At Columbia Business School, our faculty members are at the forefront of research in their respective fields, offering innovative ideas that directly impact the practice of business today. A quick glance at our publication on faculty research, CBS Insights, will give you a sense of the breadth and immediacy of the insight our professors provide.
As a student at the School, this will greatly enrich your education. In Columbia classrooms, you are at the cutting-edge of industry, studying the practices that others will later adopt and teach. As any business leader will tell you, in a competitive environment, being first puts you at a distinct advantage over your peers. Learn economic development from Ray Fisman, the Lambert Family Professor of Social Enterprise and a rising star in the field, or real estate from Chris Mayer, the Paul Milstein Professor of Real Estate, a renowned expert and frequent commentator on complex housing issues. This way, when you complete your degree, you'll be set up to succeed.
Columbia Business School in conjunction with the Office of the Dean provides its faculty, PhD students, and other research staff with resources and cutting edge tools and technology to help push the boundaries of business research.
Specifically, our goal is to seamlessly help faculty set up and execute their research programs. This includes, but is not limited to:
All these activities help to facilitate and streamline faculty research, and that of the doctoral students working with them.
The article offers the authors' views on expatriate management programs and the benefits from executives interacting with the people and institutions of the host country. The idea that international experience or interaction between foreign managers and local people will help managers become more creative, entrepreneurial, and successful is discussed. The concept of integrative complexity in bi-cultural managers which enhances job performance is mentioned.
The Kidney Case is multi-person exercise that involves the allocation of a single kidney. Students read profiles of eight candidates for the kidney and make a first allocation decision. Each candidate was designed to be high on some allocation principles but low or unknown on others (e.g., best, match, time in cue, age, personal responsibility for disease, future benefits to society, etc.). Then, students are put into groups and assigned to advocate for one of the candidates. Each group will prepare and give a 3-minute presentation on why their candidate should receive the kidney.
Emissions abatement alone cannot address the consequences of global warming for weather disasters. We model how society adapts to manage disaster risks to capital stock. Optimal adaptation — a mix of firm-level efforts and public spending — varies as society learns about the adverse consequences of global warming for disaster arrivals. Taxes on capital are needed alongside those on carbon to achieve the first best.
What are the sources of the returns to education? We study the allocation of higher education graduates from public institutions in Ohio across firms. We present three results. First, we confirm findings in the earlier literature of large pay differences across degrees. Second, we show that up to one quarter of pay premiums for higher degrees are explained by between-firm pay differences. Third, higher education degrees are associated with greater representation at the best-paying firms.
This article focuses on the role of threats in negotiations. Broadly speaking, a threat is a proposition that issues demands and warns of the costs of noncompliance. Even if neither party resorts to them, potential threats shadow most negotiations. Researchers have found that people actually evaluate their counterparts more favorably when they combine promises with threats rather than extend promises alone. Whereas promises encourage exploitation, the threat of punishment motivates cooperation.
The nature of competitive equilibrium is investigated for brands competing in a multi-attribute product space when consumer preferences for product attributes follow nonuniform distributions. Subgame-perfect equilibria are established in a 2-stage game, where firms choose positions in the first stage and prices in the 2nd stage. Two types of entry scenarios are investigated. In the first, the number of brands is given exogenously, and all of them choose positions simultaneously.
International differences in general, and cultural differences in particular, exert profound influence on what people buy. In modeling market response, highly visible international differences in purchase behavior seem to lead to an assumption by management scientists that there are large parallel international differences in market response to such things as price and advertising.
The authors argue that attribution patterns reflect implicit theories acquired from induction and socialization and hence differentially distributed across human cultures. In particular, the authors tested the hypothesis that dispositionalism in attribution for behavior reflects a theory of social behavior more widespread in individualist than collectivist cultures. Study 1 demonstrated that causal perceptions of social events but not physical events differed between American and Chinese students.
We show for the general dynamic lot sizing model how minimal forecast horizons may be detected by a slight adaptation of an earlier 0(n log n) or 0(n) forward solution method for the model. A detailed numerical study indicates that minimal forecast horizons tend to be small, that is, include a small number of orders.
The material presented in this book originated from research on discrete-event systems when the outputs are monotone functions of the inputs. A discrete-event system is defined as a collection of elementary processes evolving asynchronously and interacting at irregular instants called event epochs. Similar results have often been established for different systems by using inductive sample-path arguments. The authors have identified the underlying structure and formulated general conditions for monotonicity. The material is organized in nine chapters.
In many industries, managers face the problem of selling a given stock of items by a deadline. We investigate the problem of dynamically pricing such inventories when demand is price sensitive and stochastic and the firm's objective is to maximize expected revenues. Examples that fit this framework include retailers selling fashion and seasonal goods and the travel and leisure industry, which markets space such as seats on airline flights, cabins on vacation cruises, and rooms in hotels that become worthless if not sold by a specific time.
Analyzes the potential of reverse mortgages to increase the income and liquid wealth of the elderly by identifying households with relatively high levels of housing equity. Definition; Review of related literature; Descriptive statistics; Reverse mortgage simulations; Barriers to acceptance of reverse mortgages.
This article examines the tax-compliance game between taxpayers, a tax-collecting agency, and third-party tax-return prepares. In our model, taxpayers are uncertain about their taxable income and may hire tax practitioners to reduce tax uncertainty. We examine the viability of tax practitioners as a signaling device (taking into account the effects on the behavior of the tax-collecting agency) and investigate the desirability of encouraging (or discouraging) the use of tax practitioners via the use of alternative tax-crediting rules.
