppman
Speaker(s): Gabriel Rossman, Associate Professor and Vice Chair
University: University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Sociology
Time: Friday, May 10, 2019, 10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room and Executive Terrace

The “influentials” or “opinion leadership” hypothesis argues that social network hubs have disproportionate importance to how new ideas and behaviors spread. Previous research affirming this hypothesis has assumed that all learning occurs through the network, but we conduct a computational experiment in which we allow learning both through the network and from external sources of information (e.g., advertising). We replicate opinion leadership, but only in the region of parameter space where external influence is absent. When the model allows even trivial levels of external influence, hubs are no more important to diffusion than nodes chosen at random.

Immigration Fear and Investor Behavior

Host(s): Assistant Professor Chuchu Liang
Speaker(s): Luo Zuo, Associate Professor of Accounting
University: Cornell University, Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management
Time: Friday, May 3, 2019, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Location: SB2 Room 117

We examine the effects of public attitudes toward immigration on investor behavior in the financial advisory industry. We find that minority advisors are more likely to receive complaints in periods of high immigration fear than in other periods when compared with their white peers who work in the same firm and at the same location. The tone of complaints against minority advisors is also more negative in periods of high immigration fear, but there is no evidence that the increased level of allegations is driven by a concurrent increase in misconduct committed by minority advisors. We interpret these results as evidence suggesting that immigration fear leads investors to seek more information about their minority advisors, but they process this information in a biased manner that results in an increased number of unfounded allegations.

Complementary Assets Theory in Times of Knightian Uncertainty

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luke Rhee
Speaker(s): Curba Lampert, Assistant Professor
University: Florida International University, College of Business
Time: Friday, May 3, 2019, 2:30 PM – 4:00 PM
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

How do complementary assets across the different stages of a firm’s value chain facilitate value creation and value appropriation from technological innovation? The answer remains a key area of interest. However, much of the current thinking about value creation and value appropriation in the complementary assets theory operates with some unstated boundary conditions. The theory is applicable under conditions of risk—where decision makers can know the outcomes or probabilities—but it is less clear how the theory applies under conditions of Knightian uncertainty—where neither outcomes nor probabilities can be known. Knightian uncertainty can have significant implications for choices and outcomes. It questions the decisions made about the value chain and if they will remain relevant. We posit that traditional thinking on the complementary assets theory may not hold under uncertainty. We show that existing theory may lead firms to take a suboptimal approach, unknowingly directing complementary assets in ways for value appropriation, thereby substituting efforts for value creation. We highlight how the consideration of uncertainty reveals an intrinsic trade-off between flexibility and commitment in the complementary assets theory. Furthermore, we posit that how firms manage this tradeoff contributes to the microfoundations of the dynamic capabilities theory.

Complementary Assets Theory in Times of Knightian Uncertainty

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luke Rhee
Speaker(s): Curba Lampert, Assistant Professor
University: Florida International University, College of Business
Time: Friday, May 3, 2019, 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

How do complementary assets across the different stages of a firm’s value chain facilitate value creation and value appropriation from technological innovation? The answer remains a key area of interest. However, much of the current thinking about value creation and value appropriation in the complementary assets theory operates with some unstated boundary conditions. The theory is applicable under conditions of risk—where decision makers can know the outcomes or probabilities—but it is less clear how the theory applies under conditions of Knightian uncertainty—where neither outcomes nor probabilities can be known. Knightian uncertainty can have significant implications for choices and outcomes. It questions the decisions made about the value chain and if they will remain relevant. We posit that traditional thinking on the complementary assets theory may not hold under uncertainty. We show that existing theory may lead firms to take a suboptimal approach, unknowingly directing complementary assets in ways for value appropriation, thereby substituting efforts for value creation. We highlight how the consideration of uncertainty reveals an intrinsic trade-off between flexibility and commitment in the complementary assets theory. Furthermore, we posit that how firms manage this tradeoff contributes to the microfoundations of the dynamic capabilities theory.

Physical Collocation, Formal Work Relationships, and Work-Related Interactions in Organizations

Host(s): 
Speaker(s): Jonathon Cummings, Professor of Management and Organizations
University: Duke University, The Fuqua School of Business
Time: Friday, May 3, 2019, 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

This presentation focuses on how work-related interactions (‘who interacts with whom about work') are shaped by two key elements of organizations: physical collocation and formal work relationships. Whereas physical collocation captures the extent to which employees are proximate to one another in physical space (e.g., sit next to each other), formal work relationships capture the extent to which employees depend on one another within the organizational structure (e.g., boss-subordinate or members of the same functional unit). Prior research has shown how physical collocation and formal work relationships each positively impact work-related interactions, but less is known about their joint impact. For example, compared to collocated employees who have a formal work relationship, non-collocated employees may experience a relative boost in work-related interactions because of increased awareness, socialization, and opportunity. In addition, prior research has focused on collocation within a dyad, but less is known about the role of third-parties who are also collocated with employees. For example, compared to an employee who is not collocated with her boss, an employee who is collocated with her boss may experience a relative decline in work-related interactions because of concerns about monitoring by her boss. Given that physical collocation is often confounded with formal work relationships in organizations, the research design took advantage of quasi-random variation in the office seating of employees after the relocation of a corporate headquarters to a new building. Survey data on work-related interactions were collected from 143 employees three months prior to the move (when members of the same functional unit sat next to each other) and three months after the move (when employees were randomly assigned to seats within zones of the office, thus members of different functional units sat next to each other). The findings suggest that collocation among employees was generally good for work-related interactions, especially for those employees who did not have formal work relationships. However, the collocation of a boss with an employee was generally bad for work-related interactions with other employees, especially when they did not have a formal work relationship. Implications for the intersection of organization design, social networks, and collaborative technology are discussed.

Survival or Aspiration Reference Point? The Effect of CEO Power on Focus of Attention and Risk Taking

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luke Rhee
Speaker(s): Songcui Hu, Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations
University: University of Arizona, Eller College of Management
Time: Friday, April 12, 2019, 2:30 PM – 4:00 PM
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room and Executive Terrace

In this study, we extend March and Shapira’s (1992) organizational variable risk preferences model which states that a firm’s risk taking is a resultant outcome of attending to multiple reference points including survival point and aspiration point. We do so by incorporating the role of managerial agency and developing a power perspective on how CEOs affect both focus of attention and risk taking of firms in the face of underperformance. We argue that, compared to less-powerful CEOs, more-powerful CEOs tend to be less sensitive to the survival point but more responsive to the aspiration point, because more-powerful CEOs tend to embrace higher employment security, more managerial discretion, and greater hubris in decision making. We also argue that organizational negative momentum, i.e., consecutive loss strikes, strengthens the effect of CEO power. Our empirical analysis using data from S&P 1500 firms from 2001 to 2017 provides support to our theoretical predictions. By linking theories on variable risk preferences, performance feedback, and strategic leadership, this study contributes to conversations about CEO power and performance feedback and its implications for risk-taking behavior in organizations.

Incentive for Information Sharing in Supply Chain Management (ISOM)

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luyi Gui
Speaker(s): Albert Y. Ha, Chair Professor of Operations Management
University: The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Department of Information Systems, Business Statistics, and Operations Management (ISOM)
Time: Friday, April 12, 2019, 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room and Executive Terrace

In the first part of this talk, we present some mathematical models that have been developed to investigate the incentive for a retailer to share private demand information with a manufacturer.  We consider several drivers such as production cost function, production cost reduction effort, information accuracy, competition intensity and type of competition that influence the incentive for information sharing. In the second part of this talk, we present recent research on the incentive for a manufacturer to share private demand information with a retailer under retail price and service effort competition. We explore how this incentive depends on cost of service effort, intensity of effort competition and the number of uninformed retailers.

Measuring Accruals Quality: A Theoretical and Empirical Evaluation

Host(s): Assistant Professor Chuchu Liang
Speaker(s): Richard Sloan, Professor of Accounting
University: University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business
Time: Friday, April 5, 2019, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room and Executive Terrace

A large body of empirical research in accounting investigates the causes and consequences of accruals quality, reaching numerous influential conclusions. Yet little work has been done to systematically validate the underlying measures of accruals quality. We provide the first comprehensive evaluation of popular measures of accruals quality. We find that most of these measures often lack power and suffer serious problems with correlated omitted economic characteristics. Certain measures also appear to have the opposite relation to accruals quality as assumed in existing research. Collectively, our evidence casts doubt on the conclusions of previous research. We close by providing guidelines for conducting improved tests of accruals quality.

Relative Pay for Non-Relative Performance: Keeping up with the Joneses with Optimal Contracts

Host(s): Assistant Professor David Yang
Speaker(s): Ron Kaniel, Jay S. and Jeanne P. Benet Professor of Finance
University: University of Rochester, Simon Business School
Time: Friday, April 5, 2019, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

We consider multi-agent contracting when agents have “keeping up with the Joneses” (KUJ) preferences. Although contracts appear inefficient, as performance seems inadequately benchmarked, when a single principal can commit to a public contract, the optimal contract hedges agents’ relative wage risk without sacrificing efficiency. With multiple principals, or a principal that is unable to commit, a “rat race” emerges in which agents are more productive, but wages increase even more, reducing profits and undermining efficiency. Renegotiation reduces or enhances efficiency depending on whether KUJ effects are weak or strong. Public disclosure of contracts across firms can cause output to collapse.

Pricing Schemes in Cloud Computing: Utilization-Based versus Reservation-Based

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luyi Gui
Speaker(s): Shi Chen, Assistant Professor of Operations Management
University: University of Washington, Foster School of Business
Time: Friday, April 5, 2019, 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM
Location: SB1 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

Cloud computing has been a rising trend in the business world. In this paper, we consider two most important pricing schemes offered to sustained customers by major service providers in the cloud industry: the reservation-based scheme (the R-scheme) by Amazon or Microsoft, and the utilization-based scheme (the U-scheme) by Google. We consider a duopoly model with heterogeneous customers characterized by the mean and the coefficient of variation of their usage. We show that under either pricing scheme, the effective price is essentially an increasing function of the coefficient of variation of usage, and thus both schemes aim for rewarding stability in usage. However, when the providers adopt different schemes, we show that customers with lower demand volatility would prefer the R-scheme, while those with higher demand volatility would prefer the U-scheme. Furthermore, we study the impact of evolving market characteristics, including the distributions of market preference, demand size, and demand volatility, as well as the impact of the providers’ service levels on their choices of schemes and decisions on the pricing parameters. We find that if the market has a stronger preference for a particular provider or that provider has a higher service level than its competitor, the provider is more likely to adopt the R-scheme, while its competitor’s adoption of a scheme depends on the extent of the price competition. Specifically, when the diversity of customer preference becomes higher (lower), the price competition becomes softened (intensified), and the competitor is more likely to adopt the R-scheme (U-scheme, respectively).

Predictive Analytics and Organizational Architecture: Plant Level Evidence From the Census Data

Host(s): Assistant Professor Chuchu Liang
Speaker(s): Eva Labro, Professor of Accounting
University: University of North Carolina, Kenan-Flagler Business School
Time: Friday, March 15, 2019, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Location: SB1 5200 Lyman Porter Colloquia & Executive Terrace

We examine trends in the use of predictive analytics for a sample of more than 25,000 manufacturing plants using proprietary data from the US Census. Comparing 2010 and 2015, we find that use of predictive analytics has increased markedly, with the greatest use in younger plants, professionally-managed firms, more educated workforces, and stable industries. Decisions on data to be gathered originate from headquarters and are associated with less delegation of decision-making and more widespread awareness of quantitative targets among plant employees. Performance targets become more accurate, long-term oriented, and linked to company-wide performance, and management incentives strengthen, both in terms of monetary bonuses and career outcomes. Plants increasing predictive analytics become more efficient, with lower inventory, increased volume of shipments, narrower product mix, reduced management payroll and increased use of flexible and temporary employees. Results are robust to a specification based on increased government demand for data.

False (and Missed) Discoveries in Financial Economics

Host(s): Assistant Professor David Yang
Speaker(s): Harvey Campbell, Professor of International Business
University: Duke University, the Fuqua School of Business
Time: Friday, March 15, 2019 , 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

Investors make two types of mistakes. First, they erroneously allocate to an asset manager (or a “smart” beta) that underperforms because the asset manager lacks skill. Second, investors might miss out allocating to a good manager. The first mistake is difficult to deal with given there are thousands of managers and many look good purely by luck. We introduce a new technique that optimizes the threshold for a prespecified false discovery rate (i.e., chance of the first mistake), at say 5%. Our method also allows for heterogeneous false discoveries – we should not treat all bad managers the same because some are really, really bad. Next, we focus on the second type of error where investors miss out on good managers. It is routine to ignore this type of mistake. Our results show that current research methods have little or no power to detect good managers. Finally, our method allows for the asymmetric treatment of false discoveries and misses – generally, investing in a bad manager is more costly than missing a good manager. We also offer a way to select managers whereby the investor can prespecify the ratio of false discoveries to misses to accommodate these differential costs. For instance, we can accommodate a decision rule whereby the investor is willing to miss ten good managers to avoid the mistake of selecting one bad manager.

FLOW (W/ Caitlin Dannhauser)

Host(s): Assistant Professor David Yang
Speaker(s): Jeffrey Pontiff, Professor & James F. Cleary Chair in Finance
University: Boston College, Carroll School of Management
Time: Wednesday, March 6, 2019, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

We estimate an apples-to-apples comparison of flows to active mutual funds, index mutual funds, and exchange traded funds. Positive, contemporaneous correlations between aggregate market returns and aggregate flows that were commonplace for active funds are recently only prominent for ETFs. At the individual fund level, the flow-performance relation is more dramatic for passive vehicles, and in particular, for ETFs. Theories of mutual fund flow are hapless in explaining this result. Regardless of vehicle type, flow-induced fire sales and flow-induced trading are similar and the explanations utilized by the literature are congruous with our findings.

Information Sharing Between Mutual Funds and Auditors

Host(s): Assistant Professor Chuchu Liang
Speaker(s): Ole-Kristian Hope, Professor of Accounting
University: University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management
Time: Friday, March 1, 2019, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Location: SB2 Classroom 122

This paper examines whether there is information sharing between mutual funds and their auditors about the auditors’ other listed firm clients. Using detailed hand-collected data from the Chinese market and employing levels, changes, and PSM analyses, we find that mutual funds invest more in firms with shared auditors. They also earn higher profits from trading in those firms. These effects are more pronounced for firms with a more opaque information environment. The evidence is consistent with information flowing from auditors to mutual funds, providing mutual funds with an information advantage in firms that share the same auditors. We further find that auditors benefit by charging higher audit fees and by improving their audit quality. Our study provides evidence of bi-directional information sharing between two important market intermediaries.

When Ignorance is Not Bliss: An Empirical Analysis of Sub-tier Supply Network Structure on Firm Risk

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luyi Gui
Speaker(s): Ravi Anupindi, Professor of Technology and Operations
University: University of Michigan, Ross School of Business
Time: Friday, March 1, 2019, 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

Market Competition and Effectiveness of Performance Pay: Evidence from the Field

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luyi Gui
Speaker(s): Tobias Kretschmer, Professor of Management
University: Ludwig Maximilians University of Münich, School of Management, Institute for Strategy, Technology and Organization
Time: Wednesday, February 20, 2019, 2:30 PM – 4:00 PM

Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

It is well-established that the effectiveness of pay-for-performance (PfP) schemes depends on employee- and organization-specific factors. However, less is known about the role of external forces. Investigating the role of market competition on the effectiveness of PfP, we theorize that there are two counteracting effects – business stealing and competitor response – that jointly generate an inverted U-shape relationship between PfP effectiveness and competition. Weak competition discourages effort response to PfP because there is little extra market to gain, while strong competition creates low incentives because competitors are more likely to respond. PfP hence has the strongest effect under moderate competition. Field data from a bakery chain and its competitive environment confirm our theory, allow us to empirically separate the business stealing and competitor response effects, and refute alternative explanations.

The Maintenance and Reconstruction of Shared Management Control Practices Through Heedful Interrelating

Host(s): Professor and Taco Bell Chair Vijay Gurbaxani
Speaker(s): Kursad Asdemir, Assistant Professor of Business Administration
University: The United Arab Emirates University, College of Business and Economics
Time: Tuesday, February 19, 2019, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

Star-Cursed Lovers: Strategic Shading in Online Dating

Host(s): Professor Sanjeev Dewan
Speaker(s): Behnaz Ghahestani Bojd, Doctoral Candidate of Information Systems & Operations Management
University: University of Washington, Foster School of Business
Time: Friday, February 15, 2019, 2:30 PM – 4:00 PM
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room and Executive Terrace

We examine how users respond to the popularity information of potential partners in a gamified mobile dating app. On the one hand, knowing that a potential match is popular can increase her/his appeal. On the other hand, popular people are less likely to reciprocate, and hence users may strategically shade down their revealed preference for popular users to avoid the psychological costs of rejection. In our setting, users interact with each other by playing a rating game, where they rank-order members of the opposite sex and are then get matched based on a Stable Matching Algorithm. A key piece of information shown to users during this process is a “star-rating” for each member of the opposite-sex, which is a function of their prior received ratings. We quantify the causal impact of a user’s star-rating on the preference-ratings that s/he receives during a game and her likelihood of receiving messages after a game. To overcome the endogeneity between a user’s star-rating and her unobserved attractiveness, we employ non-linear fixed-effects models. We find strong support for the presence of strategic shading in our data: (1) three-star users receive lower preference-ratings during the game compared to two-star users, and (2) two-star users receive fewer first messages after the game compared to one-star users. We also show that the effect of star-ratings is heterogeneous across both outcomes and user-specific observables, and that this heterogeneity (or extent of shading) can be directly linked to the severity of rejection concerns. Our findings have implications for the design of dating platforms and measurement of mate preferences in matching markets.

Investor Demand for Contextual Information: Evidence from Wikipedia

Host(s): Assistant Professor Ben Lourie
Speaker(s): Chenqi Zhu, PhD Candidate in Accounting
University: New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business
Time: Thursday, February 14, 2019, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

I use the web traffic (wiki-visits) to the Wikipedia pages of S&P 500 companies to study the determinants and consequences of investors’ contextual information acquisition. Employing the launch of Google Knowledge Graph as a natural experiment, I first establish that wiki-visits reflect information acquisition by investors, especially retail investors. I then document that wiki-visits spike at key informational events such as earnings announcements. To better understand investors’ demand for contextual information, I focus on earnings announcements and find that the abnormal wiki-visits at these announcements increase with the announcing firms’ abnormal tone in earnings press releases, textual complexity of previous financial reports, and off-balance sheet intangible intensity. Consistent with contextual information improving investors’ interpretation of financial information, I find that the abnormal wiki-visits at earnings announcements are positively associated with the earnings response coefficient and the speed of price discovery measured by intra-period timeliness. Collectively, these results suggest that investors supplement financial information with highly readable contextual information, thereby improving their understanding of the financial information.

The Choice Mindset: Implications for Individual, Dyadic, and Group Decision Making

Host(s): Associate Dean and Professor Maia Young
Speaker(s): Krishna Savani, Associate Professor of Strategy, Management and Organization
University: Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Business School
Time: Monday, February 11, 2019, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room and Executive Terrace

Researchers typically assume whenever people can pick one of multiple options, they have a choice. I propose that even when faced with multiple options, people sometimes perceive that they have a choice, but other times, fail to realize that they have a choice. Nudging people to construe the act of selecting one of many options as a choice can have a broad range of influences on their individual, dyadic, and group decision making. At the individual level, employees who have a greater sense of choice are more likely to exercise their voice in the workplace. They are less also susceptible to decision making errors, such as inflexible perseverance. A choice mindset intervention in a field setting helps people keep distractions at bay, leading them to manage their time in accordance with their goals. At the dyadic level, negotiators in a choice mindset are less anchored to the first offer. They are also less likely to find ultimatums credible, and thereby continue negotiating despite receiving ultimatums, and therefore earn better outcomes. At the group level, when the idea of choice is salient, members contribute less to public goods and are less likely to punish free riders. In experimental markets, when the idea of choice is salient, buyers and sellers are less concerned about the welfare of third parties who are affected by their choices (e.g., people who bear the brunt of environmental pollution caused by a dirty manufacturing process). Overall, the findings indicate that the salience of choice has both positive and negative consequences for people’s decision making.

Do targeted business tax subsidies achieve expected benefits? Co-authored with Lisa De Simone (Stanford) and Aneesh Raghunandan (London School of Economics)

Host(s): Assistant Professor Chuchu Liang
Speaker(s): Rebecca Lester, Assistant Professor of Accounting
University: Stanford University, Graduate School of Business
Time: Friday, February 8, 2019, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Location: SB1 5200 Lyman Porter Colloquium Room

We examine the association between state and local firm-specific tax subsidies and business activity in the surrounding county, measured as the number of business establishments, number of employees, aggregate wages, per capita employment, and per capita wages. Using a propensity score matched sample and a difference-in-differences design, we find that tax subsidies are positively and significantly associated with local employment and wages, but that these effects are concentrated in the largest tax subsidies. For over 2,000 of the smaller tax subsidies in our sample, we observe no statistically significant relation. Furthermore, we only find evidence of an increase in establishments for the 49 large "megadeal" subsidy packages that include a variety of state and local benefits, but that population growth following such megadeals negates per capita employment and income effects. We provide a large-scale empirical analysis of the relation between firm-specific tax subsidies and aggregate economic activity at the county level, thus extending a literature that generally focuses on the real effects of statutory tax policies that impact all firms within a jurisdiction.

External Representations In Strategic Decision Making: Understanding Strategy’s Reliance on Visuals

Host(s): Professor Luke Rhee
Speaker(s): Felipe Csaszar, Associate Professor of Strategy
University: University of Michigan, Ross School of Business
Time: Friday, February 8, 2019, 2:30 PM – 4:00 PM
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

Visual representations pervade strategic decision making. However, the strategy literature has been mostly silent about why visual representations are so pervasive and about how they affect strategic decision making. We address the “why” question by building on ideas from cognitive science to identify four cognitive functions on which strategic decision making relies and that are improved by the use of visuals. We address the “how” question by developing a conceptual model and propositions describing how decision quality is contingent on characteristics of the task environment, the visuals, and the managers. Our work extends the understanding of bounded rational search by explaining how visual representations affect the search process.  Among other theoretical implications, we show that a problem space’s size and “satisfiability” depend on: (i) the ability of managers to select an appropriate visual representation and (ii) the extent to which that visual representation is both usable and malleable. We close by detailing some implications for users, designers, and teachers of visuals in the field of strategy and by suggesting directions for future research.

The Disciplining Effect of Peers: Evidence From the Timing of Earnings Announcements

Host(s): Assistant Professor Ben Lourie
Speaker(s): Phong Truong, Ph.D. Candidate
University: Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business
Time: Monday, February 4, 2019, 10:00 am – 11:30 am
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

I present evidence that peers have a disciplining effect on disclosure timing decisions. To do so, I exploit quasi-exogenous variation in the timing of peers' earnings announcements based on the SEC's threshold-based reporting deadline rules. I find that firms respond to early peer announcements by announcing their own earnings early. Furthermore, I show evidence suggesting that peer effects operate under two mechanisms: disciplining and information transfer. Discipline occurs because investors may infer bad news from delay relative to reporting peers. Information transfer occurs because peer reports contain information that is directly value relevant for the focal firm. Importantly, peer effects impose a significant spillover cost in the form of increased audit fees on firms facing peer pressure to report early. My findings highlight a novel externality of financial reporting regulation with benefits and costs that should be considered by policymakers concerned with the timing of earnings information releases.

Reconsidering Returns

Host(s): Assistant Professor David Yang
Speaker(s): Samuel Hartzmark, Associate Professor of Finance
University: University of Chicago, Booth School of Business
Time: Friday, February 1, 2019, 1:30 PM – 3:30 PM
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

Investors' perception of performance is biased because the relevant measure, returns, is rarely displayed. Major indices ignore dividends, inducing mechanical underperformance on ex-dividend days. Newspapers are more pessimistic on these days, consistent with mistaking the index for a return. Market betas should track returns, but track prices more than dividends, creating predictable market returns. Mutual funds receive inflows for “beating the S&P 500,” comparing the price-only index with the fund's net asset value change (also not a return). Displaying returns by default would ameliorate these issues, which arise despite high attention and little ambiguity regarding the appropriate measure.

Learning Optimal Instruments From Data

Host(s): Assistant Professor Mingdi Xi
Speaker(s): Kartik Hosanagar, Professor of Operations, Information and Decision
University: University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business
Time: Friday, February 1, 2019, 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

In this paper we approach the problem of constructing instrumental variable from exogenous information in linear causal models as a (supervised) learning problem. In learning problems the decision-maker must learn an optimal decision rule from a training sample which is to be applied on a test sample. We formulate the choice of construction of instruments in a linear causal model as a decision problem that is amenable the learning approach. We develop an algorithm that we term “cross-learning", which allows training of instruments and causal inference to be simultaneously performed from sample data. Simulations and application on real-world datasets demonstrates that the algorithm is highly effective.

Peer Information and Managerial Myopia

Host(s): Assistant Professor Ben Lourie
Speaker(s): Badryah Alhusaini, PhD Candidate in Accounting
University: Pennsylvania State University, Smeal College of Business
Time: Monday, January 28, 2019, 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

This paper examines the effect of peer information on managerial myopia. If greater peer information is beneficial, investors will face less uncertainty about the firm’s own prospects and thus fixate less on current earnings. As a result, managers can face less pressure to focus on boosting short-term performance to signal high firm type. Using the percentage of public firms in the industry (i.e. “public firm presence”) as a measure of peer information, I find that managers in industries with greater public firm presence are less myopic. This effect of peer information reducing myopia is less pronounced in instances in which the manager is more pressured to meet short-term benchmarks, as measured by analyst coverage and transient ownership. Finally, I find that, for firms with greater public firm presence, investors face less information asymmetry and react less negatively when those firms miss an earnings benchmark, consistent with greater levels of peer information reducing myopia by facilitating investors to assess the firm more effectively.

Sample Boxes for Retail Products: Bundling Experience Goods to Leverage Consumer Uncertainty and Teaching in Operations

Host(s): Professor Robin Keller
Speaker(s): Alireza Yazdani, Ph.D. Candidate in Operations and Business Analytics
University: University of Oregon, Lundquist College of Business
Time: Friday, January 25, 2019, 10:00 am – 11:30 am
Location: SB1 5200, Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

This talk will cover both teaching and research in operations. Consumers often try a few varieties of an experience product before establishing a shopping routine. Sample boxes potentially create value by helping consumers resolve their uncertainties regarding these varieties earlier and at a lower cost. In this paper, we study how firms and consumers share this added value under different market scenarios. We show that when a firm offers a sample box, consumers obtain equal or higher net expected surplus while the firm's expected profit may decrease. We also show that a firm can reverse the potential adverse profit impact of selling sample boxes by introducing an optimally specified future credit.

Early Patent Disclosures Enhance Price Discovery and Reduce R&D Uncertainty

Host(s): Assistant Professor Chuchu Liang
Speaker(s): Baruch I. Lev, Phillip Bardes Professor of Accounting and Finance
University: New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business
Time: Friday, January 18, 2019, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Location: SB1 5200 Lyman Porter Colloquium Room

We focus in this study on the exogenous event of the enactment of the American Inventor’s Protection Act of 1999 (AIPA), which disseminates timely, detailed, and credible information on firms’ R&D activities through early patent disclosures. Exploiting the staggered timing of these patent disclosures, we identify a significant improvement in the speed of stock price discovery. This improvement is stronger when patent disclosures reveal firms’ successful, new, or technologically valuable inventions. This improvement is more pronounced for firms in high-tech or fast-moving industries, and those with large institutional ownership or analyst coverage. We also find that stock liquidity rises and investors’ risk perception of R&D drops after the enactment of AIPA. Our results highlight the importance of timely, detailed, and credible disclosures of technological innovations in alleviating the information frictions faced by investors in R&D-intensive firms.

Between-Prospects Comparisons: Regret Theory and Probability Dominance

Host(s): Associate Professor Luyi Gui
Speaker(s): Enrico Diecidue, Professor of Decision Sciences at INSEAD
University: INSEAD (France) and Visiting Professor at University of San Diego, Rady School of Business
Time: Friday, January 11, 2019, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

The most popular models of decision under uncertainty such as expected utility (EU, von Neumann and Morgenstern 1947), and cumulative prospect theory (CPT; Tversky and Kahneman 1992) – assume that the decision maker evaluates each prospect separately and then chooses the prospect with the highest EU (or the highest CPT value). Regret theory (Bell 1982; Fishburn 1982; Loomes and Sugden 1982) is a bold exception in that the forgone alternative does influence the decision maker; hence this theory allows also for between-prospects interactions.

In this talk: I summarize some of the recent advancements in regret theory (behavioral foundation, quantitative measurement, and empirical performance); I then introduce Probability Dominance. This is an heuristic (choosing the alternative that maximizes the probability of being ahead) that also captures the effects of the forgone alternative, yet considers between-prospects interactions in a way that differs from regret theory. The final part of the talk focuses on evaluating the empirical performance of probability dominance relative to EU, CPT, and regret theory.

How Taking and Revisiting Photos Affects Enjoyment of and Memory for Experiences

Host(s): Teaching Professor Kevin Bradford
Speaker(s): Kristin Diehl, Associate Professor of Marketing
University: The University of Southern California, Marshal School of Business
Time: Friday, December 7, 2018, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM
Location: MSCT 122

Experiences are vital to the lives and well-being of people. Over the course of their lives, people build up a portfolio of experiences that come to make up who they are. People derive enjoyment and value both from the initial experience as well as from the memories of the experience. Taking photos during these experiences has become a central and critical aspect of experiences and photo-taking can affect both enjoyment from the experience itself as well as the memories people have of the experience. Our research finds that, in general, taking photos during the experience increases engagement with and enjoyment of positive experiences. Further, we find that taking photos heightens peoples’ memories for visual aspects of the experience, but can decrease memory for non-visual aspects (e.g., auditory).

Apart from these immediate effects of photo taking on enjoyment and memory, photos also serve as tangible reminders of experiences. In fact people take photos mainly to have access to such tangible reminders in the future, which they hope allow them to relive the experience at a later point. Our research explores whether people correctly anticipate which photos will help them relive the experience better and whether they actually take photos that serve as good reminders in the future. We also examine how actually revisiting photos after the experience affects people’s memories for the experience.

The Existence and Effect of Competition in the Audit Market: Evidence from the Bidding Process

Host(s): Associate Professor Chuchu Liang
Speaker(s): Jaime Schmidt, Associate Professor of Accounting from The University of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business
University: The University of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business
Time: Friday, November 30, 2018, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

Prior research provides mixed evidence on whether sufficient audit market competition exists and whether competition impairs or improves audit quality. A major impediment of the prior literature has been the inability of researchers to observe the competitive bidding process. In this study, we use non-incumbent (i.e., competitor) auditor views of public company SEC filings to measure the competitive bidding process. We first validate that our measure of bidding captures competition by documenting that competitor auditors’ views of companies’ SEC filings significantly increase during the three months prior to an auditor change announcement. We then investigate the determinants of competitive bidding and the effect of competitive bidding on audit quality and fees. Consistent with concerns that market concentration impedes competition, we document that less bidding occurs in industry-concentrated markets and when incumbent auditors are either industry market share leaders or have a longer tenure with the client. However, contrary to conclusions in the prior literature, we find no evidence that local market concentration is associated with competitive bidding. We also find that, inconsistent with concerns that competitive pressure causes auditors to placate managers, competitive bidding is associated with an improvement in audit quality by incumbent auditors, as measured by the likelihood to subsequently restate the financial statements. Finally, as expected, we find that competitive bidding is associated with a subsequent reduction in audit fees.

Butchers, Bakers, and Barcharts: How Digitized Information Affects Gender Differences in Performance

Host(s): Associate Professor Sharon Koppman
Speaker(s): Alexandra Feldberg, Doctoral Candidate in Organizational Behavior from The Harvard Business School
University: The Harvard Business School
Time: Friday, November 30, 2018, 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate partners

This study asks: does increased access to digitized information affect the performance of men and women workers differently? I find that the availability of information in digital platforms disproportionately improves women’s performance in a male-dominated organization. I theorize that digitized information helps women by serving as a relationship substitute, an alternative channel to traditional relationship networks through which peripheral group members can gain access to performance-enhancing information. Using interviews, observations, and archival data, I take advantage of an intervention occurring within a 100-store grocery chain—when it introduced a weekly online report providing managers with a high-level summary of their departments’ performance along key metrics. Comparing sales across 152 departments twelve weeks prior to and following the report’s implementation shows that women managers benefit disproportionately from the report’s introduction but having longer duration of contact with peers and supervisors attenuates its benefits. Findings offer new directions for research on gender inequality and knowledge transfer by suggesting that digital channels of knowledge distribution can offset disparities arising from relationship networks in organizations.

Feeling Like I Should: Emotions in Social Identity

Host(s): Teaching Professor Kevin Bradford
Speaker(s): Patti Williams, Associate Professor of Marketing
University: The University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business
Time: Friday, November 30, 2018, 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm
Location: SB1 5200 Lyman Porter Colloquium Room

Individuals possess social identities that contain unique, relevant attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs providing “what-to-do” information when enacting that identity. I will present a stream of research demonstrating that identities are also associated with specific discrete emotion profiles providing “what-to-feel” information during identity enactment. Consumers prefer emotional stimuli consistent with their salient social identity, make product choices and emotion regulating consumption decisions to enhance (reduce) their experience of identity-consistent (inconsistent) emotions, including strategically allocating their attention to enhance emotion identity-fit. This research also demonstrates that experiencing an identity-inconsistent emotion can serve as an identity threat, prompting compensatory consumption, and will also demonstrate novel effects that such identity threats reduce working memory capacity. Finally, I will examine the downstream consequences of such compensation, finding that while compensatory consumption after an emotion-based identity threat can restore explicit self-esteem, no such improvements occur for implicit self-esteem, leaving consumers vulnerable and in need of further selfverification. While previous identity research has mostly focused on emotions as a consequence of identity enactment, this stream of research demonstrates that emotions are critical components of the standard for many social identities, and that successful enactment often hinges on feeling the right, and not the wrong, emotion.

Cooperative Frames and the Formation of Business Relationships: A Field Experiment with Entrepreneurs in Togo

Host(s): Associate Professor of Organization and Management Chris Bauman
Speaker(s): Stefan Dimitriadis, Doctoral Student of Organizational Behavior
University: Harvard University, Harvard Business School
Time: Wednesday, November 28, 2018, 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM
Location: SB1 5200 Lyman Porter Colloquium Room

How can entrepreneurs form more business relationships? In developing markets, this can be challenging because there are no formal institutions to secure interactions. In this study, I explore an overlooked factor that plays a pivotal role in the formation of business relationships in developing markets: the perception of prospective interactions. I argue that in contexts where first interactions among entrepreneurs are high risk, framing them cooperatively leads to the formation of more relationships and to relationships that exhibit more skill complementarity. To test this theory, I conducted a randomized field experiment in Togo with 301 entrepreneurs who participated in a business training program. A random subset were exposed to cooperative frames, which are scripts that draw attention to and motivate interactions guided by the mutual exchange of help. I found that exposure to cooperative frames led to a 50 percent increase in the number of relationships formed among entrepreneurs, and that these relationships were characterized by more complementarity of entrepreneurs’ skills. Furthermore, I found that the businesses of entrepreneurs who were exposed to cooperative frames were significantly more profitable six months after the training program, holding everything else constant. This study shows that the formation of new business relationships in developing markets also depends on the initial framing of interactions, a factor that has so far not been taken into account.

The Innovation Consequences of Financial Regulation for Young Life-Cycle Firms

Host(s): Assistant Professor Chuchu Liang
Speaker(s): Abigail Allen, Assistant Professor of Accountancy
University: Brigham Young University, Marriot School of Business
Time: Friday, November 16, 2018, 3:00PM – 4:30PM
Location: SB1 5200 Lyman Porter Colloquium Room

The last several decades have witnessed a striking uptick in reactionary financial regulation intended to curb financial misreporting by requiring increased external monitoring and centralized decision-making. We provide evidence that young life-cycle stage firms, characterized by low levels of financial slack and heavy investment in explorative innovation, are particularly vulnerable to negative innovation consequences from such regulation. Using SOX as a backdrop to test our predictions, we document a significant reduction in both R&D spending and innovation outputs for young life-cycle stage firms after regulation, relative both to their more mature counterparts and to young life-cycle stage firms exempt from full regulatory compliance. Additional tests indicate that the decline in innovation manifests both from a diversion of scarce resources and from the imposition of an organizational structure mismatched to the pursuit of explorative innovation. Importantly, we find no evidence that innovation declines are offset by other ensuing benefits to young life-cycle stage firms; across several measures, we fail to detect evidence of improved financial reporting quality. Moreover, an event study analysis suggests that market participants expected financial regulation to be incrementally value decreasing for young life-cycle stage firms, and post-regulation returns analysis corroborates this expectation. Supplemental tests of other regulatory settings yield consistent inferences. Collectively, our results support the notion that financial regulation places a heavy burden on innovative, young life-cycle stage firms.

Diffusion of off-grid energy products with Rent-to-Own business models: An empirical analysis of usage and payment behavior in developing economies

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luyi Gui
Speaker(s): Jose Guajardo, Assistant Professor
University: Haas School of Business, University of California Berkley
Time: Friday, November 16, 2018, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

The diffusion of technological innovations in developing economies represents an opportunity for firms to address important societal problems, with the potential to have an impact on a large number of people. The off-grid energy sector is a good example. Worldwide, more than 1 billion people do not have access to electricity. In countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, the electrification rates in rural areas can often be below 10%. Rent-to-own business models—in which customers make incremental payments over time to eventually become owners of goods—are being increasingly used in the diffusion of off-grid energy products in developing economies, as they reduce adoption barriers by allowing flexible payment schemes. How customers actually behave in these flexible environments is, of course, an empirical question, but one that has very important consequences for the viability of an increasing number of firms operating in these markets. In this paper, I empirically analyze how customers’ usage and payment behavior interact in an application of rent-to-own to the distribution of solar lamps in developing countries. By exploiting the longitudinal variation in the data—and hence accounting for intrinsic differences between customers—the analysis documented an engagement effect, which indicates that higher usage rates led to lower probability of late payments. In addition, customers often “bundled” payments, making advance payments for future product access. The analysis showed that bundling payments upfront led to lower usage rates. Hence—and perhaps counterintuitively—although bundled payments may generally seem appealing, firms may not want to encourage this behavior. Building on the insights derived from econometric models, I develop predictive models of default. They revealed that first-period usage information can improve predictive accuracy and that observing usage rates in subsequent periods does not lead to further improvements. Thus, firms can benefit by using first-period information to promptly identify riskier customers as well as potential upselling opportunities. Overall, the analysis highlights the importance for firms of jointly tracking and analyzing payment and usage behavior by customers, particularly in initial stages of the adoption process.

The Class ceiling: Why it Pays to be Privileged

Host(s): Associate Professor Sharon Koppman
Speaker(s): Sam Friedman, Associate Professor of Sociology
University: The London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Sociology
Time: Friday, November 16, 2018, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm
Location: SB1 5200 Lyman Porter Colloquium Room

The hidden barriers, or ‘glass ceilings’, preventing women and minority ethnic groups from getting to the top are well documented. Yet questions of social class - and specifically class origin – have been curiously absent from these debates. In this talk I begin by drawing on new data from Britain’s largest employment survey, The Labour Force Survey, to demonstrate that a powerful and previously unrecognised “class pay gap” exists in Britain’s higher professional and managerial occupations. I then switch focus to ask why this pay gap exists. This analysis demonstrates that the class ceiling can only be very partially attributed to conventional measures of ‘merit’. Instead, drawing on 175 interviews across four occupational case studies – television, accountancy, architecture, and acting - I show that more powerful drivers are rooted in the misrecognition of classed self-presentation as ‘talent’, work cultures historically shaped by the privileged, the affordances of the ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’, and sponsored mobility premised on class-cultural homophyly.

Market Actions and Non-Market Consequences: How Transportation Network Companies Influenced Regulation in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco

Host(s): Distinguished Professor Jone Pearce
Speaker(s): Nicholas Occhiuto, Doctoral Candidate in Sociology
University: Yale University
Time: Tuesday, November 13, 2018, 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

A long line of research has examined how firms attempt to shape regulation and government policy in ways favorable to the firm. Existing research on non-market strategy has largely focused on how firm actions in the non-market environment influence both economic regulation and public policy. Recent research suggests, however, that firms actions in the market environment may also gain regulatory and policy influence. Nevertheless, because most of this work has largely focused on the market actions of existing firms, it remains unclear whether and how the market actions of startups may also help them gain regulatory and policy influence. This paper adds to our understanding of non-market strategy by showing that startups may use market actions to build constituencies, which can function as important assets in influencing their non-market environments. Drawing on 128 interviews, ethnographic observations, and content analysis of primary source documents collected across New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco, this paper will show how Transportation Network Companies used market actions (i.e., contracting with drivers, registering passengers, and securing venture capital investment) to make displays of worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment of their emerging market to both regulators and policy makers. As a result, these market actions influenced regulators and policy makers to produce regulations that were favorable to the firms. This article also highlights city-level variation of regulation in the context of global market emergence. It will show how this same market actions initiated two different types of non-market outcomes: formal and interpretive change.

Competitive and Descriptive Market Definitions: Effects on Firm Value

Host(s): Assistant Professor and Dean Maia Young
Speaker(s): Elizabeth G. Pontikes, Associate Professor of Organizations and Strategy from The University of Chicago, Booth School of Business
University: The University of Chicago, Booth School of Business
Time: Thursday, November 15, 2018, 10:30a.m.-12:00p.m.
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

A central question across literatures is how the scope of an organization’s activities affects its value. Most research on this question studies organizational characteristics, such as how firms can leverage their specific resources to effectively diversify. We propose that how the competitive space is defined is critical to understanding effects of firm scope, and largely overlooked. We suggest taking the categorical structure of markets into account can inform these questions. Specifically, we highlight that market categories are defined both by competitive rivals or use-based descriptions. Bringing together the literatures on competitive differentiation and the social and cognitive view of markets, we propose that it is beneficial when firms are in markets that are descriptively similar, but when they occupy a unique competitive position and face different rivals. We also suggest that the level of categorization is important, in that unique positions with respect to industry sub-markets reap benefits of differentiation. Hypotheses are supported in an empirical test of effects on Tobin’s q, using data from high-technology analyst Gartner’s “magic quadrant” reports, that define technology sub-markets through text description and identifying key players in each market.

Citizen – Consumers Wanted: Revitalizing the American Dream in the Face of Economic Recessions, 1981 - 2012

Host(s): Teaching Professor Kevin Bradford
Speaker(s): Gokcen Coskuner – Balli, Assistant Professor of Marketing
University: Chapman University, The George L. Argyros School of Business and Economics
Time: Friday, November 9, 2018, 12:30 PM – 2:00 PM
Location: SB1 5200 Lyman Porter Colloquium Room

This article examines the ways in which three American presidents attempted to revitalize the American dream during economic recessions over the past four decades. Through analysis of archival text, I theorize the reformulation of the American dream as a governmentality process, one that focuses on continuous reworking of the national myth and the political ideology of neoliberalism and citizen-consumer subjectivities. The analysis indicates as economic recessions threatened the American dream, presidents Reagan, Clinton, and Obama employed disciplinary, legal, and security dispositives (a term developed by Foucault) to create consumer subjectivities as a means of reviving the economy and renewing confidence in the American dream, as well as in neoliberal ideology. The resulting framework extends Foucault’s theorization of governmentality and prior consumer research on consumer subjectivity and consumer moralism in two ways—first, by illustrating how ideology and national mythology are intertwined, and second, by linking consumers’ morality to state and market goals.

Design of Lotteries and Waitlists for Affordable Housing Allocation

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luyi Gui
Speaker(s): Peng Shi, Assistant Professor of Data Sciences and Operations
University: The University of Southern California
Time: Friday, November 9, 2018, 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM
Location: SB1 5200 Lyman Porter Colloquium Room

We study a setting in which dynamically arriving items are assigned to waiting agents, who have heterogeneous values for distinct items and heterogeneous outside options. An ideal match would both target items to agents with the worst outside options, and match them to items for which they have high value.

Our first finding is that two common approaches -- using independent lotteries for each item, and using a waitlist in which agents lose priority when they reject an offer -- lead to identical outcomes in equilibrium. Both approaches encourage agents to accept items that are marginal fits. We show that the quality of the match can be improved by using a common lottery for all items. If participation costs are negligible, a common lottery is equivalent to several other mechanisms, such as limiting participants to a single lottery, using a waitlist in which offers can be rejected without punishment, or using artificial currency.

However, when there are many agents with low need, there is an unavoidable tradeoff between matching and targeting. In this case, utilitarian welfare may be maximized by focusing on good matching (if the outside option distribution is light-tailed) or good targeting (if it is heavy-tailed). Using a common lottery achieves near-optimal matching, while introducing participation costs achieves near-optimal targeting.

Are Flatter Organizations More Innovative? Hierarchical Depth and the Importance of Ideas

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luke Rhee
Speaker(s): Zur B. Shapira, Professor of Management
University: New York University, Stern School of Business
Time: Friday, November 2, 2018, 2:30 pm – 4:00 pm
Location: SB1 5200 Lyman Porter Colloquium Room

In analyzing the flow of ideas and timing of evaluation in organizations, Seshadri & Shapira (ICC, 2003) proposed that hierarchical organizations can be conducive to knowledge creation. We discuss a formal model of idea flows and project / idea combination to examine how hierarchies might influence those combinations. First, in hierarchical structures a supervisor can see potential commonalities and complementarities among different projects pursued by her subordinates without those being noticed by them. Second, projects in such organizations get evaluated at each level as they go up the hierarchy. We use the results of the model to generate hypotheses about the importance and variance of importance of ideas. Then we test the hypotheses based on an analysis of patents for 544 firms surveyed by a compensation firm, in which the hierarchical depth of the firm was also requested. We find that even after controlling for size, span of control, and other important variables, firms with deeper hierarchies tended to have a more “important” patent. We conclude the paper with a discussion of the implications of these results for organization theory and innovation.

See and Be Seen: Communication Visibility in the Era of Digital Work

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luke Rhee
Speaker(s): Paul Leonardi, Professor of Technology Management Program
University: University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of Communication
Time: Friday, October 19, 2018, 2:30 pm – 4:00 pm
Location: SB1 5200 Lyman Porter Colloquium Room

In this talk, I offer building blocks for a theory of communication visibility based on a series of field studies of the implementation of new enterprise social networking sites in large companies. The emerging theory suggests that as work digitalization makes once invisible communication occurring between others in the organization visible for third parties to see, those third parties may be able to improve their metaknowledge (knowledge of "who knows what" and "who knows whom"). Seeing the contents of other people¹s messages helps third-party observers to make inferences about the knowledge other people have and seeing the structure of other people¹s communication networks helps third-party observers to make inferences about who those people talk with on a somewhat regular basis. The emerging theory further suggests that enhanced metaknowledge can lead to more innovative products and services and less knowledge duplication if individuals learn to work in new ways. I discuss the important implications – both positive and negative – that this emerging theory of communication visibility has for work and the design of new technologies and organizations.

Diversity’s Dark Side: Dominant Group Blowback to Organizational Diversity Policies

Host(s): Assistant Professor Chris Bauman
Speaker(s): John Morton, Doctoral Student in Organization & Management from the University of California, Irvine, the Paul Merage School of Business
University: University of California, Irvine, The Paul Merage School of Business
Time: Friday, October 19, 2018, 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

As the workforce has become increasingly diverse, many organizations have responded by implementing various approaches to managing workforce diversity, including formal diversity policies. Organizational diversity policies are widespread in organizations; however, scholars are only beginning to examine the impact of diversity policies on the attitudes and behaviors of dominant group employees (i.e., usually White employees). Using experimental methodology, I find support for the dominant group blowback to organizational diversity policies. Study 1, an online experiment conducted on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, and Study 2, a field experiment in an organizational setting, found support for such blowback in the form of increased turnover intentions and decreased organizational citizenship behavior for dominant group members. However, Study 3, an online experiment conducted on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, did not find any differences in unethical behavior for dominant group members exposed to a diversity policy or a neutral mission statement. This suggests that the dominant group blowback does not take the form of active harm against the organization. Taken together, these research findings suggest that diversity policies can have unintended, adverse consequences for organizations.

Optimal Signaling of Content Accuracy: Engagement vs. Misinformation

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luyi Gui
Speaker(s): Ozan Candogan, Associate Professor of Operations Management
University: University of Chicago, Booth School of Business
Time: Friday, October 12, 2018, 10:00 am – 11:30 am
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

This paper studies information design in social networks. We consider a setting, where agents’ actions exhibit positive local network externalities. There is uncertainty about the underlying state of the world, which impacts agents’ payoffs. The platform can choose a signaling mechanism that sends informative signals to agents upon realization of this uncertainty, thereby influencing their actions. We investigate how the platform should design its signaling mechanism to achieve a desired outcome. Although this abstract setting has many applications, we discuss our results in the context of a specific one: misinformation in social networks. Agents in a social network engage with content that is possibly erroneous. Their payoff is based on the direct satisfaction from engaging, the disutility from engaging with erroneous content, and the positive externality that they derive from engaging with the same content as their peers in the underlying social network. The platform can commit to a signaling mechanism that sends agents informative signals based on the realization of the error of the content, and influence agents’ engagement decisions.

We show that the optimal (in terms of engagement/misinformation) signaling mechanisms have a simple threshold structure: the platform recommends that agents “Engage” with the content if its error is below a threshold and recommends “Do not engage” otherwise. For the mechanism that maximizes engagement, these thresholds depend on agents’ network positions, which we capture through a novel centrality measure that we introduce. Surprisingly, in the case where the platform seeks only to minimize misinformation (regardless of the induced engagement), public signal mechanisms with identical thresholds across agents are optimal. This is in contrast to the engagement maximization setting, where when agents are heterogeneous in terms of their network positions, public signal mechanisms induce substantially lower engagement than the optimal mechanisms. We also study the frontier of the engagement/misinformation levels that can be achieved via different mechanisms and characterize when public signal mechanisms can achieve optimal tradeoffs. Finally, we supplement our theoretical findings with numerical simulations on a Facebook subgraph.

Pro – Environmental Waste Receptacle Labeling Can Increase Recycling Contamination (Joint work with Jesse Catlin)

Host(s): Professor Robin Keller and Co-Hos
Speaker(s): Yitong Wang, Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor Equivalent) of Marketing
University: University of Technology Sydney, Business School
Time: Friday, October 5, 2018, 10:00 am – 11:30 am
Location: SB1 5200 Lymann Porter Colloquia Room

While aggregate recycling rates in developed countries have plateaued in recent years, the contamination rate of recycling streams due to consumers incorrectly recycling items that cannot be recycled has grown rapidly. We propose that this problem may be partially due to persuasive messages, such as labelling on bins, that encourage recycling, but often lack guidance for how to do so accurately. For example, a number of public garbage receptacles across the U.S. feature the term “landfill” instead of “trash”, encouraging recycling by making the negative impact of garbage more salient. However, this labelling may also lead consumers to incorrectly recycle materials that cannot be recycled. In two field studies, we found that some variations of pro-environmental receptacle labelling led to overly inclusive recycling and an online study provided preliminary evidence that this effect is driven by the negative emotions the labels evoke. A field study using pictorial guides illustrating accurate item disposal showed potential to counteract the previously observed effects.

A Computational Social Science Framework For Representing Emergent Consumer Experience

Host(s): Professor Alladi Venkatesh
Speaker(s): Donna Hoffman, Professor of Marketing Denit Trust Distinguished Scholar and Co-Director of The Center for the Connected Consumer;Thomas Novak, Professor of Marketing; Louis Rosenfeld Distinguished Scholar and Co-Director of The Center for the Connected Consumer
University: George Washington University School of Business
Time: Friday, June 8, 2018, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

IoT interactions are generating extremely large amounts of data in a variety of forms. These include IFTTT (online service for creating “if this then that” rules), Amazon Alexa skills, chatbots and other discourse data, intelligent assistants, sensors, smart home, social robots, and autonomous cars. With more than 20 billion devices connected to the Internet (many more than the 7.35 billion people in the world), managers have a need to understand what new kinds of consumer experiences are likely to emerge from these interactions. Interaction data are very high dimensionality and consist of often millions of ongoing interactions among complex component devices (and consumers). This makes IoT data big in two ways: 1) their size, in terms of the number of objects that are interacting with each other, and 2) their complexity, in terms of the number of attributes or features describing each object. This complexity presents significant challenges for…(View Complete Abstract on Catalyst)

One-To-Many Matching Auctions in Platforms

Host(s): Assistant Professor Mingdi Xin
Speaker(s): Hemant Bhargava; Professor, MSBA Program Chair, Jerome and Elsie Suran Chair in Technology Management
University: University of California, Davis; Graduate School of Management
Time: Tuesday, May 29, 2018, 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

Platforms create value by matching participants on alternate sides of the marketplace. While many platforms practice one-to-one matching (e.g., Uber), others can conduct and monetize one-to-many simultaneous matches (e.g., lead marketing platforms). Ideally, the choice between the two modes should be determined by the relative premium that participants perceive for exclusive matches and the nature of heterogeneity in these two sets of valuations. This paper studies the problem of designing an auction format for such platforms, i.e., a set of rules for allocation and pricing of matches. The solutions we devise maintain incentive-compatibility (i.e., truthful bidding is optimal), making them easy to participate in and implement. We formulate the problem optimal incentive-compatible auction as a mixed integer mathematical program. Although the mathematical program is notoriously hard to solve, its value is that it leads to heuristic auction designs that are simple to implement, provide good revenue, and have speedy performance, all critical in practice. Specially, we develop multiple relaxations of the mathematical program to obtain upper bounds on the (unknown) optimal auction revenue and, conversely, renements that produce heuristic auction designs whose optimal revenue is a lower bound. By demonstrating a tight gap between the two bounds for one such design, RM (a reserve-price based mechanism), we prove that it has excellent revenue performance and places low information and computational burden on the platform and participants.

One-To-Many Matching Auctions in Platforms

Host(s): Assistant Professor Mingdi Xin
Speaker(s): Hemant Bhargava; Professor, MSBA Program Chair, Jerome and Elsie Suran Chair in Technology Management
University: University of California, Davis; Graduate School of Management
Time: Tuesday, May 29, 2018, 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

Platforms create value by matching participants on alternate sides of the marketplace. While many platforms practice one-to-one matching (e.g., Uber), others can conduct and monetize one-to-many simultaneous matches (e.g., lead marketing platforms). Ideally, the choice between the two modes should be determined by the relative premium that participants perceive for exclusive matches and the nature of heterogeneity in these two sets of valuations. This paper studies the problem of designing an auction format for such platforms, i.e., a set of rules for allocation and pricing of matches. The solutions we devise maintain incentive-compatibility (i.e., truthful bidding is optimal), making them easy to participate in and implement. We formulate the problem optimal incentive-compatible auction as a mixed integer mathematical program. Although the mathematical program is notoriously hard to solve, its value is that it leads to heuristic auction designs that are simple to implement, provide good revenue, and have speedy performance, all critical in practice. Specially, we develop multiple relaxations of the mathematical program to obtain upper bounds on the (unknown) optimal auction revenue and, conversely, renements that produce heuristic auction designs whose optimal revenue is a lower bound. By demonstrating a tight gap between the two bounds for one such design, RM (a reserve-price based mechanism), we prove that it has excellent revenue performance and places low information and computational burden on the platform and participants.

Can Multiple On-Demand Service Platforms Coexist?

Host(s): Professor Robin Keller
Speaker(s): Jiaru Bai, Assistant Professor
University: Binghamton University, School of Management
Time: Friday, May 25, 2018, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

Firms are financing many startups that are essentially on-demand service platforms, we wonder how many startups of this kind can survive in a competitive market. To examine this question, we present a model in which two on-demand service platforms compete in both the provider and customer markets with earning-sensitive service providers and price- and delay-sensitive customers. We first analyze a base model that relies on five market characteristic assumptions: 1) Homogeneous platform valuations; 2) Homogeneous reservation wages; 3) Homogeneous customers; 4) Pure pricing strategies; 5) Nonexclusive providers. We show that both platforms cannot co-exist in equilibrium when the system delay satisfies a "pooling effect" condition that holds in an M/M/k queuing system. Then we find that this result continued to hold even when we relax those characteristic assumptions separately by allowing for non-identical platform valuations, heterogeneous reservation wages, and promotional pricing strategies. However, both platforms may co-exist when customers are heterogeneous or when service providers are exclusive to their respective platforms.

Comovement: Evidence from Network – Connected Firms in China

Host(s): Assistant Professor Elizabeth Chuk
Speaker(s): T.J. Wong, Professor of Business Administration and Accounting
University: Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California
Time: Friday, May 18, 2018, 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm
Location: SB1 2321, Judy B. Rosener Classroom

In this paper, we examine whether comovement in the stock returns of pairs of Chinese firms connected to the same political network are systematically shaped by the prevailing coordination vs. competition incentives of the network’s politicians. We find strong evidence that stock price comovement is affected by the embeddedness of the firm-politician tie within the network. Among pairs of firms connected to a network through a common politician, we document an increase in stock return comovement. For those pairs of firms connected to a common network via separate politicians (rather than a common politician), we document a relative decrease in stock return comovement. This negative effect suggests that the politicians’ relationships within these political

Informal Certification: resolving the tension between lowering barriers to entry and new firm legitimacy

Host(s): Dean’s Professor Margarethe Wiersema
Speaker(s): Robert Eberhart. Assistant Professor, Department of Management
University: Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University
Time: Friday, May 18, 2018, 2:30 pm – 4:00 pm
Location: SB2 Classroom 117

This paper examines the effects on new firms when certifications intended to assist their entry are eliminated. Common efforts to invigorate entrepreneurship often lead to policies that lower the difficulty of the steps that are required to start a firm. The policies often lead to the loss of certifications that audiences use to evaluate a new firm’s propriety and capability. Using insights from recent research on audience diversity as a new firm seeks legitimacy, and quantitative data from new firm credit records, this study offers evidence that after a dramatic reduction of required capital to gain a certificate of incorporation, new firms in emerging industries continue to opt for high capital levels that were previously certified. This happens because as new firms lose the formal certification of satisfying the regulatory requirements of incorporating, they still seek legitimacy by showing their organizational achievement of raising initial capital at or above the previously certified level – what this study calls an “informal certification.” This study also demonstrates that firms with alternate legitimating attributes - an elite founder or local social ties – need not pursue an informal certification. This study contributes to the recent growing literature on audience diversity and organizational responses as a process of legitimization. Overall, this study shed’s light on the dynamics of how new firms acquire legitimacy in a complex, multi-audience environment by examining their responses to policies that deprive them of legitimizing certifications.

Determining Credit Risk Using Qualitative Disclosure

Host(s): Associate Professor Elizabeth Chuk
Speaker(s): Jared Jennings, Assistant Professor of Accounting
University: Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis
Time: Friday, May 11, 2018, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

We examine whether supervised machine-learning methods extract credit risk relevant qualitative information from conference calls. Using a subsample of observations between 2003 and 2015, we create a summary text-based measure for borrower credit risk by combining the estimates generated by support vector regression, supervised LDA, and random forest trees using factor analysis. We find that our measure explains a substantial portion of borrower creditworthiness as indicated by credit default swap (CDS) spreads. In addition, for firms without actively traded CDS, we find that our measure also captures credit risk as measured by initial interest rate spreads in private debt contracts, future covenant violations, future credit rating downgrades, future bankruptcy filings, and future negative stock price shocks, and is incremental to other common market-based credit risk measures. Our study is the first to convert qualitative disclosure into a quantitative measure of credit risk. This is significant, as the majority of borrowers do not have actively-traded CDS.

Recent Research and Teaching In Smart City Operations Management

Host: Associate Professor Shuya Yin
Speaker: Ho-Yin Mak, Associate Professor in Management Science
University: Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
Time: Wednesday, May 2, 2018, 10:00 am – 11:30 am
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

Over 50% of the world’s population lives in cities. The ever-growing urban population entails economic opportunities as well as major sustainability challenges. Enabled by latest technological advances, the Smart City approach has emerged as a potential strategy to overcome these grand challenges and unlock new business opportunities. In this talk, I shall first discuss my ongoing research in Smart City Operations Management, focusing on a working paper on peer-to-peer (P2P) crowdshipping in urban omnichannel retail. Toward the end of the talk, I also plan to share about the development of an MBA course on Smart City Analytics at Oxford. Crowdshipping, a novel practice built upon the sharing economy, has been adopted by a number of retailers to tackle the notorious last-mile delivery problem in urban omnichannel retail. In this work, we study the potential of P2P crowdshipping, i.e., enlisting in-store shoppers to deliver online orders in their vicinity, and its impact on the marketing-operations interface for an omnichannel retailer. Specifically, P2P crowdshipping could potentially help the retailer improve delivery efficiency, and gain an additional lever for price discrimination. When these two effects interact, we find that the favorability of crowdshipping heavily depends on product characteristics, and how shopper-deliverers are reimbursed. For necessity goods, a cost-based reimbursement scheme could lead to a win-win outcome in both the retailer’s profit and consumer surplus; for higher-end products, reimbursing deliverers a premium on top of their delivery costs would be favorable.

The Effect of Health Insurance on Home Payment Delinquency: Evidence From ACA Marketplace Subsidies

Host(s): Associate Professor Mireille Jacobson
Speaker(s): Emily Gallagher, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Household Finance
University: Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis
Time: Tuesday, May 1, 2018, 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm
Location: Social Sciences Plaza A, Room 3132

We use administrative tax data and survey responses to quantify the effect of health insurance on rent and mortgage delinquency. We employ a regression discontinuity (RD) design, exploiting the income threshold for receiving Marketplace subsidies in states that did not expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Eligibility for subsidies is associated with a roughly 26 percent decline in the delinquency rate and reduced exposure to out-of-pocket medical expenditure risk. IV results indicate that this relationship is likely causal. We show that, under plausible assumptions, the social benefits implied by our RD estimates, in terms of fewer evictions and foreclosures, are substantial relative to the transfer value of the subsidies.

How do IPOs affect Employee Behavior?

Evidence from Brokerage IPOs and Analysts’ Forecasts

Host(s): Associate Professor Elizabeth Chuk
Speaker(s): Mark Bradshaw, Chairperson and Professor of Accounting
University: Carroll School of Management, Boston College
Time: Friday, April 27, 2018, 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm
Location: SB1 5100, Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

This study examines the effects of initial public offerings (IPOs) by brokerages (henceforth, broker IPOs) on the objectivity of sell-side equity analysts employed by those brokerages. Using a matched sample difference-in-differences research design, we provide evidence that analysts produce more optimistically biased earnings forecasts relative to their peers following their employer’s IPO. We further find that the effect of broker IPOs on analysts’ forecast bias is more pronounced when economic incentives for optimistic bias are stronger (i.e., brokers with higher market-to-book ratios and for covered firms with higher future external financing needs). Our results provide important evidence on how IPOs can impact the behavior of individual, non-executive, employees by increasing their focus on short term results.

Healthcare Markets: For-Profit vs. Non-Profit Hospital Competition

Host(s): Walter B. Gerken Chair in Enterprise and Society and Professor of Marketing Rajeev Tyagi
Speaker(s): Steven Mark Shugan, McKethan-Matherly Eminent Scholar Chair & Professor of Marketing
University: Warrington College of Business, University of Florida
Time: Friday, April 27, 2018, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm
Location: SB1 5100, Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

We find the unusual competitive interactions between for-profit and nonprofit hospitals contribute to the higher profits and prices of nonprofit over for-profit hospitals. The nonprofits’ legal inability to distribute profits to stakeholders allows nonprofits to sacrifice profits for market share and thus have a formidable competitive advantage. Specifically, given nonprofits’ willingness to forego profits for output, nonprofits deter for-profit entry into premium specialty medical services (PSMS) markets, or for-profits cede market share to nonprofits foreseeing low post-entry competitive prices in costly PSMS markets. Consequently, nonprofits dominate PSMS (e.g., oncology, hospice services) markets, commanding both greater output and higher prices. Those gaps increase as competition intensifies because nonprofits seeking output invest more aggressively. As expected, the most profitable U.S. hospitals are nonprofit. Last, focusing on PSMS, nonprofits use national advertising while for-profits use local advertising for basic services. Our analysis involves both game-theoretic models and empirical tests with several healthcare databases.

Regulation of Charlatans in High – Skill Professions

Host(s): Assistant Professor David Yang
Speaker(s): Jules Van Binsbergen, The Nippon Life Associate Professor of Finance
University: The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Time: Friday, April 27, 2018, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm
Location: SB1 2321, Judy B. Rosener Classroom

We model a market for a skill that is in short supply and high demand, where the presence of charlatans (professionals who sell a service that they do not deliver on) is an equilibrium outcome. We use this model to evaluate the standards and disclosure requirements that exist in these markets. We show that reducing the number of charlatans through regulation decreases consumer surplus. Although both standards and disclosure drive charlatans out of the market, consumers are worse off because of the resulting reduction in competition amongst producers. Producers, on the other hand, strictly benefit from the regulation, implying that the regulation we observe in these markets likely derives from producer interests. Using these insights, we study the factors that drive the cross-sectional variation in charlatans across professions. Professions with weak trade groups, skills in larger supply, shorter training periods and less informative signals regarding the professional’s skill, are more likely to feature charlatans.

Fear and the Safety Net: Evidence From Secure Communities

Host(s): Associate Professor Mireille Jacobson
Speaker(s): Marcella Alsan, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Investigator at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System
University: Stanford University
Time: Wednesday, April 25, 2018, 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm
Location: Social Science Plaza A, Room 3132

We study the impact of deportation fear on the incomplete take-up of federal safety net programs in the United States. We exploit changes in deportation fear due to the roll-out and intensity of Secure Communities (SC), an immigration enforcement program administered by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) from 2008 to 2014. The SC program empowers the federal government to check the immigration status of anyone arrested by local law enforcement agencies and has led to the issuance of over two million detainers and the forcible removal of approximately 380,000 immigrants. We estimate the spillover effects of SC on Hispanic citizens, finding significant declines in ACA sign-ups and food stamp take-up, particularly among mixed-status households and areas where deportation fear is highest. Our results are most consistent with network effects that perpetuate fear rather than lack of benefit information or stigma.

Shareholder Litigation and Corporate Innovation

Host: Assistant Professor David Yang
Speaker: Gustavo Manso, Associate Professor of Finance, William A. and Betty H. Hasler Chair in New Enterprise Development
University: Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley
Time: Friday, April 13, 2018, 2:00 pm – 2:30 pm
Location: SB1 5200, Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

We examine whether and to what extent shareholder litigation shapes corporate innovation. We use the staggered adoption of the universal demand (UD) laws in 23 states from 1989 to 2005. These laws impose obstacles against shareholders filing derivative lawsuits thereby significantly reducing a firm’s litigation risk. Following the passage of the UD laws, firms have invested more in R&D, produced more patents based on new knowledge and more patents in new technological classes, generated more patents that have a large number of citations, and achieved higher patent value. Our findings suggest that the external pressure imposed by shareholder litigation discourages managers from engaging in explorative innovative activities.

Political Connections and Government Subsidies: State-level Evidence

Host: Assistant Professor Elizabeth Chuk
Speaker: Reining Petacchi, Assistant Professor
University: McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University
Time: Friday, March 16, 2018, 3:00pm – 4:30pm
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

Coauthored with Daniel Aobida (Northwestern University) and Allison Koester (Georgetown University) This paper examines whether corporate political connections are associated with government awarded subsidies, and how this relation impacts subsidy effectiveness in spurring state future economic growth. Subsidies relate to foregone government revenues through income, sales, property, and payroll tax credits/abatements, and to government resource transfers through grants and cost reimbursement programs. Using novel datasets to identify state-awarded corporate subsidies and corporate contributions to state political candidates, we find that political contributions increase both the likelihood a company is awarded a state subsidy and the dollar value of subsidy awarded. Companies contributing to a greater number of candidates, to both Republican and Democratic Party candidates, and to both gubernatorial and legislative candidates reap the greatest subsidy benefits. Importantly, we find that subsidies are positively associated with a state’s future intra-industry jobs growth, but only for subsidies awarded to politically unconnected companies. This finding suggests quid pro quo behavior in the state subsidy award process results in a less effective allocation of government resources.

The Downside of Productive Leisure

Host: Professor Connie Pechmann
Speaker: Jordan Etkin, Associate Professor of Marketing
University: The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University
Time: Friday, March 16, 2018, 12:30pm – 2:00pm
Location: SB1 2321, Judy B. Rosener Classroom

Recent marketing trends encourage consumers to consider whether they are getting the most out of their leisure time. Guidebooks like Lonely Planet publish top-sites lists to help tourists plan the best vacation. Media outlets like The New York Times post-read lists to steer readers towards the best articles. But while this notion of “productive leisure” may appeal to consumers’ desire to be productive and accomplish, could it also undermine some of leisure’s benefits? Five experiments demonstrate that making leisure productive hurts subsequent performance. This occurs because considering what one is doing during leisure imposes cognitive demands, hampering resource replenishment. As a result, when downstream activities require cognitive resources, productive leisure hurts performance. Thus, while taking a break can replenish diminished resources and improve subsequent performance, we demonstrate that making leisure productive can undermine leisure’s restorative benefits and cause consumers to do worse (sometimes even worse than not taking a break at all). The findings further understanding of how productivity and time use shape consumer wellbeing, and have implications for how consumers spend their leisure time.

Default and Endogenous Leverage in the Laboratory

Host: Assistant Professor David C. Yang
Speaker: Marco Cipriani, Sam P. Woodson, Research Officer of Money & Payments Studies Function
Organization: Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Time: Monday, March 12, 2018, 2:00pm – 3:30pm
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace

We study default and endogenous leverage in the laboratory. To this purpose, we develop a general equilibrium model of collateralized borrowing amenable to laboratory implementation and gather experimental data. In the model, we do not rely on ad-hoc leverage constraints, instead, leverage endogenously arises in equilibrium. When financial assets serve as collateral, namely, assets with payoffs that do not depend on ownership (such as bonds), leverage is low and there is no default. In contrast, when non-financial assets serve as collateral, namely, assets with payoffs that depend on ownership (such as firms), leverage is higher and default occurs. In line with these theoretical predictions, leverage and default rates are higher in the treatment with non-financial assets; in contrast to the theory, however, default rates are greater than zero even when assets are financial.

Does Litigation Encourage or Deter Real Earnings Management?

Host: Assistant Professor Elizabeth Chuck
Speaker: Sugata Roychowdhury, Professor of Accounting
University: Carroll School of Management, Boston College
Time: Friday, March 9, 2018, 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

We examine whether litigation risk encourages or deters real earnings management (REM). The literature documents that litigation risk restricts earnings management via accruals. Reduced ability to manipulate accruals in the presence of high litigation risk can encourage managers to engage in REM instead. However, an alternative scenario is also possible. Specifically, since the intention of REM is to mislead shareholders, managers’ efforts to conceal REM can induce them to make misleading disclosures that become the subject of future lawsuits. This ex post settling-up by shareholders can ex ante deter managers from engaging in REM. We conduct differences-in-differences tests centered on an unanticipated court ruling that reduced shareholders’ ability to initiate class action lawsuits against firms headquartered in the Ninth Circuit. We observe significant increases in REM following the ruling for Ninth-Circuit firms relative to other firms, consistent with litigation deterring REM. Additional analyses reveal that REM rises more for firms that issue optimistic forecasts and exhibit more positive tone and higher obfuscation in the MD&A sections of their 10-K reports. These findings provide evidence on the channel through which litigation constrains REM: the as-yet unexplored link between misleading disclosures and opportunistic real activities. Further results confirm that the deterrence role of litigation is more salient when managers have incentives to manipulate earnings and when governance mechanisms are weaker.

Externalities As Arbitrage

Host(s): Assistant Professor David Yang
Speaker: Benjamin Hebert, Assistant Professor of Finance
University: Stanford University, Stanford School of Business
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, March 9, 2018, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm

Regulations on financial intermediaries can create apparent arbitrage opportunities. Intermediaries are unable to fully exploit these opportunities due to regulation, and other agents are unable to exploit them at all due to limited participation. Does the existence of arbitrage opportunities imply that regulations are sub-optimal? No. I develop of general equilibrium model, with financial intermediaries and limited participation by other agents, in which a constrained-efficient allocation can be implemented with asset prices featuring arbitrage opportunities. Absent regulation, there would be no arbitrage; however, allocations would be constrained-inefficient, due to pecuniary externalities and limited market participation. Optimal policy creates arbitrage opportunities whose pattern across states of the world reflects these externalities. From financial data alone, we can construct perceived externalities that would rationalize the pattern of arbitrage observed in the data. By examining these perceived externalities, and comparing them to the stated goals of regulators, as embodied in the scenarios of the stress tests, we can ask whether regulations are having their intended effect. The answer, in recent data, is no.

Reflections on Teaching

Host: Taco Bell Endowed Professor Vijay Gurbaxani
Speaker: Roy Jones
University: Simon Business School, University Of Rochester
Location: SB1 5200, Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, March 9, 2018, 11:30 am – 12:30 pm

Background: Little is known about the impact of non-cardiovascular disease burden on 30-day readmission in heart failure (HF) patients.
Objectives: We aimed to assess the role of non-cardiovascular disease burden on 30-day readmission in HF patients.
Methods: We analyzed the effect of non-cardiovascular disease burden by frequency of ICD-9 code categories on readmissions of patients discharged with a primary diagnosis of HF. We first modeled the probability of readmission within 30 days as a function of demographic and clinical covariates in a randomly selected training dataset of the total cohort. Variable selection was carried out using a bootstrap LASSO procedure with 1000 bootstrap samples, the final model was tested on a validation dataset. Adjusted odds ratios and confidence intervals were reported in the validation dataset.
Results: There were a total of 6228 HF hospitalizations, 1523 (24%) with readmission within 30 days of discharge. The strongest predictor for 30-day readmissions was any hospital admission in the prior year (p<0.001). Cardiovascular risk factors did not enter the final model. However, digestive system diseases increased the risk for readmission by 17% for each diagnosis (p=0.046), while respiratory diseases and genitourinary diseases showed a trend toward a higher risk of readmission (p=0.07 and 0.09, respectively). Non-cardiovascular diseases out-competed cardiovascular covariates previously reported to predict readmission.
Conclusions: In patients with HF hospitalization, prior admissions predicted 30-day readmission. Diseases of the digestive system also increase 30-day readmission rates.
Assessment of non-cardiovascular disease burden in HF patients could serve as an important risk marker for 30-day readmissions.

Do Unto Others: Development and Validation of a Measure of Managerial Interpersonal Skills (MIPS)

Host: Associate Dean and Professor Gerardo A. Okhuysen
Speaker: Shaun Pichler, Associate Professor of Management
University: Mihaylo College of Business and Economics, California State University, Fullerton
Time: Friday, March 9, 2018, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm
Location: SB1 5100, Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom

It is no secret that employees leave their organizations because of bad managers- but what about the good ones? How can researchers and organizations differentiate managers in terms of their interpersonal skills? And how are these skills related to outcomes for employees—and for managers themselves? These are fundamentally important questions for management scholars and for organizations. With that said, there exists no widely accepted conceptual model, definition or measure of managerial interpersonal skills (MIPS). We sought out to address these questions by developing and validating a measure of MIPS through a multiphasic research program that included four studies: First, through structured interviews with practicing managers and executives; next, through two pilot studies; and finally, in a validation study with matched supervisor-employee data from a large healthcare organization. Results of our research program suggest that, at least among employee reports, MIPS is three-dimensional construct comprised of supporting, motivating and managing conflict, each indicating a higher-order latent MIPS factor. Results also indicate that MIPS predict job attitudes and performance among both employees and managers.

Toward a neo-Darwinian Synthesis of Neoclassical and Behavioral Economics

Host: Professor Lu Zheng
Speaker: Terence Burnham, Associate Professor
University: George. L. Argyros School of Business and Economics, Chapman University
Time: Tuesday, March 6, 2018, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia room & Executive Terrace

There is a schism within economics between the neoclassical and behavioral schools. A primary cause of the behavioral ascent is the experimental evidence of deviations between actual behavior and the neoclassical prediction of behavior. While behavioral scholars have documented these “anomalies,” they have made little progress explaining the origin of such behavior. This paper proposes a biological and evolutionary foundation for the anomalies of behavioral economics by separating proximate and ultimate causation. Such a foundation may allow for a re-uniting of economics; a neo-Darwinian synthesis of neoclassical and behavioral economics.

Mutual and Hedge Fund Portfolios: The Case of The Missing Value Funds

Host: Assistant Professor David C. Yang
Speaker: Martin Lettau, Kruttschnitt Chair in Financial Institutions 
University: Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley 
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Friday, March 2, 2018, 2:00pm – 3:15pm 

We study the portfolio composition of active mutual funds and hedge funds. For each mutual fund we construct the time series of portfolio-weighted characteristics (e.g. size, book-to-market and momentum). We find that a majority of mutual funds are low book-to-market while there are virtually no high book-to-market funds. Even most mutual funds described as value funds'' have book-to-market ratios that not higher than that of the overall market. The portfolios of growth funds'' is strongly tilted towards low book to-market growth stocks. In contrast, "value funds'' actually hold a larger portion of their portfolio in low book-to-market growth stocks than high book-to-market value stocks. We find similar results for alternative value/growth measures. Mutual funds hold mostly very large stocks and do not tilt towards high momentum stocks.

The Rise of Ant Financial Services

Host: Professor Lu Zheng
Speaker: Lingwen Huang
University: The Paul Merage School Of Business, University Of California, Irvine
Location: SB1 5100, Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Tuesday, February 27, 2018, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm

The teaching demo is going to present the phenomenal rise of Ant Financial Services, which started as Alipay, and has since grown to become the world's largest Fintech company. Ant Financial leverages cutting edge technology to provide accessible finance to the underserved SMEs and individuals. This case highlights the dynamic evolution of its business model and its ecosystem. The case also brings up the key challenges that Ant Financial has to deal with, i.e., the intensely competitive Fintech landscape, the viability of its ambitious strategy for inclusive finance, and the transferability of its success beyond China.

Research and Development Tax Incentives in the Mining Industry

Host: Professor Elizabeth Chuk
Speaker: Sam Sherry, Visiting Scholar at UCI, PhD Candidate in Accounting
University: Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine
Location: SB1 5200, Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace
Time:  Friday, February 23, 2018, 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm

This paper examines the impact of the introduction of the R&D tax incentive in 2011 on R&D expenditure by Australian mining firms. The R&D tax incentive was introduced to address limitations of the existing R&D tax concession which prevented small, innovative companies in a tax loss position from benefiting from the concession, and to remedy the very tight targeting of the existing refundable R&D tax offset by removing restrictions on eligibility to make cash refunds accessible to more small to medium sized companies. We examine the effect of the new R&D tax incentive in a setting where small to medium sized companies with accumulated losses are prevalent, namely the Australian mining sector. Using a sample of 907 unique companies in the mining and energy sectors that were listed on the ASX during the period 2008 to 2015, we find that the number of companies receiving R&D tax refunds after 1 July 2011 increased significantly, and the average refund received increased from $220,067 in 2008 to $986,074 in 2015. We find that firms with accumulated losses are more likely to access the R&D tax incentive and that qualifying R&D expenditure by firms eligible for the incentive has increased since 2011, providing prima facie evidence that the R&D tax incentive has been effective.

Retention and its Discontents: How Ideal Workers with Family Aspirations Navigate Career Decision-Making

Host(s): Assistant Professor Maia Young
Speaker: Carrie Oelberger
University: University of Minnesota, Humphrey School of Public Affairs
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, February 23, 2018, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm

Every career decision forces the worker to grapple with the possibility of realizing – or repressing – deeply held desires.  As such, career decisions are the fruit of protracted deliberation with high emotional stakes, not simply rational calculations of advancement. Moreover, modern careers provide nearly constant opportunities to engage in these reflections. Using interview and detailed career history data from 70 international aid workers, I examine the career decision-making process for people who are extremely devoted to work, enacting ideal worker norms, but who also desire a family. While resolving any work-family conflict is difficult, I find that people with family aspirations experience greater stress in decision-making than their family-rooted counterparts due to the uncertainty of their situation. I show how people navigate these crises by reflecting upon the possibility of transitioning their desires into realities, detailing how they consider the uncertainty of their situation, the breadth of options they perceive, and the temporal durability of those options. Even after a process of deep reflection, many people nonetheless choose to double down and prioritize work, suggesting that people who are devoted to work tend to fear the loss of meaning that it provides. As such, organizations may paradoxically retain employees who are devoted to work, but are personally discontented. These findings hold implications for research on work-family, labor market inequalities, and careers.

The Implications of Invisibility on the Use of Strategic Inventory in a Supply Chain

Host(s): Assistant Professor Shuya Yin
Speakers: Stephen M. Gilbert, Sam P. Woodson, Jr. Centennial Memorial Professor in Business, Chair of the Department of Information, Risk & Operations Management
University: The University of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business
Location: SB1 2321 Judy B. Rosener Classroom
Time: Friday, March 9, 2018, 10:00am – 11:30am

It is now widely accepted that a retailer’s use of strategic inventory can mitigate double marginalization and improve the coordination of a supply chain, potentially benefiting both the downstream retailer and an upstream manufacturer. However, this conclusion has typically been based on the assumption that the manufacturer can observe the retailer’s level of inventory before making wholesale pricing decisions. In reality, there are many situations in which neither the retailer’s sales nor inventory are observable to the manufacturer, effectively concealing the action taken by the retailer. We investigate the implications of such a lack of observability upon the use of strategic inventory in a supply chain consisting of a single retailer and a single manufacturer. We find that the manufacturer’s inability to observe inventory has significant implications for the amount of inventory and the range of holding cost for which it is held in equilibrium. In addition, we find that, in the absence of any form of uncertainty to which the manufacturer could benefit from responding to, he may prefer not to observe the retailer’s inventory. On the other hand, the retailer’s willingness to make her inventory visible depends upon the holding cost.

Broker Rebates and Investor Sophistication

Host(s): Professor Lu Zheng
Speaker(s): Mor Haziza, Visiting Lecturer in Finance
University: University of California, Irvine. Paul Merage School of Business
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace
Time: Tuesday, February 20, 2018, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm

Following a notice of the Israeli Securities Authority, portfolio managers had to obtain their clients’ proper and legal approval, in writing, so that they can receive a fraction of the transaction costs, their clients pay the broker executing the trades. One would expect an overwhelming opposition to the kickback as consenting investors are exposed to avoidable losses due to (moral hazard) excessive trading. Yet about 89% of the investors in our sample allowed their manager to receive a kickback. This is quite remarkable considering that not responding implies a prohibition. Indeed, the more sophisticated investors tend to disagree. We find that portfolios of consenting investors underperform in the year following their decision. In addition, the empirical evidence indicates that consenting is not a reward on past success.

When Prospect Theory Meets Consumer Choice Models: Assortment and Pricing Management with Reference Prices

Host(s): Associate Professor Shuya Yin
Speaker(s): Ruxian Wang, Assistant Professor of Operations Management and Business Analytics
University: Carey Business School, Johns Hopkins University
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Thursday, February 15, 2018, 11:00am – 12:30pm

Reference prices arise as price expectations against which consumers evaluate products in their purchase scenarios. We investigate what will happen when prospect theory (e.g., reference prices) meets consumer choice models from the perspectives of both the consumers and the firm. Consumers see multiple relevant products on a particular purchase occasion, and often compare their prices to form the willingness to pay when considering whether to purchase a particular product. Reference prices, which are not included in many choice models, may impact consumer choice behavior, so we incorporate reference prices into consumer choice models and investigate the operations management problems. We take the widely used multinomial logit model as a showcase to examine the effects of reference prices through analytical and empirical study. We consider the optimization problems on assortment planning and pricing under consumer choice models with a variety of reference prices, including the lowest price and the assortment variety. Our empirical study on a real data set demonstrates that incorporating reference prices into choice models can significantly improve goodness-of-fit and prediction accuracy of consumer choice behavior. Moreover, we characterize the optimal policies for the assortment planning and pricing problems under the consumer choice models with various reference prices. In particular for the pricing problems under the reference prices defined by either the lowest price or assortment variety, we show that the optimal pricing policy has the following structure: products can be divided into several groups based on their costs; the products in the same group charge either the same markup or the same price. In practice, reference prices should be taken into account in model estimation and operations management. Ignoring reference prices may lead to substantial losses.

How do Reductions In Foreign Country Corporate Tax Rates Affect U.S. Domestic Manufacturing Firms?

Host(s): Assistant Professor Elizabeth Chuk
Speaker(s): Ryan Wilson, Richard W. Lindholm Professor of Accounting in Taxation
University: Charles H. Lundquist College of Business, University of Oregon
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Friday, February 9, 2018, 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm

We examine whether reductions in foreign country statutory corporate tax rates affect U.S. domestic manufacturing firms’ profitability and how U.S. firms respond. We develop a measure of U.S. domestic firms’ exposure to changes in foreign country corporate tax rates and find U.S. domestic firms’ profitability is adversely affected by decreases in foreign country corporate tax rates. In cross-sectional analyses, we find the impact of these foreign tax shocks on the profitability of U.S. domestic firms is more pronounced among firms with low product differentiation. We also provide evidence that following foreign tax shocks U.S. firms with low product differentiation increase R&D and experience an increase in total factor productivity. Taken together, these findings suggest that reductions in foreign country statutory corporate tax rates adversely affect U.S. domestic firms’ profitability, and in response U.S. domestic firms become more innovative and productive.

Repairing Disrupted Practices: Material Singularity and the Servicing of a Consumer Practice

Host(s): Assistant Professor Tonya Bradford
Speaker(s): Linda Price, Professor of Marketing
University: Lundquist College of Business, University of Oregon
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Friday, February 2, 2018, 3:00pm – 4:30pm

Consumer practices constantly face the threat of disruption, as the objects central to their performance gradually and continually disintegrate through natural material forces. We examine how consumers respond to material objects that become misaligned from their practices. Through an in-depth, multi-method study of consumers, objects, and their practices, we utilize a new materialist perspective on practice theory to illuminate often-overlooked processes of object alignment, disintegration, and repair that are integral to nearly every consumer practice. We introduce the concept of material singularity and develop a general model of object-practice calibration, which explains why and how consumers protect, maintain, and repair their continually disintegrating practices. Building on these material practice insights, we also describe the processes by which service providers aid in object-practice calibration by integrating their practices with consumers’ materially singular objects and the practices to which these objects are central.

Former Insiders' Trading

Host(s): Assistant Professor Elizabeth Chuk
Speaker(s): Erik Johannesson, Ph.D. Candidate
University: Columbia University
Location: SB1 4410 Center for Global Leadership Room
Time: Wednesday, January 31, 2018, 3:00pm – 4:30pm

Using detailed and unique data from Sweden, I show that former insiders trade profitably in the shares of companies with which they used to be affiliated. A trading strategy mimicking former insiders’ trading behavior yields abnormal returns of 7.6% per year. These returns are primarily driven by post-separation purchases rather than by sales. They do not reflect general stock-picking skills: former insiders earn significantly lower abnormal returns when trading in companies with which they have no affiliation. Their informational advantage diminishes over time, but less so if they have ties to current insiders. The importance of such ties increases in the presence of value-relevant information. My results are consistent with former insiders benefiting from both a retained informational advantage and from inside information obtained post-separation when trading in inside stock.

Media Exposure Through the Funnel: A Model of Multi-stage Attribution

Host(s): Vijay Gurbaxani
Speaker(s): Vibhanshu Abhishek, Assistant Professor of Information Systems
University: Carnegie Mellon University
Location: SB1 4410, Center for Global Leadership (CGL) Suite
Time: Thursday, January 25, 2018, 1:00pm – 2:30pm

In this paper, we address the problem of advertising attribution by developing a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) of an individual consumer's behavior based on the concept of a conversion funnel. We apply the model to a unique dataset from the online campaign for the launch of a car. We observe that different ad formats, e.g. display and search ads, affect consumers differently based on their states in the decision process. Display ads usually have an early impact on the consumer, moving her from a disengaged state to a state in which she interacts with the campaign. On the other hand, search ads have a pronounced effect across all stages. Further, when the consumer interacts with these ads (e.g. by clicking on them), the likelihood of a conversion increases considerably. Finally, we show that attributing conversions based on the HMM provides fundamentally different insights into ad effectiveness relative to the commonly used approaches for attribution. Contrary to the common belief that display ads are not useful, our results show that display ads have a significant effect on the early stages of the conversion process. Furthermore, we show that only a fraction of online conversions are driven by online ads.

Do Firms Manage Pay Inequality?

Host(s): Dean’s Professor Jone Pearce
Speaker(s): Paul Willman, Emeritus Professor of Management
University: London School of Economics and Political Science
Location: SB1 5200, Porter Colloquia Room and Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, January 26, 2018, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm

The paper examines the role of the modern firm in the creation of inequality of income. Specifically, it examines the growth in the use of asset based rewards for senior executives, combined with continued use of salaried rewards for other employees, and the impact this has on measures of inequality within the firm. The paper presents data on intra firm inequality from the UK FTSE 100 for the period 2000-2015. It looks at ratios of CEO to average earnings and attempts to explain both the growth in inequality on this measure and the extent of variance between firms. It concludes first, that executive compensation option structures constitute a ‘one way bet’ on pay increases and, second, that differences in outsourcing as well as levels of CEO pay are important influences on ratios. Policy implications are discussed.

Is there a home field advantage in global markets?

Host(s): N/A
Speaker(s): Andrew Karolyi, Harold Bierman, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Management
University: SC Johnson College of Business, Cornell University
Location: SB1 5200, Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, January 19, 2018, 2:00 pm - 3:15 pm

International equity mutual funds that hire managers from a country linked to the fund`s geographic mandate exhibit a strong bias to invest in stocks of that country. These funds with “home-biased managers” attract disproportionally more flows, on average, that intensify during periods of higher economic uncertainty in that country. Stocks domiciled in countries in which the fund has a homefield advantage outperform those held by other funds without home-biased managers, but with investments in the same countries. We interpret this new finding as evidence of an informationbased channel through which the home-bias phenomenon may be revealed and link it to theories that emphasize the role of an informational endowment advantage.

An Analysis of Time-Based Pricing in Electricity Supply Chains (Joint with Baris Ata and Serasu Duran)

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luyi Gui
Speaker(s): Ozge Islegen, Assistant Professor of Operations
University: Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
Location: SB1 5200, Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, January 19, 2018, 10:00 am - 11:30 am

Our paper empirically evaluates the impact of time-based tariffs on the electricity supply chain. We investigate the residential electricity demand and supply equilibrium, using data from a field experiment conducted by the Ireland Commission for Energy Regulation: We first estimate individual households’ demand as a function of retail electricity prices. Then, we characterize the optimal retail prices under the flat rate, time-of-use (TOU) and real-time pricing (RTP) schemes for the social planner, the monopolist retailer and in a perfectly competitive retail electricity market. We find that time-based pricing schemes can be effective in reducing the peak load. Specifically, a simple TOU tariff with predetermined rates for different hours of the day can reduce the peak load as much as RTP. However, an RTP scheme can prevent demand spikes by significantly increasing the price of electricity in a given hour. We also find that time-based tariffs do not change consumers’ electricity bills significantly. Finally, time-based prices only slightly increase the carbon dioxide emissions in Ireland. By a numerical study in the U.S. electricity markets, we show that the environmental impact of time-based tariffs can be significant in other electricity markets with different generation mix and dispatch decisions.

Collective Intelligence and Learning in Teams

Host(s): Assistant Professor Maritza Salazar
Speaker(s): Anita Williams Woolley, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Theory
University: Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business
Location: SB1 5200, Porter Colloquia Room and Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, January 12, 2018, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm

Recent research suggests that groups can be characterized by a collective intelligence factor, which represents their ability to work together as observed in their performance across a range of different tasks. In this research, we investigate whether collective intelligence also can predict the rate of group learning. In a longitudinal study of 59 teams who worked together in an MBA course, we find that collective intelligence predicts two different forms of group learning: task mastery and performance improvement. We find that group task mastery, as measured by cognitive synergistic gains, mediates the relationship between collective intelligence and performance improvement. We also explore the degree to which collective intelligence and team performance improvement are related to team member ratings of the quality of team interaction, which has been conceptualized as another dimension of learning. As expected, we find no relationship between collective intelligence and member-rated quality of team interaction but do find that both rated interaction quality and collective intelligence explain unique variance in performance improvement over time across groups. Based on the consistency in patterns across this and other studies, we conclude that collective intelligence impacts performance improvement via a cognitive rather than a socioemotional path. We discuss both the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

Signals or Shackles? The Effect of Patents on Inventor Mobility and Entrepreneurship

Host(s): Professor John Joseph
Speaker(s): Justin Frake, Ph.D. Candidate
University: Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland
Location: SB1 5100, Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Monday, December 11, 2017, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm

How do patents affect the probability that an inventor will leave their employer to join or start another firm? Building on theories of appropriability and firm-specificity, prior studies support the notion that patents constrain inventors. I argue, using signaling theory, that patents will increase inventor mobility and entrepreneurship by acting as signals of inventor quality. I further argue that the positive effects of patenting are exacerbated for university inventors and inventors working on discrete technologies. Instead of relying on patent records to measure mobility, which leads to sampling and misclassification bias, I match US patent data with linked employee-employer Census microdata. This novel dataset allows me to observe the near-complete patent, wage, and employer history of most US inventors between 1995 and 2008. To causally identify the effect of patenting, I use the historical leniency of quasi-randomly assigned patent examiners to instrument for whether a patent is granted. I challenge prior work by finding support for the signaling, rather than constraining, effects of patents. To test whether signaling is the operant mechanism, I show that patenting also increases the inventor’s wages and future productivity. My findings reveal an interesting paradox for innovative firms: by patenting an inventor’s idea, firms dramatically increase the probability that the inventor will leave to join or start another firm.

Peer Firm Disclosure Response to Takeover Threat

Host(s): Assistant Professor Elizabeth Chuk
Speaker(s): Shuping Chen, Professor of Accounting
University: McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin
Location: SB1 2321 Judy B. Rosener Classroom
Time: Friday, December 8, 2017, 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm

We examine how firms subject to a takeover threat change their voluntary disclosure behavior. We exploit the exogenous control shock experienced by firms upon the hostile takeover announcements of rival firms in the same industry, and perform difference-in- difference analyses to test shocked firms’ disclosure reaction relative to control firms. We find that, after the control shock, treatment firm managers provide more forecasts and issue more 8-Ks and the expanded disclosure contains more bad news. In addition, the expanded disclosure is of a higher precision as evidenced by managers’ conference call language that is easier to understand and that contains less obfuscation component. Treatment firms also provide more quantitative but not qualitative earnings forecasts, and their 10-Ks contain fewer uncertainty words. Taken together, our combined results are consistent with treatment firms expanding voluntary disclosure and increasing the transparency of the associated disclosure in response to the control shock. Our study contributes to the voluntary disclosure literature by providing much needed causal evidence on voluntary disclosure changes.

The Social Foundations of Creativity: Evidence From Popular Music, 1955-2000

Host(s): Assistant Professor Sharon Koppman
Speaker(s): Noah Askin, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior
University: INSEAD Business School Fontainebleau Campus
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, December 8, 2017, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm

Creativity is central to cultural production, but what makes certain producers more likely to innovate than others? More specifically, what are the different sources of social influence that drive variation in creative output, and through what mechanisms do these sources operate? To answer these questions, we leverage original data on over 25,000 musical artists and 600,000 songs recorded and released between 1955 and 2000, using fine-grained musical features to construct a continuous measure of creative output (i.e., song novelty). We then test whether artists draw creative inspiration through the recombination of diverse ideas, or are instead stimulated by the creativity of their musical neighbors. We find that both of these mechanisms explain an artist’s propensity to write and release novel songs, but in systematically different ways: creative artists tend to recombine material from diverse genres that they encounter through their collaboration networks, while they draw inspiration from—and are granted legitimacy by—other creative artists with shared genre, record label, and/or geographic affiliations. This pattern holds even after controlling for an individual or group’s historical propensity to produce novel songs. These findings suggest that the likelihood of generating new ideas is influenced not only by direct interaction and collaboration with others, but also through indirect exposure via shared cultural, organizational, and geographic contexts. Understanding when and how creative potential travels across these “spheres of influence” sheds new light on the production of novelty in music and the social foundations of creativity more generally.

Sourcing and procurement cost allocation in multi-division firms

Host(s): Associate Professor John Turner
Speaker(s): Assistant Professor of Management, Fang Fang
University: College of Business and Economics, California State University at Los Angeles
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Friday, December 8, 2017, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm

Problem definition. Through Central Procurement Organizations (CPOs), large firms with multiple divisions have begun adopting a center-led sourcing approach that allows firms to centralize strategic sourcing activities, while permitting decentralized execution by divisions, allowing the firm to leverage large purchase volumes with vendors. This new center-led procurement environment has brought a new decision requirement: How can a CPO select vendors for each division’s requirements to minimize the firm’s total procurement cost and simultaneously develop a fair and alignment-inducing mechanism to allocate the costs (and savings) of company-wide procurement to the divisions? Academic/Practical relevance. Past research and current practice have not addressed this linkage between vendor selection and cost allocation in multi-division firms. Methodology. We model this sourcing and procurement cost allocation (SPC) decision problem facing CPOs of large firms as a mixed-integer optimization problem. This model is flexible and permits us to incorporate and examine alternative divisional participation schemes and commonly used fair cost allocation rules. Results. Although the SPC problem is NP-hard, our analysis characterizes important aspects of the optimal solution to reveal that (a) the CPO could incur a significant additional cost in ensuring fair cost allocation, (b) selecting vendors first and then setting appropriate transfer prices (in a sequential, rather than simultaneous manner) could cause large deficits for the CPO, and (c) of two common fairness rules (uniform pricing and proportional savings allocation), one does not uniformly dominate another, and similarly neither of two participation schemes (flexible and all-or-nothing) dominates the other in all cases. Managerial implications. This work shows that sourcing and procurement cost allocation are interlinked, highlighting the need for managers to make these decisions jointly. CPOs have several choices (participation schemes and fairness rules) in organizing multi-division procurement; this research helps construct a framework for managers to understand the relative impact of their choices. Keywords: Procurement, Cost allocation, Applied optimization

Platform Competition under Network Effects: Piggybacking and Optimal Subsidizing

Host(s): Assistant Professor Tingting Nian
Speaker(s): Professor of Information Technology Management, Dongjun Wu
University: Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology
Location: SB1 5200 Lyman Porter Colloquia Room
Time: Thursday, December 7, 2017, 2:30 pm – 4:00 pm

A repeated challenge in launching the two-sided market platform is how to solve the “chicken-and-egg” problem. Subsidizing one side of the market to jumpstart the platform adoption process has often been suggested in the literature as the solution. In this paper, using a game-theoretic framework, we study piggybacking -- importing users from external networks as a new approach to launch platforms. First, we solve for the platforms' optimal pricing strategies and identify conditions under which each competing platform should subsidize users in the presence of piggybacking. Benchmarked with the case of no-piggybacking, we find that piggybacking does not change the condition of but only the degree of platform subsidizing. Second, we discover when subsidizing is complementary to piggybacking. Third, we show that the platform with stronger piggybacking capabilities tends to monetize more aggressively the side with stronger network effects, while the opponent platform has to monetize the other side. These findings are robust to an extension when piggybacking is endogenized. Finally, we extend our model to examine fabricated piggybacking such as zombie users and fake profiles in platform competition. We show that fabricated piggybacking may affect the platforms' subsidizing conditions, and it always undermines the opponent platform’s profit. These results contrast sharply to findings under authentic piggybacking. Managerial implications for platform practitioners are also discussed. (This is joint work with Yifan Dou.)

Wealth Management and Financial Advisory Services in the Asia-Pacific Region

Host(s): Associate Professor Christopher Schwarz
Speaker(s): Professor of Finance, Lujer Santacruz
University: School of Commerce, University of Southern Queensland
Location: SB1 5200 Lyman Porter Colloquia Room
Time: Friday, December 1, 2017, 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm

The present paper is an industry study of wealth management and financial advisory services in the Asia-Pacific region, recognising the strong growth in personal wealth in this region. It aims to gain an understanding of the structure of the industry, current directions and opportunities thereof. The paper starts with a look at the wealth management and financial advisory services industry in the US, on which the practices in other countries are patterned and given that US financial entities are major players in the Asia-Pacific region. Examining the US industry is also a good way of introducing the terminologies used in the industry worldwide. The paper then examines the industry in Australia, which has a relatively well developed financial advisory environment before examining the industry in other major Asia-Pacific countries. For each country, the paper looks at the industry participants and the regulatory environment. Finally, the paper examines the general trends and directions that impact the industry and identifies potential opportunities.

Adaptive Thinking: Why some Directors exert an Outsized Influence on Strategic Change in New Ventures at IPO

Host(s): Dean’s Professor Margarethe Wiersema
Speaker(s): Razvan Lungeanu, Assistant Professor of Management and Organization
University: Smeal College of Business, Penn State
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Thursday, November 30, 2017, 10:30 pm – 12:00 pm

This study addresses the oft-debated questions of whether, when, and how corporate board members help shape firm strategy by advancing a new perspective on heterogeneous director influence that introduces the notion of the deep/broad director. Specifically, we build upon research in strategy/organization theory and human cognition to suggest that deep/broad new outside directors, whose expertise results from a blend of depth and breadth of experience, will have an outsized influence in shaping firm strategy. We test our theory using an extensive multi-year dataset that tracks all firms that went through an IPO in the U.S. across multiple business cycles (1997, 2001, and 2004) until 2011. Focusing on new outside directors in their first year of service (and controlling for selection issues), our results support our main prediction that those directors whose prior experiences are both deep and broad are the most influential directors for strategic change. We find this result to be robust for multiple indicators of strategic change. We also explore whether the outsized influence of the deep/broad director on strategic change may vary by differences in a board’s openness to strategic change. We conclude by highlighting the relevance of our approach and findings for future research and debates on director selection and director expertise.

Attention Biases in Social Networks

Host(s): Dean’s Professor Margarethe Wiersema
Speaker(s): Luke Rhee, Assistant Professor of Technology Management and Innovation
University: Tandon School of Engineering, New York University
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Monday, November 27, 2017, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm

This study introduces the notion of attention allocation in social networks to examine how people receive high performance evaluations in innovation projects. Using survey data on communication networks among software engineers at a mobile service company, we find that independent of their network structure, engineers who allocate their attention to information coming from brokers receive higher performance evaluations in innovation projects than those who pay no (or little) attention to that information. Although individuals should pay attention to information shared by brokers for better innovation performance, our data reveal that individuals typically pay less attention to information coming from brokers than they do to information shared by other work colleagues. Consequently, there is a mismatch between the communication partners to whose information people normally pay attention and to whose information they should be paying attention for innovation. These findings about attention bias in social networks make a number of contributions to behavioral theories of networks and innovation in an organization.

The Persistence and Pricing of Merger-Related Transitory Growth and Its Implications for Growth Anomalies and Asset Pricing Models

Host(s): Assistant Professor Liz Chuk
Speaker(s): Daniel Collins, Professor and Department Executive Officer Henry B. Tippie Research Chair in Accounting
University: The University of Iowa, Tippie School of Business
Location: SB1 2321, Judy B. Rosener Classroom
Time: Friday, November 17, 2017, 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm

Prior literature in financial economics and accounting measures asset growth as year-over-year nominal growth in total assets. Such growth estimates are upward biased when firms engage in mergers and acquisitions. We decompose asset growth into merger-related and organic growth components, and find that merger-related growth is less persistent than organic growth. We find that merger-related growth is a strong predictor for future returns after controlling for other return predictors in cross-sectional tests. Asset pricing tests reveal that priced risk factors do not explain this merger-related growth pricing anomaly. We also documents that merger-related growth is positively associated with analysts’ optimism in earnings forecasts and stock recommendations. Furthermore, such return predictability is exhibited by firms that do not transparently disclose the merger-related and organic growth components, and is more pronounced for stocks with high transaction costs and arbitrage risk. Finally, the return predictability of merger-related growth dissipates within one year. Collectively, these findings are consistent with the performance over-extrapolation hypothesis and investors with limited attention playing a role in mispricing.

Emphasizing feasibility and near optimality in first-order methods: A level-set method with a feasible solution path

Host(s): Associate Professor John Turner
Speaker(s): Assistant Professor, Negar Soheili Aza
University: University of Illinois at Chicago
Location: SB1 5200 Lyman Porter Colloquium Room
Time: Friday, November 17, 2017, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm

Large-scale constrained convex optimization problems arise in several application domains, including data mining and machine learning, nonlinear resource allocation problems in operations management, and circuit and layout design. First-order methods are good candidates to tackle such problems due to their low iteration complexity and memory requirement. These features have led to revived interest in first-order methods from academics and commercial software developers (e.g., TensorFlow). However, the success of first-order methods has been greatest for problems with simple feasible sets. Current bundle and level-set approaches attempt to extend the applicability of these methods to more complicated objectives and constraint sets but either rely on the solution of challenging subproblems or do not guarantee a feasible solution, especially if the procedure is terminated before convergence, for example, due to time limits in an online environment. Infeasibility may void the implementation of a solution in real-world situations where constraints capture operating conditions that must be satisfied.

This status-quo motivates our research. We develop a level-set method that finds a feasible and near (relative) optimal solution to a constrained convex optimization problem with a fairly general objective function and set of constraints, maintains a feasible solution at each iteration (i.e., a feasible solution path), and only relies on calls to first-order oracles. We establish the iteration complexity of our approach, also accounting for the smoothness and strong convexity of the objective function and constraints when these properties hold. The dependence of our complexity on the optimality guarantee is similar to the analogous dependence one can obtain in an unconstrained setting, which is not known to be true for other level-set methods in the literature.

Optimizing Two-Sided Promotion for Transportation Network Companies: A Structural Model with Conditional Bayesian Learning

Host(s): Assistant Professor Mingdi Xin
Speaker(s): Yong Tan, Neal and Jan Dempsey Professor of Information Systems
University: Foster School of Business, University of Washington
Location: SB1 2321 Judy B. Rosener Classroom
Time: Friday, November 17, 2017, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm

The mobile app of a transportation network company (TNC) allows the TNC platform to run aggressive and diverse two-sided sales promotions to help to introduce new products. We examine how two-sided sales promotion affects drivers’ willingness to use the TNC app and how the TNC develops its optimal promotion strategies accordingly. To investigate the effects of sales promotion, we estimate a structural model of drivers’ decisions to accept orders and to cancel generated orders and their perception of passengers’ willingness to utilize a sales promotion. Bayesian learning processes are introduced to account for decisions under uncertainty as the app is introduced. We find measurable evidence of drivers’ learning about the value of the attributes of the transportation network app. The results indicate that the substantial value of early promotion not only encourages current usage but also fosters learning that sustains drivers’ use of the app afterward. Our results also show that revealed tips from passengers signal low quality of service and that platform cashback to passengers has a positive effect on drivers by increasing drivers’ chances of being rewarded. Given the estimated parameters, we run simulations to explicitly measure the indirect effects of the sales promotion, as supported by learning, and show how cashback for passengers affects the decisions of drivers. Finally, our experimental promotion policies show improved performance with regard to drivers’ willingness to use the app as well as its cost effectiveness.

Social Comparison and Employee Mobility

Host(s): Associate Professor Libby Weber
Speaker(s): Teppo Felin, Professor of Strategy
University: University of Oxford, Saïd Business School
Location: SB1 5100, Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Friday, November 3, 2017, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm

In this paper we study the nexus of social comparison, wage inequality, and employee mobility. Extant research has largely focused on how within-firm social comparison of wages—using aggregate measures such as firm-level wage inequality (e.g., Gini coefficient)—impact employee satisfaction, productivity and mobility. We argue that social comparison is “personal” in the sense that it is a function of one’s relative standing within and across firms, rather than a function of more aggregate measures (e.g., overall wage inequality, average wages of the firm, the firm’s ranking in terms of average wage within the industry). We utilize a more fine-grained measure of social comparison, that is, a focal employee’s relative standing or rank both within and across firms. Using a large-scale, multi-year and multi-industry dataset we show that both within and across-firm employee wage rank is negatively correlated with mobility. We also theoretically argue and empirically show that industry-level social comparison matters more than firm-level comparison—suggesting a need to broaden the scope of the social comparison literature to include the set of other firms that an employee might move to. Across-firm social comparisons are salient due to a number of factors, including the professional ties and embeddedness of employees in networks outside the firm. We replicate extant findings of firm-level wage inequalities and mobility, and provide a more nuanced discussion of why and how wage inequality shapes employee mobility. We also highlight and discuss the implications of wage inequality and mobility on firm performance. key words: employee mobility, social comparison, strategy, performance.

Lenders’ Use of Analyst Earnings Forecasts When Establishing Debt Convenant Thresholds

Host(s): Assistant Professor Elizabeth Chuk
Speaker(s): Andrew Call, Associate Professor
University: Arizona State University, School of Accountancy
Location: SB1 2321, Judy B. Rosener Classroom
Time: Friday, October 27, 2017, 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm

We examine whether lenders use analyst forecasts of the borrowing firm’s future earnings when establishing covenant thresholds in private debt contracts. We find greater proximity between the analysts’ consensus earnings forecast and the future earnings performance required by the contract among borrowers whose analysts historically issue accurate earnings forecasts, consistent with our hypothesis that lenders use analyst earnings forecasts when establishing debt covenant thresholds. These results are robust to firm and year fixed effects as well as an instrumental variable approach that addresses potential correlated omitted variables. We also find that the likelihood that the borrower violates a debt covenant following a decline in creditworthiness is increasing in the extent to which the debt covenant threshold is set closer to analyst expectations, suggesting that lenders’ use of analyst research increases the effectiveness of debt covenants in transferring contingent control rights. Our results provide new evidence on the role of analyst earnings forecasts in debt contracting and inform the literature on the information used by lenders when establishing debt covenant thresholds.

Stage-Gate Selection In Innovation

Host(s): Professor John Joseph
Speaker(s): Ronald Klingebiel, Professor of Finance
University: Frankfurt School of Finance and Management
Location: SB1 3410, Center for Investment and Wealth Management
Time: Wednesday, October 25, 2017, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm

We use a hybrid inductive method to examine resource-allocation decision making at stage gates of the innovation process at former handset maker Sony Ericsson. We particularly focus on project discontinuation, a key objective in organizing innovation as selective funnels. We provide three insights with implications for escalation theory. First, initial uncertainty constrains the articulation and tracking of projects’ commercial attractiveness. This means that escalation can be an unknowable process as well as a decision bias, limiting the usefulness of selection gates early in development. Second, we document a reluctance to search and update business cases as projects near completion. This suggests the presence of a new mechanism that might inadvertently have been captured in escalation studies of self-justification and goal-substitution effects. Third, we reveal a strong form of escalation, whereby projects, whose deteriorating commercial prospects are reflected in downward business-case revisions, are more likely to be continued than projects with stable or improving business cases. This suggests a counter-intuitive effect of attention on commitment escalation. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of both the nature of escalation decisions and the stage-gate organization of innovation under uncertainty.

Relative Valuation and the Production of Information

Host(s): Assistant Professor David Yang
Speaker(s): Alan Moreira, Assistant Professor of Finance
University: Simon Graduate School of Business, University of Rochester
Location: SB1 5200, Lyman Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, October 20, 2017, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

We study the problem of an investor that allocates analysts to assets to learn about future asset values. We show that when analysts are better at relative rather than absolute asset valuations the optimal matching of analysts to assets displays a balancedness property in which pairs of distinct assets are covered by a similar number of analysts. A balanced allocation allows the investor to efficiently aggregate information using the relative value between assets, eliminating the effect of the analyst-specific component. We show that the optimal matching of analysts to assets and the optimal portfolio decision depends on the structure of the analyst coverage network - the bipartite graph where the vertices are the firms and the edges are all the pairs of distinct firms that are covered by at least one common analyst. For example, capital is only reallocated between firms that are connected in the network, and the intensity of the reallocations depends on both the value of relative asset recommendations and the strength of the connection between the assets.

Business Models: Toolkits for Sensemaking in a Post – Chandlerian Economy

Host(s): Professor John Joseph
Speaker(s): William Ocasio
University: Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
Location: SB1 5200, Porter Colloquia Room and Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, October 20, 2017, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm

The business model concept is increasingly used by practitioners, but our understanding of its origins and development is limited. Using a combination of inductive text analysis and historical narrative, we trace the evolution of the concept from 1990 to 2016. Our analysis shows that the concept began in semiconductors, computers, and e-business firms as they transitioned away from vertically integrated organizations towards greater specialization and horizontal collaboration. The concept expanded in usage and became institutionalized but its precise application was quite varied. Paradoxically this ambiguity in meaning facilitated sensemaking and strategizing across a variety of industries responding to changes in to technology, globalization, and customer demands in a post-Chandlerian economy.

Asset Pricing in the Quest for the New El Dorado

Host(s): Associate Professor David Yang
Speaker(s): Bruce Carlin
University: Anderson Graduate School of Business, University of California, Los Angeles
Location: SB1 5200, Porter Colloquia Room and Executive Terrace
Time:Friday, October 13, 2017, 10:00 am – 11:30 am

Creative destruction not only involves bringing new technology to market, it imposes higher risk on the future of existing assets. We characterize the asset pricing implications of creative destruction when investors compete for market share. Compared to first best, the quest for oligopoly rents leads to overinvestment in uncertain projects, spikes in asset prices and risk premia, and an aftermath in which prices fall steeply as uncertainty resolves. If competition for rents is sufficiently aggressive, the elevated price-dividend ratio predicts negative future expected returns. This resembles a bubble ex post, but arises solely from competitive behavior and does not require heterogeneous beliefs, behavioral biases, or financial frictions. Our analysis yields novel empirical predictions and we discuss how financial innovation might be used to predict bubbles ex ante.

Does PCAOB Regulatory Enforcement Deter Non-Sanctioned Auditors?

Host(s): Assistant Professor Elizabeth Chuck
Speaker(s): Phillip Lamoreaux, Assistant Professor of Accounting
University: Arizona State University
Location: SB1 2321 Judy B. Rosener Classroom
Time:Friday, September 29, 2017, 3:00 pm – 4:00 am

We investigate whether public enforcement by the PCAOB against an audit firm influences the audit quality of nonsanctioned audit firms. PCAOB enforcement activities are publicized with the intent to serve a deterrence function for other auditors. However, the effect of public enforcement on non-sanctioned audit firms has not been empirically investigated. Exploiting this exogenous event to non-sanctioned firms, we hypothesize and find that non-sanctioned auditors improve the quality of their audits after a publicized PCAOB enforcement action against a competing auditor. Specifically, clients of these non-sanctioned audit firms have a lower incidence of client misstatement, but a higher incidence of reported internal control deficiencies. We also find that these non-sanctioned auditors charge higher audit fees postenforcement. Taken together, these results are consistent with non-sanctioned auditors making costly efforts to improve the quality of their audits as a result of PCAOB enforcement.

Out-of-Town Home Buyers and City Welfare

Host(s): Associate Professor David Yang
Speaker(s): Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, Professor of Finance
University: Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University
Location: SB1 2321, Judy B. Rosener Classroom
Time: Wednesday, September 20th, 2017, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm

The major cities of the world have attracted a flurry of out-of- town (OOT) home buyers. Such capital inflows affect housing affordability, the spatial distribution of residents, construction, labor income, wealth, and ultimately welfare. We develop a spatial equilibrium model of a city with substantial heterogeneity among residents. We calibrate the model to the New York and Vancouver metro areas. The observed increase in OOT purchases is associated with 1.1% (5.0%) higher house prices and a 0.1% (0.34%) welfare loss in New York (Vancouver). Taxing OOT buyers can turn welfare losses into gains when tax revenues finance a local public good.

Internet Adoption and Knowledge Diffusion

Host(s): Associate Professor MIngdi Xin
Speaker(s): Chris Forman, Peter and Stephanie Nolan Professor of Strategy, Innovation, and Technology
University: Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University
Location: SB1 2321, Judy B. Rosener Classroom
Time: Wednesday, September 20th, 2017, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm

What is the capacity of ICT to reduce the (geographical and technological) localization of knowledge? In this paper, we analyze the impact of Internet adoption within US firms on knowledge spillovers. More specifically, we investigate the impact of basic Internet access on the likelihood that patents invented at a given R&D establishment cite patents invented elsewhere within the same firm. Our findings suggest that adoption of Internet significantly fosters cross-location citations in a significant way, and that these effects are proportional to the technologically proximity of the establishments. This positive effect holds even when excluding collaborative patents or controlling for earlier collaborations, and suggests that Internet adoption has helped in reducing the spatial localization of knowledge but not in the ability to draw from new knowledge sources (i.e., across different technological areas).

Supply Risk Mitigation via Supplier Diversification and Improvement: An Experimental Evaluation

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luyi Gui
Speaker(s): Basak Kalkanci, Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology
University: Georgia Institute of Technology
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Thursday, August 3rd, 2017, 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm

The agriculture industry plays a critical role in the U.S. economy and various industry sectors depend on the output of farms. A salient challenge in farming is uncertainty in the farm yield, which depends on the weather conditions (and other unpredictable factors) during the growing season and   impacts farmers' profit. To protect and raise farmers' income, the U.S. government offers two subsidy programs to farmers: the Price Loss Coverage (PLC) program which pays farmers a subsidy when the market price of a crop falls below a reference price, and the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) program which pays a subsidy when farmers' revenue is below a guaranteed level. Given the unique features of PLC and ARC, in this paper we develop models to analyze the effects of these programs on consumers, farmers, and the government. Our analysis generates several insights. First, while PLC always motivates farmers to plant more acres compared to the no-subsidy case, farmers may plant less acres under ARC, leading to a lower crop supply. Second, despite the prevailing intuition that PLC benefits farmers only if the crop price remains very low for several years, we show that both farmers and consumers can be better off with PLC for a large range of parameter values, even when the reference price represents the historical average market price.  Third, we show that the two-sided structure of the ARC subsidy may induce farmers to utilize the subsidy in two different ways, depending on the crop and market characteristics. This is used to explore the implications of each subsidy regime on different stakeholders. Fourth, our analysis reveals that the government's cost of maximizing social welfare can be lower under PLC. Finally, we calibrate our model with USDA data and provide insights about the effects of crop characteristics and market characteristics on the relative performance of PLC and ARC. Our findings are corroborated by USDA's statistics for farmers' enrollment in the subsidy programs.

Price vs. Revenue Protection: An Analysis of Government Subsidies in the Agriculture Industry

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luyi Gui
Speaker(s): Foad Iravani, Assistant Professor of Operations Management
University: Foster School of Business, University of Washington  
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Thursday, May 18, 2017, 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm

The agriculture industry plays a critical role in the U.S. economy and various industry sectors depend on the output of farms. A salient challenge in farming is uncertainty in the farm yield, which depends on the weather conditions (and other unpredictable factors) during the growing season and   impacts farmers' profit. To protect and raise farmers' income, the U.S. government offers two subsidy programs to farmers: the Price Loss Coverage (PLC) program which pays farmers a subsidy when the market price of a crop falls below a reference price, and the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) program which pays a subsidy when farmers' revenue is below a guaranteed level. Given the unique features of PLC and ARC, in this paper we develop models to analyze the effects of these programs on consumers, farmers, and the government. Our analysis generates several insights. First, while PLC always motivates farmers to plant more acres compared to the no-subsidy case, farmers may plant less acres under ARC, leading to a lower crop supply. Second, despite the prevailing intuition that PLC benefits farmers only if the crop price remains very low for several years, we show that both farmers and consumers can be better off with PLC for a large range of parameter values, even when the reference price represents the historical average market price.  Third, we show that the two-sided structure of the ARC subsidy may induce farmers to utilize the subsidy in two different ways, depending on the crop and market characteristics. This is used to explore the implications of each subsidy regime on different stakeholders. Fourth, our analysis reveals that the government's cost of maximizing social welfare can be lower under PLC. Finally, we calibrate our model with USDA data and provide insights about the effects of crop characteristics and market characteristics on the relative performance of PLC and ARC. Our findings are corroborated by USDA's statistics for farmers' enrollment in the subsidy programs.

New Organizational Forms, Intermediaries, And Alternative Work Arrangements That Lie Beyond Employment: Research And Practical Opportunities

Host(s): Assistant Professor Maritza Salazar
Speaker(s): John Boudreau, Professor of Management and Organization
University: Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California
Location: SB1 5100 Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Friday, April 28, 2017, 10:30 am - 12:00 pm

Organization success, worker behaviors and leadership will increasingly involve optimizing work that includes, but goes well beyond traditional employment.  Cascio and Boudreau (in press) and Boudreau, Jesuthasan and Creelman (2015) note evidence that a larger proportion of work is and will be done by individuals working outside the traditional regular full-time employment relationship, through arrangements such as alliances, talent-trading, tours of duty, freelancers, along with familiar options of outsourcing, temporary employment and contractors.  Yet virtually all present laws, organizational systems and human resource processes and most research focuses on regular full-time employees.  This gap raises important questions about the future of research on work, employment, human resources, strategy and organizational design, such as: What are the fundamental dimensions of this new world, and how can they help leaders make better decisions about work and talent? Will they be as committed as full-timers? Will their rapid turnover require extensive orientation and training of new ones? Will they stick around long enough to develop the kind of depth of understanding of people and operations that will enable them to contribute meaningfully? Can work arrangements appropriately protect workers and balance worker and organizational rights and needs?  This talk will describe examples of emerging non-standard work arrangements, as the context for a review of research on nonstandard work through the lens of the talent-management lifecycle.  We set out to discover where research has been plentiful and sparse, and whether research frameworks applied to nonstandard work are similar to those applied to traditional, regular fulltime employment, and the implications for future research.

Relative Target Setting and Cooperation

Host(s): Assistant Professor Radhika Lunawat
Speaker(s): Michal Matejka, Associate Professor of Accounting
University: W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University 
Location: SB1 5200, Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, April 21, 2017, 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm

A large stream of work on relative performance evaluation highlights the benefits of using information about peer performance in contracting. In contrast, the potential costs of discouraging cooperation among peers have received much less attention. The purpose of our study is to examine how the importance of cooperation affects the use of information about peer performance in target setting, also known as relative target setting. Specifically, we use data from 111 business units of an industrial services company where managers need to share specialized equipment and staff with their peers to manage bottlenecks in their capacity. We construct several empirical proxies for the importance of cooperation and examine their effect on target setting. We find robust evidence that the sensitivity of target revisions to past peer (own) performance is lower (higher) when the importance of cooperation is higher, which is consistent with the theory that compensation contracts incorporating information about peer performance discourage cooperation.

The Group Dynamics of Inter-organizational Relationships: Collaborating with Multiple Partners in Innovation Ecosystems

Host(s): Assistant Professor John Joseph
Speaker(s): Jason Davis, Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise
University: INSEAD Asia in Singapore
Location: SB1 2321, Judy B. Rosener Classroom
Time: Friday, April 21, 2017, 2:00pm - 3:30pm

This paper examines how organizations collaborate with multiple partners, such as when they develop innovative and complex product platforms like smartphones, servers, and MRI machines that rely on technologies developed by organizations in three or more sectors. Research on multipartner alliances often treats them as a collection of independent dyads, neglecting the possibility of third-party influence and interference in dyads that can inhibit innovation. Using a multiple-case, inductive study of six groups, each composed of three organizations engaged in technology and product development in the computer industry, I examine the collaborative forms and processes that organizations use to innovate with multiple partners in groups. Groups that used the collaborative forms of independent parallel dyads or single unified triads generated mistrust and conflict that stemmed from expectations about third-party participation and overlapping roles and thus had low innovation performance and weaker ties. Other groups avoided these problems by using a dynamic collaboration process that I call “group cycling,” in which managers viewed their triad as a small group, decomposed innovative activities into a series of interlinked dyads between different pairs of partners, and managed third-party interests across time. By temporarily restricting participation to pairs, managers chose which ideas, technologies, and resources to incorporate from third parties into single dyads and ensured that the outputs of multiple dyads were combined into a broader innovative whole.

Inattention and Inertia in Household Finance: Evidence from the Danish Mortgage Market

Host(s): Assistant Professor David Yang
Speaker(s): John Y. Campbell, Morton L. and Carole S. Olshan Professor of Economics
University: Harvard University
Location: SB2 116
Time: Friday, April 21, 2017, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm

A common problem in household finance is that households are often inactive in response to incentives. Mortgages are generally the largest household liability, and mortgage refinancing is an important channel for monetary policy transmission, so inactivity in this setting can be socially costly. We study how the Danish population responds to mortgage refinancing incentives between 2010 and 2014, building an empirical model that identifies two important sources of inactivity: inattention (a low probability of responding to a refinancing incentive in a given quarter), and inertia (a psychological addition to the financial cost of refinancing). Inertia is hump-shaped in age and generally increasing in socioeconomic status, while inattention is highest for older households and households with low income, education, housing wealth, and financial wealth, making it the key determinant of low refinancing among households with low socioeconomic status. Our model highlights the importance of policies to make such households aware of refinancing opportunities or to refinance mortgages automatically.

Merchant Energy Trading in a Network

Selvaprabu (Selva) Nadarajah at University of Illinois at Chicago and
Nicola Secomandi at Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University

Host(s): Assistant Professor John Turner
Speaker(s): Selvaprabu (Selva) Nadarajah, Assistant Professor of Information and Decision Sciences
University: University of Illinois at Chicago
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room and Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, April 7, 2017, 10:30 am – 11:30 am

We formulate the merchant trading of energy in a network of storage and transport assets as a Markov decision process with uncertain energy prices, generalizing known models. Because of the intractability of our model, we develop heuristics and both lower and dual (upper) bounds on the optimal policy value estimated within Monte Carlo simulation. We achieve tractability using linear optimization, extending near optimal approximate dynamic programming techniques for the case of a single storage asset, versions of two of which are commercially available. We propose (i) a generalization of a deterministic re-optimization heuristic, (ii) an iterative version of the least squares Monte Carlo approach, and (iii) a perfect information dual bound. We apply our methods to a set of realistic natural gas instances. The combination of our re-optimization heuristic and dual bound emerges as a practical approach to nearly optimally solve our model. Our iterative least squares Monte Carlo heuristic is also near optimal. Compared to our other heuristic, it exhibits slightly larger optimality gaps and requires some tuning, but is faster to execute in some cases. Our methods could enhance single storage asset software and have potential relevance beyond our specific application.

Negative Affect Management in Service Interactions

Host(s): Dean’s Professor Jone Pearce
Speaker(s): Xiao-Yu Liu, Professor of Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior
University: University of International Business and Economics
Location: SB1 5200, Lyman Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, April 7, 2017, 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm

How do service employees deal with customers with negative affect at the start of a service encounter? We attempt to answer this question by drawing on prior research on affect transference and proactive personality. This study firstly examines the reciprocal process by which restaurant customers and servers influence each other’s affect in a daily study of customer service interactions. Data from 180 customer-employee dyads supported the hypotheses proposing that employee proactive personality buffers the relationship between customer negative affect before service and employee negative affect during service, as well as the relationship between employee negative affect during service and subsequent customer ratings of service quality after service. Employee proactive personality also moderated the indirect effect of initial customer negative affect on service quality through employee negative affect during service. In addition, employee proactive personality was associated with employee negative affect during service. These findings highlight the potential for employee proactive personality in limiting negative affective transfer in service encounters. Then, based on interviews with 18 service employees and data from 250 customer-employee dyads in barber shops, this study further examined how proactive employees manage their own affective states in response to negative customer affect before service and how employees manage affective displays in such a way as to influence customer affective experience and service quality.

Flow and the Quality of Life

Host(s): Associate Professor Loraine Lau-Gesk
Speaker(s): Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Management
University: School of Social Science, Policy & Evaluation
Time: Friday, March 24, 2017, 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room and Executive Terrace

Professor Csikszentmihalyi will introduce the concept of flow — the optimal experience of full engagement with what one is doing -- and some of its applications to such activities as work, creativity, education and life in general — based on 45 years of research conducted around the world.

Employee Non-Compete Agreements and External Knowledge Sourcing: The Paradoxical Impact of Potential Employee Mobility

Host(s): Assistant Professors John Joseph and Libby Weber 
Speaker(s): Deepak Somaya, Associate Professor of Business Administration, Stephen V. and Christy C. King Faculty Fellow
University: College of Business at Illinois, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 
Location: SB1 5100, Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Friday, March 17, 2017, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm

Prior research assumes that because non-compete agreements impede employee mobility, they negatively impact external knowledge sourcing, defined as the use of external knowledge in firms’ internal innovation. In this paper, we examine the proposition that non-competes may paradoxically have the opposite effect. When firms innovate by building on external knowledge, they may face higher risks of losing valuable R&D talent due to both reduced firm-specificity and diminished labor market frictions. By mitigating such potential talent losses, enforceable non-competes may therefore encourage firms to engage in more (rather than less) external knowledge sourcing. Empirically, we leverage a natural “quasi-experiment” created by a sudden and unexpected change in non-compete law in Michigan 1985, and employ a differences-in-differences empirical methodology to help identify causal effects. We find that stronger non-compete enforceability increased the extent to which firms drew on external knowledge, especially from local (within-state) sources and in industries that otherwise have weaker appropriability.

Using An Experiment To Learn About Selection, Treatment Effect Heterogeneity, And External Validity

Host(s): Assistant Professor Mireille Jacobson
Speaker(s): Amanda Kowalski, Associate Professor of Economics
University: Yale School of Management, Yale University
Location: Social Sciences Plaza A, Room 3132
Time: Wednesday, March 14, 2017, 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm

I examine treatment effect heterogeneity within an experiment to inform external validity. The local average treatment effect (LATE) gives an average treatment effect for compliers. I bound and estimate average treatment effects for always takers and never takers by extending marginal treatment effect methods. I use these methods to separate selection from treatment effect heterogeneity, generalizing the comparison of OLS to LATE. Applying these methods to the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, I find that the treatment effect of insurance on emergency room utilization decreases from always takers to compliers to never takers. Previous utilization explains a large share of the treatment effect heterogeneity. Extrapolations show that other expansions could increase or decrease utilization.

Using Games to Teach Auction Theory to Students

Host(s): Professor Philippe Jorion
Speaker(s): Charles Cuny, Senior Lecturer in Finance
University: Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis
Location: SB1 5200 Porter Colloquia Room and Executive Terrace
Time: Monday, March 13, 2017, 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm
 
Abstract is not available.

Modern Disclosure Theory

Host(s): Assistant Professor Radhika Lunawat
Speaker(s): Ron Dye, Professor of Accounting Information and Management
University: Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
Location: SB1 5200, Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, March 10, 2017, 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm

Abstract available upon request to the speaker. 

Using An Experiment To Learn About Selection, Treatment Effect Heterogeneity, And External Validity

Host(s): Professor Rick So
Speaker(s): Saif Benjaafar, Distinguished McKnight University Professor; Director, Initiative on the Sharing Economy
University: College of Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota
Location: SB1 5200, Lyman Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, March 10, 2017, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm

We describe an equilibrium model of peer-to-peer product sharing, or collaborative consumption, where individuals with varying usage levels make decisions about whether or not to own. Owners are able to generate income from renting their products to non-owners while non-owners are able to access these products through renting on as needed basis. We characterize equilibrium outcomes, including ownership and usage levels, consumer surplus, and social welfare. We compare each outcome in systems with and without collaborative consumption and examine the impact of various problem parameters including rental price, platform's commission fee, cost of ownership, owner's moral hazard cost, and renter's inconvenience cost. Our findings indicate that, depending on the rental price, collaborative consumption can result in either lower or higher ownership and usage levels, with higher ownership and usage levels more likely when the cost of ownership is high. We show that consumers always benefit from collaborative consumption, with individuals who, in the absence of collaborative consumption, are indifferent between owning and not owning benefiting the most. We also show that the platform's profit is not monotonic in the cost of ownership, implying that a platform is least profitable when the cost of ownership is either very high or very low. (Joint work Xiang Li, Guangwen Kong, and Costas Courcoubetis).

The Making of Hawks and Doves: Inflation Experiences and Voting on the FOMC

Host(s): Assistant Professor David Yang
Speaker(s): Stefan Nagel, Michael Stark Professor of Finance and Economics
University: Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Location: SB1 2321, Dr. Judy B. Rosener Classroom 
Time: Friday, March 3, 2017, 2:00 pm - 3:15 pm

We show that personal experiences of inflation strongly influence the hawkish or dovish leanings of central bankers. For all members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) since 1951, we estimate an adaptive learning rule based on their lifetime inflation data. The resulting experience-based forecasts have significant predictive power for members’ FOMC voting decisions, the hawkishness of the tone of their speeches, as well as the heterogeneity in their semi-annual inflation projections. Averaging over all FOMC members present at a meeting, inflation experiences also help to explain the federal funds target rate, over and above conventional Taylor rule components.

Stuck in the Shell: Middle-Stage Goal Pursuers Avoid (But Need) Social Reference Point

Host(s): Professor Connie Pechmann
Speaker(s): Szu-chi Huang, Assistant Professor of Marketing
University: Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford University
Location: SB1 5100, Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Friday, March 3, 2017, 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm

When people arrive in the middle stage of goal pursuit, they deliberately avoid social reference points that could potentially outperform them—a phenomenon we term “stuck-in-the-shell effect.” We use the frequency of head turns, eye movements, and direct choices to document this U-shaped pattern of avoidance behavior and show that this behavior is indeed driven by a fear of being outperformed: Middle-stage goal pursuers avoid social reference points that are relevant, proximal, and potentially superior. Paradoxically, however, in both individual and collective goal contexts, we found that the very social reference points that middle-stage goal pursuers attempt to avoid could ultimately restore their motivation and pull them out of the slump. Our findings connect the psychophysics of goal pursuit with information avoidance literature and shed light on why middle-stage goal pursuers get stuck in an environment that is rich with social information.

Asset Pricing With Return Extrapolation

Host(s): Assistant Professor David Yang
Speaker(s): Lawrence Jin, Assistant Professor of Finance
University: California Institute of Technology
Location: SB1 2321, Judy B. Rosener Classroom
Time: Friday, February 24, 2017, 2:00 pm – 3:15 pm

We develop a representative agent general equilibrium model with return extrapolation and recursive preferences. The model can serve as a quantitative benchmark for the comparison between belief-based behavioral asset pricing models and more traditional models. Our model matches in magnitude investors' extrapolative beliefs and their memory structure derived directly from survey evidence. Also, the model generates a large and countercyclical equity premium, a low and procyclical interest rate, low interest rate volatility, strong excess volatility and predictability for equity returns, persistence of price-dividend ratios, as well as low correlations between consumption growth and stock returns. Extrapolative beliefs generate perceived persistence in dividend and consumption growths that, under recursive preferences, help explain some of our model predictions.

The Dominant Logic of Matching: Finding Acquisition Targets

Host(s): Professor John Joseph
Speaker(s): Henrich Greve, Professor of Entrepreneurship, The John H. Loudon Chaired Professor of International Management
University: INSEAD, Singapore Campus
Location: SB1 5200, Lyman Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, February 24, 2017, 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

Acquisitions are preceded by a search for targets and assessment of whether a potential target is a good fit. While prior research has emphasized resource fit and search costs, we argue that the dominant logic of the acquirer is a source of direction and constraint in the search. Based on this theory, cognitive schema and myopia by the dominant coalition can shape top management strategic analysis and conception of the firm, and are important influences in resource allocations such as acquisitions. They are likely to narrow down their search to targets that resonate with them on the mental construction of the firm environment. As a result, firms match not only on resources, but also on characteristics that are likely to be a source of cognitive schema that are influential in the dominant logic, such as nature of governance, ownership structure, and board composition. We derive new hypotheses on target selection in acquisitions from this theory, and our findings support the hypotheses by showing strong influences from this mechanism on target selection in acquisitions in China.

When Two Bodies Are (Not) a Problem: Gender and Relationship Status Discrimination in Academic Hiring

Host(s): Assistant Professor Sharon Koppman
Speaker(s): Sharon Koppman, Assistant Professor of Organization & Management
University: Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
Location: SB1 5200, Lyman Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, February 24, 2017, 10:30 am - 12:00 pm

Although junior faculty search committees serve as gatekeepers to the professoriate and play vital roles in shaping the demographic composition of academic departments and disciplines, how committees select new hires has received minimal scholarly attention. In this paper, I highlight one mechanism through which committees evaluate applicants and contribute to gender inequalities in academic careers: relationship status discrimination. Through a comparative, ethnographic case study of junior faculty search committees at a large R1 university, I show that committees actively considered women’s—but not men’s—relationship status when selecting hires. Drawing from gendered scripts of career and family that present men’s careers as taking precedence over women’s, committee members believed that heterosexual women whose partners held academic or high-status jobs were not “moveable” and excluded such women from offers, when there were viable male or single female alternatives. Conversely, male applicants’ relationship status was discussed infrequently, and all female partners were seen as moveable. Consequently, I show that the “two-body problem” is a gendered phenomenon embedded in cultural stereotypes and organizational practices that can disadvantage women in academic hiring. I conclude by discussing the implications of such relationship status discrimination for sociological research on labor market inequalities and faculty diversity.

Monetary Stimulus and Bank Lending

Host(s): Assistant Professor David Yang
Speaker(s): Itay Goldstein, Professor of Finance and Economics
University: Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Location: SB1 2321, Judy B. Rosener Classroom
Time: Friday, February 17, 2017, 10:30 am - 11:45 am

The U.S. Federal Reserve purchased both agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and Treasury securities to conduct Quantitative Easing (QE). Using micro-level data, we find that banks benefiting from MBS purchases increase mortgage origination, compared to other banks. At the same time, these banks reduce commercial lending and firms that borrow from these banks decrease investment. The effect of Treasury purchases is different: either positive or insignificant in most cases. Our results suggest that MBS purchases caused unintended real effects and that Treasury purchases did not cause a large positive stimulus to the economy through the bank lending channel.

Short-Sales Constraints and Aftermarket IPO Pricing

Wish Upon a Star? How Network Proximity to Stars Influences the Attainment of Stardom

Host(s): Professor John Joseph
Speaker(s): Joel A.C. Baum, Professor of Strategic Management
University: Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
Location: SB1 5100, Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Friday, February 10, 2017, 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

Third-party awards that identify and rank “star performers” are important for ordering actors in crowded, complex markets. Because such awards are typically bestowed annually, however, stardom is more closely tied to recent performance and less stable than hierarchical orderings based on status. In such conditions, proximity to stars may inform attributions of close rivals’ quality, but the nature of these “spillovers” is debatable. When one actor receives an award, for example, a film actor wins an Oscar or a musician wins a Grammy, how does this stardom affect the fates of the winner’s closest rivals? Are close rivals elevated too, gaining spillovers of attention and recognition from the increased notoriety of the winner? Or conversely, are they lost in the shadow of the winner’s notoriety and forced to compete more intensely for attention and recognition that they would have garnered otherwise? We investigate this question in a study of US equity analysts. Using the stock co- coverage network to gauge analysts’ proximity, we examine the impact of an analyst being named to Institutional Investor’s “All-America Research Team”, the magazine’s annual ranking of sell-side equity analysis, on the subsequent likelihood of analyst’s closest rivals’ being named to a “Team” as well. We also examine the efficacy of rivals’ competitive responses to an alter’s ascension to stardom.

Do ETFs Increase The Commonality In Liquidity Of Underlying Stocks?

Host(s): Assistant Professor David Yang
Speaker(s): Vikas Agarwal, Professor of Finance
University: J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, GA
Location: SB1 2321, Judy B. Rosener Classroom
Time: Friday, February 10, 2017, 2:00 pm - 3:15 pm

We examine the impact of ETF ownership on the commonality in liquidity of the stocks held by ETFs, while controlling for the ownership by other institutional investors. Our results indicate that ETF ownership significantly increases the liquidity commonality on account of the arbitrage mechanism inherent in ETFs that ensures that ETF prices are in line with the prices of the underlying stocks. We show that greater arbitrage activities in both the primary and secondary markets of ETFs are associated with an increase in the effect of ETF ownership on commonality in liquidity. We exploit a quasi-natural experiment based on ETF trading halts to establish a causal relation between ETF ownership and liquidity commonality. Taken together, our results show that ETFs reduce the ability of the market participants to diversify liquidity shocks.

Momentum, Reversals and other Puzzles in Farma-MacBeth Cross-Sectional Regressions

The existence of reversals and momentum in equity returns has challenged proponents of efficient markets for over 30 years. Although explanations for momentum profits based on cross-sectional return dispersion have been proposed, evidence of time-series autocorrelation from Fama-MacBeth cross-sectional regressions persists without any good risk/return explanation. In this paper I show that common implementations of the Fama-MacBeth procedure will yield upward biased estimates of time-series autocorrelation coefficients. Even in absence of autocorrelation, the bias is strictly positive, leading to apparent momentum when there is, in fact, none. Perhaps more interestingly, this biased implementation of the Fama-MacBeth procedure has found its way into a great many other studies and may, similarly, lead to apparent effects when there are none. I outline conditions under which this bias occurs and prove the existence of bias under these conditions. I also provide a Monte Carlo simulation demonstrating the magnitude of the bias. Finally, I provide demonstrations of the impact of this bias with reference to published results in the literature, demonstrating how correcting this bias can overturn results.

What are We Really Good at? Product Strategy with Uncertain Capabilities

Host(s): Professor Sreya Kolay
Speaker(s): Dr. Matthew Selove, Associate Professor
University: The George L. Argyros School of Business & Economics, Chapman University
Location: SB1 5100, Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Friday, February 3, 2017, 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm

Firms often learn about their own capabilities through their products’ successes and failures. This paper explores the interaction between such learning from experience and product strategy in a formal model. We consider a firm that can launch a sequence of products, where each product’s performance depends on the fit between the firm’s capabilities and the product. A successful new product always causes the firm to become more optimistic about the capability most relevant for that product; however, it can also cause the firm to become less optimistic about some of its other capabilities, including capabilities the new product does not use. A product launch generates useful information for future decisions if it leads to learning about capabilities used by potential future products. We find that a product sharing few or even no capabilities with potential future products may generate more useful information than a product with greater overlap.

How Emotions Move Us: An Action-Readiness Account of the Effects of Emotions on Decision-Making

Host(s): Professor Gerardo Okhuysen
Speaker(s): Maia Young, Associate Professor of Management and Organizations
University: Anderson School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles
Location: SB1 5200, Lyman Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, February 3, 2017, 10:30 am - 12:00 pm

In this talk, I’ll present findings on anger and two common decision biases: confirmation bias and anchoring. I find that anger can improve decision making when task success requires the decision maker to be confrontational. In the case of confirmation bias, people often erroneously focus on information that confirms their opinion and ignore information that disconfirms it. However, people who are angry are more prone to seek disconfirming information, attenuating the bias. Paradoxically, people who are angry seek information about opponents’ claims to refute them, but exposure to the information moderates their position. In the case of anchoring bias, people’s numeric estimates of unknown values are overly influenced by salient values that are unlikely to be accurate. However, people who are angry are less prone to anchoring bias. For both confirmation and anchoring biases, anger reduces the bias because it motivates confrontation. Whereas the dominant model of emotions and decision-making asserts that cognitive appraisals that accompany emotions affect decision making, my research suggests that emotions can also affect decision making by changing motives.

Vote Avoidance and Shareholder Voting in Mergers and Acquisitions

Host(s): Assistant Professor Chong Huang
Speaker(s): Kai Li, Professor of Finance
University: University of British Columbia, Sauder School of Business, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Location: SB1 5200, Lyman Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, December 2, 2016, 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

Using a hand-collected sample of U.S. stock deals over the period 1995-2015, we examine whether and how the requirement of acquirer shareholder voting affects deal quality. We find that acquirer management substitutes stock with cash to bypass shareholder voting, and that deals bypassing shareholder voting have lower announcement returns than those requiring shareholder voting. Employing a regression discontinuity design in a setting without managerial discretion, we show a positive causal effect of shareholder voting on deal quality. Moreover, this positive value effect is concentrated among acquirers with higher institutional ownership and among acquirers buying targets with more severe information problems. We conclude that shareholder voting mitigates the agency problems in mergers and acquisitions.

Cost-Benefit Analysis of Resource Allocation in The United States: Models and a 1980-2011 Case Study

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luyi Gui
Speaker(s): Dr. Jun Zhuang, Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Industrial and Systems
University: University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
Location: SB1 2321, Judy B. Rosener Classroom
Time: Friday, December 9, 2016, 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

Fire-related hazards and incidents are an everyday phenomenon, and firefighting in the United States owe to more than one million firefighters in about 30,000 fire departments across the country. The estimated total cost of fire was $329 billion in 2011. Leveraging the National Fire Incident Response System (NFIRS) data set, we conduct a data-driven study to propose empirical and theoretical models to assess risk levels and quantitatively measure effectiveness of investments. We then study the optimal risk-reduction strategies, and optimal resource allocation strategies given a total budget constraint. We will also discuss public-private partnership, equity, and optimal routing in fire protection. This study would benefit policymakers and analysts in fire protection and safety, to save lives and other losses.

Casting A Wider Net: How Increasing the Proportion of Women Applicants Affects the Hiring of Female Freelancers in an Online Labor Market

Host(s): Assistant Professor Sharon Koppman
Speaker(s): Ming Leung, Assistant Professor of Management of Organization
University: Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley
Location: SB1 5200, Lyman Porter Colloquia Room and Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, December 2, 2016, 10:30 am - 12:00 pm

It is well-understood that women and men work in distinctly different jobs, contributing to substantial disparity in earnings. Less well-understood are the mechanisms generating these uneven outcomes – hampering remediation efforts. Explanations oscillate between whether employers are biased against certain applicants and whether women and men vary in their likelihood of applying to certain jobs. Conclusions are difficult to draw because researchers rarely account for how many women and men apply. This is critical because employment outcomes result from a two-sided process: applicants first decide to apply then employers decide to hire. I argue that accounting for the proportion of women applying to jobs significantly alters the conclusions we can draw. Analyses of 792,650 job postings, by 249,506 employees who received 7,699,370 job applications from 292,518 freelancers on an online market for contract labor demonstrate my contention. Regression analyses first reveal that equally qualified women are more likely to be hired for female-type jobs and less likely to be hired for male-type jobs of IT & Programming, than men. However, this differential hiring is completely mediated once the proportion of women applying to these jobs is accounted for. Most strikingly, for every 1% increase in proportion of women applying to a job, there is a commensurate 1% increase in the proportion of female freelancers hired – for all job-types. These findings advocate for a focus on the challenges women face in applying to traditionally male-type jobs. I also provide insight into the burgeoning phenomenon of online hiring and the gig-economy.

Bank Capital & Monitoring: Evidence from Loan Quality

Host(s): Assistant Professor Radhika Lunawat
Speaker(s): Hemang Desai, Robert B. Cullum Professor of Accounting
University: Edwin L. Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University
Location: SB1 5200, Lyman Porter Colloquia Room and Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, November 4, 2016, 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm

There are two competing theoretical perspectives on whether bank capital improves or adversely affects banks’ monitoring incentives. We show that bank capital is positively associated with loan quality, an outcome of bank’s monitoring effort, after controlling for other determinants of loan quality. Importantly, using two ex-ante measures of bank’s monitoring effort that capture quality and quantity of labor input into monitoring, we show that bank capital is positively related to monitoring efforts. Our evidence is consistent with the prediction in Mehran and Thakor (2011) that bank capital strengthens monitoring incentives which in turn increases the value of its loan portfolio.

When Transparency Improves, Must Prices Reflect Fundamentals Better?

Host(s): Assistant Professor Radhika Lunawat
Speaker(s): Assistant Professor Snehal Banerjee
University: Rady School of Management, University of California, San Diego
Location: SB1 5100, Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Friday, October 28, 2016, 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm

No. A common regulatory response to high market uncertainty is to increase transparency by making access to fundamental, payoff-relevant information cheaper. We study the impact of such policies on how informative prices are about fundamentals in a setting where investors can endogenously choose to learn about asset fundamentals and liquidity trading by others. When liquidity demand is price-dependent (e.g., due to forced deleveraging), we show that higher transparency, even if exclusively targeting fundamentals, can make prices less informative. As such, regulatory changes which make learning easier may exacerbate the very problems they are intended to address.

How Do Complementers Respond to the Threat of Platform Owner Entry? Evidence from the Mobile App Market

Host(s): Professor Tingting Nian
Speaker(s): Assistant Professor Feng Zhu
University: Harvard Business School, Harvard University
Location: SB1 5200, Lyman Porter Colloquia Room and Executive Terrace
Time: Thursday, October 27, 2016, 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm

How do complementers respond to the threat of platform owner entry, and how do such responses differ from the responses to actual entry? Using the mobile platform Android as our research setting, we examine how app developers on Android adjust their rate and direction of innovation efforts and prices in response to Google’s entry threat and actual entry into to the app markets. Based on a difference-indifferences empirical framework, we find that app developers that are affected by Google’s entry reduce their innovation efforts on affected apps after entry threats increase; after Google’s actual entry, they reduce innovation efforts on affected apps further and also increase these apps’ prices. However, we find that affected app developers do not withdraw from the platform completely—once the threat occurs, they shift innovation efforts from affected apps to other unaffected apps, as indicated by an increase in updates on unaffected apps during both the entry-threat and actual-entry period.

RFQ, Sequencing, and the Most Favorable Bargaining Outcome

Host(s): Assistant Professor Luyi Gui
Speaker(s): Leon Y. Zhu, Associate Professor
University: University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business
Location: SB1 5200, Porter Colloquia Room and Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, October 21, 2016, 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm

When suppliers are imperfect substitutes, it is usually the best interest of a buyer to procure from various suppliers to match the needs of different customers. Motivated by prescription drug affordability practices, we study quantity-dependent pricing contracts with exclusion clauses in a dual-sourcing setting. We show that the quantity-dependent pricing contracts coordinate the supply chain, but introducing exclusion clauses may lead to various equilibriums in profit allocation. As a result, we analyze the negotiations between a buyer and two suppliers both with and without a request for quotation (RFQ) stage that precedes the negotiation. We show that the buyer can leverage the RFQ stage even under a full information setting when the negotiation sequence is endogenously determined by the final quotations of the RFQ process. Specifically, the buyer's equilibrium payoff with RFQ dominates the most favorable equilibrium under bargaining without RFQ.

The Impact of Affordable Care Act Medicaid Expansion on Medicaid Revenue, Uncompensated Care, and Hospital Financial Position

Host(s): Associate Professor Mireille Jacobson
Speaker(s): Tom Buchmueller, Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy
University: Ross School of Business, University of Michigan
Location: SB1 5200, Porter Colloquia Room and Executive Terrace
Time: Monday, October 17, 2016, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm

In debates over the Affordable Care Act, hospitals argued forcefully for Medicaid expansions with the hope that favorable changes in payer mix would reduce uncompensated care and consequently improve financial performance. Although uninsured discharges fell in Medicaid expansion states relative to non-expansion states, little is known about how expansions affected hospital financial performance. We estimate the impact of expansion on Medicaid payments, uncompensated care costs, net income, and operating margins using the 2011-2015 Medicare cost reports. Relative to hospitals in non-expansion states, Medicaid revenues increased and uncompensated care fell for hospitals in expansion states. Comparing all expansion states to non-expansion states suggests that net operating income and operating margins increased slightly. However, this result masks heterogeneity among expansion states. The improved financial performance was limited to states where the ACA expansion represented a major change in eligibility standards and a large increase in insurance coverage. Among hospitals in states in which childless adults above the Federal Poverty Line (FPL) were already eligible for Medicaid, changes in Medicaid revenues and uncompensated care were smaller and net income and operating margins did not improve relative to the trend in non-expansion states. We provide theoretical and empirical evidence that worsened financial position in these states could be explained by high levels of crowd-out of private hospital discharges.

Prompting the Benefit of the Doubt: The Joint Effect of Auditor-Client Social Bonds and Measurement Uncertainty in Audit Adjustments

Host(s): Professor Radhika Lunawat
Speaker(s): Professor Steven Kachelmeier
University: University of Texas, Austin
Location: SB1 5100, Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Friday, September 30, 2016, 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm

We design an incentivized experiment to test the extent to which measurement uncertainty elevates the risk that social bonds between auditors and reporters compromise audit adjustments. Results indicate that, when audit evidence is characterized by some residual uncertainty, the adjustments our auditor-participants require is sensitive to whether they have an opportunity to form a modest but friendly social bond with reporters. In contrast, although auditors do not adjust fully even when misstatements are known with certainty, social bonding has no effect in this scenario. Accordingly, our experiment contributes beyond the main effects of social bonding and measurement uncertainty demonstrated in prior research by showing that these forces are interdependent. A practical implication is that audit firms’ expanded use of in firm specialists and concurring partners when determining audit adjustments to complex accounts can confer both technical benefits from expertise and social benefits from a more distanced assessment that is less influenced by day-to-day interactions with client personnel.

The Self-Fulfilling Cycle of Coercive Surveillance

Host(s): Professor Sharon Koppman
Speaker(s): Professor Michel Anteby
University: Boston University
Location: SB1 5200, Lyman Porter Colloquia Room and Terrace
Time: Friday, September 30, 2016, 10:30 am - 12:00 pm

In the past few decades, the growth of surveillance has become a fixture of organizational life. Past scholarship has largely explained this growth as the result of managerial demands for added control over workers, coupled with newly available cheap technology (such as cameras). We draw on identity work literature to complement this view, suggesting that workers can also drive the growth in surveillance. We show that workers under surveillance can feel constantly observed and seen, but they also feel largely unnoticed and uncared for as individuals by management. This paradoxical experience leads them to interpret the surveillance as coercive and to engage in invisibility practices to attempt to go unseen and remain unnoticed. Management, in turn, views these attempts as justification for even more surveillance, thus creating a self-fulfilling cycle of coercive surveillance. Our analysis therefore links in part the growth of surveillance to workers’ own identity work, while also identifying a unique form of identity work attached to such surveillance. Overall, our study offers one of the first endogenous explanations for the growth of surveillance and carries important implications for the literature on surveillance and identity work.

A Dynamic Model of Two-Sided Markets (with Anna Ingster Adachi)

Host(s): Professor Tingting Nian
Speaker(s): Professor Luis Cabral
University: New York University
Location: SB1 5200, Lyman Porter Colloquia Room and Terrace
Time: Wednesday, September 21, 2016 10:30 am - 12:00 pm

We introduce a dynamic framework to analyze two-sided markets. The (single) platform owner sets prices at the beginning of each period. Agents (buyers, sellers, readers, consumers, merchants, etc.) make usage decisions every period and platform membership decisions occasionally. We show that optimal platform prices result from an extension of the canonical elasticity rule that also accounts for (a) the externality of two-sided markets and (b) the dynamic value of attracting new platform members. We provide analytical results relating prices to the size of each platform side. We also examine the determinants of equilibrium platform size, showing that the stationary distribution may be bi-modal, that is, with some probability the platform remains very low or takes very long to increase in size.

Emotions are Contagious: Social Network and Mood-Induced Stock Returns

Host(s): Professor David Hirshleifer
Speaker(s): Qiguang Wang
University: University of California, Irvine
Location: SB2 Conference Room 306
Time: Friday, August 19, 2016, 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm

Aggregate stock market experiences mood-induced return movements. Moreover, there are also substantial cross-sectional variations in individual stocks’ reaction to these mood events. This paper tests the hypothesis that social interactions amplify the mood effects. I estimate social interactions for the local population of firms’ headquarters using Spatial Model and the U.S. census data. I show that cross-sectionally, stocks with higher local social interactions exhibit higher Friday returns and pre-holiday returns. This effect cannot be explained by stock and firm characteristics or existing return seasonalities, and is stronger for small, retail, and volatile stocks. The evidence strongly supports the notion that emotion contagion is a key determinant for mood-induced stock returns.

CEO Power and Nonconforming Reference Group Selection

Host(s): Assistant Professor John Joseph
Speaker(s): Professor Pino Audia
University: Dartmouth College
Location: SB1 5100, Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Friday, June 3, 2016, 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

By integrating insights from social psychological research on power and organizational research on legitimacy, we examine the influence of CEO power on organizations’ selections of nonconforming reference groups and the impact of these selections on analysts’ stock recommendations and coverage. Our empirical analyses rely on reference group selections manually coded from stock performance graphs of 10-K filings within the U.S. chemical industry. Consistent with previous studies, our data reveal that the majority of reference groups selected are well-known indexes favored by the SEC, analysts, and investors. At the same time, fourteen percent of the reference groups used by organizations in our sample are nonconforming custom peer groups generally regarded with suspicion by outsiders. Consistent with our predictions, we find that organizations with powerful CEOs are more likely to use custom peer groups and that the use of custom peer groups has a negative influence on analysts’ stock recommendations and coverage. We contribute to research on the choice of reference groups by calling attention to CEO power as a driver of the choices of nonconforming reference groups and by highlighting the negative effects of such choices.

What Is a Digital Cookie Worth?

Host(s): Professor VC Choudhary
Speaker(s): Professor Rahul Telang
University: Carnegie Mellon University
Location: SB1 5200, Lyman Porter Colloquia Room and Terrance
Time: Monday, May 23, 2016, 10:30 am - 12:00 pm

Tracking a user’s online browsing behavior to target them with relevant ads has become pervasive. There is an ongoing debate about the value of such tracking and the associated loss of privacy experienced by users. We inform this debate by quantifying the value of using different kinds of potentially intrusive information in targeted advertising. We collect a large proprietary dataset with over 1.3 million individual impression-bid-level observations. The data has detailed cookie information, as well as the bids placed by the firm for serving ad impressions. We also know whether a user saw the ad and whether a purchased occurred. First, we find that using more information from cookies increases the accuracy of prediction of purchases, but at a decreasing rate. We also find that firm’s bidding decision (how much to bid for an ad) can be accurately predicted by cookie information. We then estimate the effect of an ad on a user’s purchase probability. In particular, we examine whether users who have a high baseline purchase probability are also more likely to be influenced by ads. We find that on average ads do not have a statistically significant impact on purchase probabilities of consumers. However, individuals who have a high baseline purchase probability, do respond positively to ads and ads can increase their purchase probability by up to 2.7 percentage points. To overcome potential endogeneity in ad placement, we use an instrumental variable and find that these results are robust. Finally, we simulate different policy regimes by restricting different kinds of user information from being used for targeted advertising and quantify the impact such restrictions have on sales. We find that restricting more intrusive variables for targeting lowers ad effectiveness and leads to fewer potential purchases.

Simple Pricing for Services and Information Goods

Host(s): Mingdi Xin
Speaker(s): Professor Hemant Bhargava
University: University of California, Davis
Location: SB1 3410, Elisabeth and Paul Merage Conference Room
Time: Thursday, May 12, 2016, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm

The first part of my talk will cover results from the attached working paper "Pricing Digital Goods: Valuation vs. Appetite'' which analyzes "simple pricing''---where firms face a large market of heterogeneous consumers, but offer either a single “Pay as you Go” plan (one per-unit price), a single “All you can Eat” plan (one buffet price), or a combination of both (either a two-part tariff, or a choice between per-unit and buffet price). We show that appetite heterogeneity, caused by variation in rate of satiation, is far more consequential in plan design than the more commonly analyzed valuation heterogeneity. The profit advantage of a two-part tariff over per-unit and buffet pricing is significant only under moderate RAH (appetite heterogeneity relative to valuation heterogeneity). The 2PT also has higher profit vs. giving consumers a choice between per-unit and buffet prices, but the combination dominates on market coverage and consumer surplus. Per-unit pricing works quite well when RAH is high, while buffet pricing does well when RAH is low. But when a firm is uncertain about RAH, or has numerous products with different RAH, then the per-unit plan is less risky compared to the buffet plan, sacrificing less profit across the spectrum of scenarios, and producing higher market share. The second part of my talk (based on a paper that is in draft form) extends the analysis to three-part tariffs (F, Q, s) - fixed fee, allowance, per-unit overage fee) which is also very common in practice, and considered the most efficient way to price discriminate when users consume multiple units. Intuitively, this should be more profitable than 2PT. But we show that for all log-concave distribution of valuations (the most common assumption in modeling valuation heterogeneity), the optimal 3PT reduces to a 2PT, and a 3PT is not any more profitable. But a 3PT does produce higher profit under other conditions, e.g., the market has a bimodal distribution, or when consumers have uncertain valuations.

Resource Interdependence and Appropriability: A Study of Product and Process Inventions

Host(s): Professor John Joseph
Speaker(s): Professor Gautam Ahuja
University: University of Michigan, Stephen M. Ross School of Business
Location: SB1 5100, Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Friday, May 6, 2016, 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

We examine how building interdependence between a firm's activities enhances a firm’s appropriation of returns to its inventions. The strategy literature has argued that higher levels of interdependence between a firm's activities can protect a firm from imitation and thereby enhance appropriability. We evaluate this argument recognizing that firms have access to multiple different mechanisms to enhance appropriability and increasing interdependence is just one of them. Specifically we examine three routes to appropriating value from your inventions described in the literature - building enhanced levels of interdependence between your activities, investing in substantial production capacity and building access to multiple markets. Using a new measure of interdependence based on textual coding of patent claims, we demonstrate that building increased interdependence between a firm’s product and process inventions deters imitation and improves firm performance. However, this effect is most significant when the firm has more limited access to alternative scale-based mechanisms (production capacity, market access) for value appropriation. Further, firms systematically differ in their usage of these three different mechanisms in theoretically predictable ways and not all firms choose to use enhanced interdependence as a mechanism for increased appropriability. Thus, we develop a contingent model that identifies the limits to complexity and interdependence as a source of protection from imitation.

Making Transparency Transparent: Productivity and Behavioral Implications of Observability at Work

Host(s): Professor Luyi Gui
Speaker(s): Assistant Professor Ethan Bernstein
University: Harvard Business School
Location: SB1 5100, Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Thursday, April 21, 2016, 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm

We are increasingly observed and observing at work. Advances in technology, from increased use of smart cameras to wearable tracking devices, are enabling “Super Vision” (Gilliom & Monahan, 2012) far beyond any level of supervision envisioned when Frederick Taylor (1911) touted the benefits of managerial oversight through scientific management. That has had profound implications for compliance, both within organizations and beyond. In this talk, I explore the conditions which, when present, might make workplaces designed with zones of privacy (rather than full observability) more productive and, ironically, more transparent—a result I term the “transparency paradox.” After reviewing several studies that investigate different aspects of the transparency paradox, I will then relate the results back to my own experiences in the regulation of consumer financial products in the United States.

Entry, Exit and the Potential for Resource Redeployment

Host(s): Professor Libby Weber & Professor John Joseph
Speaker(s): Professor Marvin Lieberman
University: UCLA Anderson School of Management
Location: SB1 5100, Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Friday, April 8, 2016, 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

Combining the concept of resource relatedness with the economic notion of sunk costs, we assess how the potential for resource redeployment affects market entry and exit by multi-business firms. If the performance of a new business falls below expectations, a diversified firm may have more flexibility if it is able to redeploy its resources back into related businesses. In effect, relatedness reduces the sunk costs associated with a new business, which facilitates exit. This, in turn, has implications for entry: by decreasing the cost of failure, the potential for redeployment justifies the undertaking of riskier entries and greater experimentation. These dynamic benefits of relatedness are distinct from standard notions of ‘synergy.’ To show support for this idea, we provide a mathematical model, descriptive data, and company examples.

The Role of Tacit Knowledge In Auditor Expertise and Human Capital Development

Host(s): Professor Ben Lourie
Speaker(s): Dr. Jasmijn Bol
University: Tulane University, Freeman School of Business
Location: SB1 5200, Lyman Porter Colloquia Room and Terrace
Time: Friday, April 8, 2016, 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm

Prior audit research predicts and finds that tacit managerial knowledge is associated with better annual performance evaluations, but only for relatively experienced auditors (Tan and Libby [1997]). By contrast, and based on the increasing importance of social skills in today’s audit ecology, we predict and find that tacit knowledge is now also valued in relatively inexperienced auditors. In particular, audit firms reward both tacit managerial knowledge and tacit audit quality knowledge in relatively inexperienced auditors via career opportunities, better performance evaluations, and bonus compensation. Shifting to relatively experienced auditors, we predict that better supervision of subordinate auditors is one way in which tacit managerial knowledge enhances relatively experienced auditors’ performance. We find that, consistent with this prediction, supervisors with higher tacit managerial knowledge better develop this knowledge in their subordinates, value tacit knowledge more when evaluating subordinates’ annual performance, and strengthen the firm commitment of higher tacit knowledge subordinates to the firm.

Power as an Emotional Liability: Implications for Perceived Authenticity and Trust after a Transgression

Host(s): Professor Gerardo Okhuysen
Speaker(s): Professor Peter Kim
University: University of Southern California
Location: SB1 5100, Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Friday, April 1, 2016, 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm

People may express a variety of emotions after committing a transgression. Through four empirical studies, we investigated how the perceived authenticity of such emotional displays and resulting levels of trust are shaped by the transgressor's power. Past findings suggest that individuals with power tend to be perceived as more authentic. Yet our findings reveal that: a) a transgressor’s display of emotion is perceived to be less authentic when that party’s power is high than low, b) this perception of emotional authenticity, in turn, directly influences (and ultimately mediates) the level of trust in that party, and c) these effects lead perceivers to exert less effort when asked to make a case for leniency toward high than low power transgressors. This tendency to discount the emotional authenticity of the powerful was, furthermore, found to arise from power increasing the transgressor’s perceived level of emotional control and strategic motivation. These results were found across different types of emotions, different expressive modalities, different operationalizations of the transgression, and different types of participants.

Why Strategic Management Scholars Must Adopt a Stakeholder Perspective

Host(s): Professor Libby Weber & Professor John Joseph
Speaker(s): Professor Jay Barney
University: Eccles School of Business, University of Utah
Location: SB1 5200, Lyman Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace
Time: Thursday, March 31, 2016, 11:30 am - 1:00 pm

Despite calls for integrating a stakeholder perspective more completely into strategic management research and practice, most strategic management scholars continue to build on the assumption that shareholders are a firm’s only residual claimant. This paper shows that scholarly efforts designed to explain the existence of expected economic profits logically requires that stakeholders, besides a firm’s shareholders, are residual claimants, and thus that strategic management research must incorporate multiple stakeholders in its analysis of expected economic profits. This conclusion has a variety of important implications for several research traditions, including stakeholder theory, strategic management, entrepreneurship, and finance.

Lessons Learned From Hybrid [In-Person & Online] Teaching

Host(s): Professor Connie Pechmann
Speaker(s): Lecturer Raymond Pirouz
University: University of California, Irvine
Location: SB1 2100, Experian Case Study Classrooms
Time: Monday, March 14, 2016, 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Over a six-year period, Raymond Pirouz has taken his “Marketing on the Internet” MBA elective from a standard 10-week in-person course to a hybrid offering wherein the class meets in-person for the first and final session with all other class sessions held completely online. Through trial and error, Raymond has adopted a unique mix of technologies and approaches resulting in key learnings & best practices centered around the pursuit of one central objective: To replicate a “University of” teaching & learning experience in a digital context.

Supply and Demand Functions in Inventory Models

Host(s): Professor Shuya Yin
Speaker(s): Professor Annabelle Feng
University: Purdue University
Location: SB1 5100
Time: Friday, March 4, 2016, 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm

The heart of an inventory model is the modeling of the supply and demand functions. To allow for analytical tractability, the existing literature focuses on almost surely linear supply and demand functions, which greatly limits the applicability of the models. The goal of this paper is to provide a unified approach to analyze general random supply and demand functions. By transforming the problem into one defined on a higher dimension, we show that many of the seemingly highly nonlinear supply and demand functions (in the almost sure sense) are linear in the stochastic sense. With this new notion of linearity, called the stochastic linearity in mid-point, our ability to analyze inventory and supply chain problems is much enhanced. We are able to prove the concavity of the profit function in the transformed inventory and pricing decisions for a general class of supply and demand functions that cover and go much beyond the ones studied in the existing literature. We further show that when the supply functions are stochastically increasing in the dispersive order, a condition satisfied by almost all the supply functions analyzed in the existing literature, the optimal ordering decision follows an almost threshold policy—When the inventory level is above a threshold, no order is placed to the supplier; otherwise, a positive order is issued to the supplier with exception over a set of inventory levels with zero Lebegue measure. If, in addition, the demand distribution is continuous, this policy reduces to a strict threshold policy and it is optimal to select the suppliers based on per unit cost of delivery. To demonstrate the applicability of these theoretical developments, we analyze several known and new examples of supply and demand functions. We also present a nonparametric approach to show how one can empirically estimate and verify the stochastic properties of the supply and demand functions. This is a joint work with J. George Shanthikumar.

The Potlatch Revisited: Distinction and Destruction among the New Global Elite

Host(s): Professor Sharon Koppman, Co-Sponsored by: The Department of Sociology
Speaker(s): Associate Professor Ashley Mears
University: Boston University
Location: SB1 5200
Time: Friday, March 4, 2016, 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

This paper draws its conceptual lens from the sociology of expectations and from market studies to investigate the relationship between hype cycles and how future markets are formed. Through discourse analysis we interrogate a body of 462 publicly accessible texts from the period 2005 to 2015 around digital health technologies and markets across newspapers, internet sources and public policy documents, tracing: the content of the discourse, the promises made and warnings sounded, who contributes to the hype, and its effects on the shaping of the digital healthcare landscape. We find that the digital health technology hype follows an hourglass pattern, where the early market impetus around cost savings in healthcare systems finds itself replaced by a technology development frenzy in a second phase before settling down into a more mature third phase where technologies are integrated into a wider socio-economic discourse again.

From Electronic Health Records to Mindful Cyborgs: How Expectations Shape Markets

Host(s): Professor Alladi Venkatesh
Speaker(s): Professor Susi Geiger
University: UCD Dublin
Location: SB1 5200
Time: Friday, March 4, 2016, 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

This paper draws its conceptual lens from the sociology of expectations and from market studies to investigate the relationship between hype cycles and how future markets are formed. Through discourse analysis we interrogate a body of 462 publicly accessible texts from the period 2005 to 2015 around digital health technologies and markets across newspapers, internet sources and public policy documents, tracing: the content of the discourse, the promises made and warnings sounded, who contributes to the hype, and its effects on the shaping of the digital healthcare landscape. We find that the digital health technology hype follows an hourglass pattern, where the early market impetus around cost savings in healthcare systems finds itself replaced by a technology development frenzy in a second phase before settling down into a more mature third phase where technologies are integrated into a wider socio-economic discourse again. The paper contributes to technology marketers' understanding of how technology markets are shaped and how they can position themselves in these markets to best effect, and to marketing researchers' understanding of how complex markets form. We warn against following the 'hype', especially when it encourages companies to engage in technology development that is blinded by the promises of an untapped market and unhinged from broader systems, societal, ethical or economic concerns.

Spillovers Inside Conglomerates: Incentives and Capital

Host(s): Professor Chong Huang
Speaker(s): Professor Denis Sosyura
University: University of Michigan
Location: SB2 122
Time: Friday, February 26, 2016, 1:30 pm - 2:45 pm

Using hand-collected data on divisional managers at conglomerates, we find that a change in industry pay in one division generates spillovers on managerial pay in other divisions of the same firm. These spillovers arise only within the boundaries of a conglomerate. The intra-firm spillovers increase when conglomerates have excess cash and when managers have more influence over its distribution, but decline in the presence of strong governance. These spillovers are associated with weaker performance and lower firm value. Our evidence is consistent with simultaneous cross-subsidization via managerial payoffs and capital budgets and suggests that these practices arise in similar firms.

Value of Multi-Dimensional Rating Systems: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Host(s): Professor Mingdi Xin
Speaker(s): Associate Professor Pei-Yu Chen
University: Arizona State University
Location: SB1 5200 5th Floor, Lyman Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, February 19, 2016, 10:30 am - 12:00 pm

Online product ratings offer consumers information about products. However, consensus is lacking on whether or not single-dimensional ratings can efficiently convey product quality information to consumers. Some scholars have discussed the potential of designing multi-dimensional rating systems to transfer quality information because quality is often comprised of multiple dimensions. This study directly investigates whether or not, and to what extent, multi-dimensional rating systems enhance the efficiency of information transfer. Our key identification strategy hinges on a natural experiment on www.tripadvisor.com (TripAdvisor) when the website reengineered and changed its rating system from single-dimensional to multi-dimensional in January 2009. To control the unobserved quality change over time at the restaurant level, we obtain rating data on the same set of restaurants from www.yelp.com (Yelp), which allow us to identify the causal effect using a difference-in-difference approach. Results from a set of econometric analyses show that ratings in a single-dimensional rating system have a high dispersion and downward trend, in contrast to those in a multi-dimensional rating system, which support the conjecture that multi-dimensional rating systems facilitate matching between consumer preferences and product attributes. Consumers form more accurate expectations from multi-dimensional ratings and are therefore less likely to be either “disappointed,” which results in a downward trend in ratings, or “surprised,” which leads to a higher dispersion of ratings. We also conduct two randomized experiments to understand the mechanisms of how multi-dimensional rating systems enhances information transfer. Results suggest that multi-dimensional rating systems not only help consumers find products that better fit their preference, but also increase their confidence of their choice. These results support the view that multi-dimensional rating systems enhance information transfer efficiency. This study provides important implications for a good design of online rating systems that help consumers match their preferences with product attributes.

The Local Realities of Risk, Responsibility, and Regulatory Empowerment: A Frontline Safety Approach

Host(s): Professor Luyi Gui
Speaker(s): Assistant Professor Garry Gray
University: University of Victoria
Location: SB1 5200, Lyman Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, February 12, 2016, 10:00 am - 11:30 am

In what ways do social interactions within work settings influence compliance with legal regulations? How do those on the frontline who perform day-to-day work, interpret and respond to regulations designed to specify and bound their work practices? A frontline safety approach takes seriously the relationships between people at the local level, between people and the systems/institutions in which they are embedded, and between people and their wider social and political contexts. It is vital for regulatory scholarship to recognize these issues, in particular, how conceptions of individuals (as rational, responsible, economic actors) are constructed and maintained at these levels. In this presentation, I will illustrate limitations in regulatory empowerment approaches that require citizens to speak up by drawing on field research among blue collar workers in factories and truck driving as well as professionals in white collar settings such as hospitals and universities. Power imbalances play a crucial role in the decision to speak up, however, not only among those doing manual labor, but also among highly trained professionals.

Do managers tacitly collude to withhold industry-wide bad news?

Host(s): Professor Ben Lourie
Speaker(s): Professor Catherine M. Schrand
University: University of Pennsylvania
Location: SB1 5200 5th Floor, Lyman Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, February 12, 2016, 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm

We analyze when firms in an industry could collectively withhold adverse news about industry conditions. Intra-industry correlation in signals should increase capital market pressures to disclose, making it difficult for firms to collectively withhold adverse news. Using a strategic game framework, we predict that a cooperative withholding equilibrium is possible, but whether it is achievable depends on the structure of the industry, the nature of the industry news, and the extent to which these factors are common knowledge. Using opacity in 10-Ks as a proxy for withholding, we document a small number of cases of increased intra-industry withholding of adverse news, controlling for changes in firm fundamentals including complexity. Strategic withholding is more likely in industries with greater negative tailrisk, greater equity incentives, and trade associations that foster interpersonal connections. The analysis has implications for mandated disclosure of industry-wide news by providing an understanding when economic forces are sufficient to generate voluntary disclosure of industry-wide adverse conditions.

Robust Dynamic Estimation

Host(s): Professor Rajeev Tyagi
Speaker(s): Professor Prasad Naik
University: University of California, Davis
Location: SB1 5100, Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Friday, February 12, 2016, 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm

Managing marketing resources over time requires dynamic model estimation, which necessitates specifying some parametric or nonparametric probability distribution. When the data generating process differs from the assumed distribution, the resulting model is misspecified. To hedge against such a misspecification risk, the extant theory recommends using White’s (1980) sandwich estimator. This approach, however, only corrects the variance of estimated parameters, but not their values. Consequently, the sandwich estimator does not affect any managerial outcomes such as marketing budgeting and allocation decisions. To overcome this drawback, we present the minimax framework that does not necessitate any distributional assumptions to estimate dynamic models. Applying minimax control theory, we derive an optimal robust filter, illustrate its application to a unique advertising data set from the Canadian Blood Services, and contribute several novel findings. We discover the compensatory effect: advertising effectiveness increases and the carryover effect decreases as robustness increases. We also find that the robust filter uniformly outperforms the Kalman filter on the out-of-sample predictions. Furthermore, we uncover the existence of a profit-volatility tradeoff, similar to the returns-risk tradeoff in finance, whereby the volatility of profit stream decreases at the expense of reduced total profit as robustness increases. Finally we prove that, unlike for-profit companies, managers of non-profit organizations should optimally allocate budgets opposite of the advertising-to-sales ratio heuristic; that is, advertise more (less) when sales are low (high).

Improving Environmental, Health, and Safety in Supply Chains: Some Preliminary Studies

Host(s): Professor Shuya Yin
Speaker(s): Professor Chris Tang
University: University of California, Los Angeles
Location: SB1 5200, Lyman Porter Colloquium Room and Executive Terrace
Time: Friday February 5, 2016, 9:30 am - 11:00 am

Many factories in developing countries have serious Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) issues. Due to inconsistent law enforcement, limited progress has been made. What can be done? This is an open research topic that operations management and supply chain researchers should explore. I plan to share some of my preliminary studies in this presentation.

Using Choice Architecture to Improve Energy Decisions

Host(s): Professor Chris Bauman
Speaker(s): Professor Rick Larrick
University: Duke University
Location: SB1 5100, Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Monday, February 1, 2016, 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm

This talk will describe a set of cognitive biases that lead people to misunderstand their energy use. The talk will review four principles of “choice architecture” derived from cognitive and social psychology for helping decision makers make better energy decisions. Brief research examples will be given in support of each. The principles will also be illustrated more broadly as tools for helping employees and consumers make better decisions. (1) Do the calculations for decision makers. “Miles per gallon” (MPG) is a familiar efficiency metric used to evaluate automobiles in the United States. However, gas consumption is a highly curvilinear function of MPG. As a result, MPG leads people to severely underestimate the gas savings from small MPG improvements on inefficient cars. Calculating consumption for decision makers by using a measure such as “gallons per 100 miles” corrects this bias. (2) Translate energy use to important objectives such as cost and environmental impact. People often fail to map energy use to other concerns, such as cost and environmental impact, because they lack knowledge or motivation. Translations remind people of goals they care about and guide them to options they prefer. (3) Provide a meaningful relative comparison. Relative comparisons help consumers evaluate whether an ambiguous energy number is good or bad. For instance, OPower has demonstrated that people reduce their energy use when given specific comparisons to average (and best) neighbors. Other comparisons, such as ambitious but realistic goals, also lead to reduced energy use. (4) Use an expanded scale, such as lifetime cost (not daily cost). People tend to ignore small numbers. To address this issue, energy-related numbers can be scaled to large but realistic time periods. Research shows that people are more interested in energy efficient products when given costs on a longer time scale.

The Bright Side of Managerial Overconfidence

Host(s): Professor Shuya Yin
Speaker(s): Professor Juan Li
University: Nanjing University
Location: SB1 5200, Lyman Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Boardroom
Time: Friday, January 29, 2016, 10:00 pm - 11:30 pm

A well-known behavior phenomenon is managers hold excessive faith that they know the truth. Managers may receive signals about market states, in which the states may be high or low, thus, the posterior probability of market state being high(low) with receiving a hit (bomb) signal is not smaller than the prior probability, managers may exhibit overconfidence on the accuracy of signals. The objective of this paper is to answer under which conditions overconfidence bias may lead to higher profits, the corresponding managerial insights for firms are whether to hire overconfident managers and how to estimate the value of signals in a competitive setting. The paper shows firms’ differentiation strategies critically depend on how costly it enter market. When the fixed cost of entry is not too high, both firms would like to hire rational managers. However, for a larger fixed cost, counterintuitively, one of firms exploits to hire overconfident manager to differentiate their competition if the market states being high is relatively large, the main reason of overconfidence leading to higher profits is benefits from ordering more with receiving the hit signal are sufficiently large compared with loss from ordering less with receiving the bomb signal. The fact that hiring overconfident managers is stable in a wide range of environments may help to explain why overconfident managers remains prevalent, even if it contributes to decision bias. Furthermore, overconfidence bias leading to higher profits are robust even when market states belong to a normal distribution.

Vicarious Learning In Startups: Evidence From Accelerator Programs

Host(s): Professor John Joseph
Speaker(s): Professor Chris Bingham
University: University of North Carolina
Location: SB1 5100, Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom
Time: Friday, January 29, 2016, 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

A fundamental challenge for new startups is overcoming liabilities of newness - especially lack of experience and business understanding. Accelerators, intense, time-compressed entrepreneurial education programs, attempt to alleviate these critical liabilities by facilitating vicarious learning for participating new ventures. Yet, the organizations literature suggests that since new ventures lack experience and thus adequate levels of absorptive capacity to assimilate and integrate new knowledge, vicarious learning may be less effective. Using a multiple case, inductive study of eight US seed accelerator programs and affiliated startups, we address this tension and explore how accelerators may contribute to (or distract from) vicarious learning in startups. Our data suggest how accelerators do both. Collectively, our findings contribute to strategy by introducing intermediaries that may broker vicarious learning for others, to organization theory by suggesting how startups can build initial absorptive capacity, and to entrepreneurship by demystifying how accelerators can help or harm venture development.

"Only One Left - I'll Fight you for It!": Scarcity Promotion Advertising and Aggressive Behavior

Host(s): Professor Connie Pechmann
Speaker(s): Dr. Darren Dahl
University: Sauder School of Business
Location: SB1 5200, Lyman Porter Colloquia Room and Executive Terrace
Time: Monday, January 25, 2016, 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm

Marketers frequently use scarcity promotions, where a product or service is limited in either quantity or is promoted for a limited time. The present research shows that the mere exposure to scarcity promotion advertising can activate actual aggression even outside the consumption domain, when the scarce item is not even attainable. Further, exposure to scarcity promotion advertising prompts consumers to perceive other consumers (even if not physically present) as potential threats to obtaining a desired product. This threat, in turn, is shown to drive aggression towards others. Four studies using violent video game behavior to measure aggression demonstrate that firearm shooting behavior (number of shots fired), punching behavior (punches thrown), and consumer preferences for violent experiences are higher in response to such advertising.

Attributes of Informative Disclosures

Host(s): Professor Ben Lourie
Speaker(s): Professor Daren Roulstone
University: Ohio State University
Location: SB1 2321, Judy Rosener Flexible Classroom
Time: Thursday, January 21, 2016, 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

Regulatory actions and academic research suggest a variety of seemingly “good” disclosure attributes: readability, amount of forward-looking information, concreteness (numerical intensity), and more disclosure in general. While all of these attributes seem intuitively desirable, there is little empirical evidence about how these disclosure attributes compare in terms of informing the readers of financial reports. We examine equity market responses to quarterly earnings announcements as a function of these disclosure attributes and find substantial variation in their effects. We find strong evidence that forward-looking disclosures represent informative disclosures, very little evidence that readability is associated with disclosure informativeness, and actually find evidence that both disclosure length and numerical intensity are negatively associated with disclosure informativeness. We provide several reasons why these measured attributes may not capture disclosure quality as expected. Overall, our results should help inform both managers and regulators making decisions about how to craft or encourage informative disclosures. Our results also suggest caution for academics using seemingly intuitive measures of disclosure quality.

Which Factors Matter to Investors? Evidence from Mutual Fund Flows.

Host(s): Chong Huang
Speaker(s): Professor Brad Barber
University: UC Davis
Location: SB1 5200, Lyman Porter Colloquia Room & Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, January 15, 2016, 1:30 pm - 2:45 pm

When assessing a fund manager's skill, sophisticated investors will consider all factors (priced and unpriced) that explain cross-sectional variation in fund performance. We investigate which factors investors attend to by analyzing mutual fund flows as a function of recent returns. Investors attend most to market risk (beta), but treat returns attributable to size, value, momentum, and industry factors as alpha. Flows of direct-sold funds- whose investors are likely more sophisticated than those of broker-sold funds-are less responsive to factor-related returns, which suggests sophisticated investors are aware that factor-related returns are not indicative of managerial skill.

Stringency, Governance, Media Coverage and Diffusion of Environmental and Social Labeling Schemes

Host(s): Professor Luyi Gui
Speaker(s): Professor Charles J. Corbett
University: University of California, Los Angeles
Location: SB1 5200, Lyman Porter Colloquia Room and Executive Terrace
Time: Friday, January 15, 2016, 10:00 am - 11:30 am

The diffusion of ecolabels has been widespread, through adoption of individual labels by firms and consumers has varied widely. Little is known about why some labeling schemes are more widely adopted than others. One might speculate that firms prefer labels with less stringent requirement, as they are less costly to adopt. Conversely, firls may prefer to associate themselves with a label that is sufficiently well-governed to minimize the risk of negative publicity emerging about other firms carrying that smae label. the notion "well-governed" itself is also not well-defined. Finally, one might speculate that labels which receive favorable coverage in the media are likely to be more widely adopted, and that labels which are more stringent and better-governed are more likely to attract such favorable coverage. We explore these linkages (between stringency, governance, and media coverage and adoption) using three sources of data. We analyze 40 environmental and social labeling schemes, using www.ecolabelindex.org and other sources to code their governance practices. We conducted a survey of 67 experts from governments, major retailers, NGOs, consultancies. and academia, around the world, to determine stringency, quality of governance, and breadth of adoption. Finally, we analyzed 3043 media articles on these 40 schemes, to determine the tenor of media coverage. We find that only accreditation of verifiers is associated with a better overall quality of governance. We also find that labels that are better-governed are also more widely adopted, consistent with the expectation that firms are more wary of joining labels with weal governance. On the other hand, labels that are more stringent are not less widely adopted, suggesting that (within the range of stringency included in our sample) labels do not suffer by imposing stricter requirements. We find that the tenor of the media coverage of a label does not depend on its stringency, on most specific governance practices, or its overall quality of governance. Only an open and consensus-based standard-setting process is associated with more favorable media coverage. More favorable media coverage is not, however, associated with wider adoption. Overall our findings point to "reassurance" as a key part pf governance of ecolabels, whether in the form of accreditation of verifiers, or participation of many stakeholders in the standard-setting process.