A recently published meta-analysis of the impact of strategic planning on financial performance omitted a major study of corporate planning practice in Fortune 500 manufacturing firms. This article briefly reviews that study in light of the results of the meta-analysis. Additional analysis examines performance and firm survival over a longer time period than in the original work. The overall conclusion is that a small but positive relationship between strategic planning and performance exists, and persists.
Presents data about which dimensions led to greater optimism with more fundamentalism. Three dimensions of explanatory style; Differences among the fundamentalists, moderates and liberals; Factors responsible for greater optimism among fundamentalists.
We address the Joint Replenishment Problem (JRP) where, in the presence of joint setup costs, dynamic lot sizing schedules need to be determined for m items over a planning horizon of N periods, with general time-varying cost and demand parameters. We develop a new, so-called, partitioning heuristic for this problem, which partitions the complete horizon of N periods into several relatively small intervals, specifies an associated joint replenishment problem for each of these, and solves them via a new, efficient branch-and-bound method.
Most models of multilevel production and distribution systems assume unlimited production capacity at each site. When capacity limits are introduced, an ineffective policy may lead to increasingly large order backlogs: The stability of the system becomes an issue. In this paper, we examine the stability of a multi-echelon system in which each node has limited production capacity and operates under a base-stock policy.
In this study we compare the value relevance of accounting measures for U.S. and German firms matched on industry and firm size, and evaluate the incremental informativeness of earnings adjusted on the basis of a formula proposed by analysts.
The mean-variance model for portfolio selection requires estimates of many parameters. This paper investigates the effect of errors in parameter estimates on the results of mean-variance analysis. Using a small amount of historical data to estimate parameters exposes the model to estimation errors. However, using a long time horizon to estimate parameters increases the possibility of nonstationarity in the parameters. This paper investigates the tradeoff between estimation error and stationarity. A simulation study shows that the effects of estimation error can be surprisingly large.
We find support for a negative relation between conditional expected monthly return and conditional variance of monthly return, using a GARCH-M model modified by allowing (1) seasonal patterns in volatility, (2) positive and negative innovations to returns having different impacts on conditional volatility, and (3) nominal interest rates to predict conditional variance. Using the modified GARCH-M model, we also show that monthly conditional volatility may not be as persistent as was thought.
Why do some new ventures succeed while others fail? What is the essence of entrepreneurship? Who is most likely to become a successful entrepreneur and why? How do entrepreneurs make decisions? What market, regulatory, and organizational environments foster the most successful entrepreneurial activities? Entrepreneurship research is plagued by these and other fundamental unanswered questions, for which there does not exist a cohesive explanatory, predictive, or normative theory.
By a filtered Monte Carlo estimator we mean one whose constituent parts—summands or integral increments—are conditioned on an increasing family of σ-fields. Unbiased estimators of this type are suggested by compensator identities. Replacing a point-process integrator with its intensity gives rise to one class of examples; exploiting Levy's formula gives rise to another.
Investigates the explanatory style of religious groups representing fundamentalist, moderate and liberal views. Reason for the optimism of fundamentalist individuals; Causes of the optimism differences among fundamentalists, moderates and liberals; Impact of religious hope on individuals.
In the standard analysis of overlapping generations economies with gifts from children to parents, each generation takes the actions of other generations as given. The resulting equilibrium is dynamically inefficient. In reality, however, parents realize that children will respond to higher parental saving by reducing gifts. For a broad class of gift economies, this implicit tax on saving pushes the equilibrium to dynamic efficiency.
Money managers select weights of managed portfolios to enhance their reputation in the spot market for their services, inevitably using their actions to signal their quality. We develop a two-asset signalling model of money managers. A unique screening equilibrium and (under certain parameter configurations) a host of pooling equilibria survive the Cho-Kreps Intuitive Criterion. In all the equilibria managers behave more aggressively than they would in the absence of the signalling motive, exaggerating their position in the risky asset.
In this paper we develop a model for a capacitated production/distribution network of general (but acyclic) topology with a general bill of materials, as considered in MRP (Material Requirement Planning) or DRP (Distribution Requirement Planning) systems. This model assumes stationary, deterministic demand rates and a standard stationary cost structure; it is a generalization of the uncapacitated model treated in the seminal papers of Maxwell and Muckstadt (1985) and Roundy (1986).
This research proposes that negotiators consider each other's payoffs in their evaluation of potential settlements beyond the level necessary to maintain the bargaining relationship. We further hypothesize that the way in which negotiators weight their opponents' payoffs, relative to their own, is a function of characteristics of the relationship and of the bargainers' personalities. Specifically, we consider liking of the other party, payoff expectations, satisfaction with past settlements, the likelihood of future negotiations, egocentricity, and power orientation.
This paper examines the attributes that consumers use when making product similarity judgments and their effect on similarity scaling. Previous research suggests that concrete brands are judged using dichotomous features while more abstract product categories are judged using continuous dimensions. This, in turn, suggests that the appropriateness of spatial scaling increases relative to tree scaling as one moves from brands to product categories. The results of two studies support an increase in the fit of spaces relative to trees from brands to categories.
Given a parametric family of regenerative processes on a common probability space, we investigate when the derivatives (with respect to the parameter) are regenerative. We primarily consider sequences satisfying explicit, Lipschitz recursions, such as the waiting times in many queueing systems, and show that derivatives regenerate together with the original sequence under reasonable monotonicity or continuity assumptions. The inputs to our recursions are i.i.d. or, more generally, governed by a Harris-ergodic Markov chain. For i.i.d.
Likelihood ratios are used in computer simulation to estimate expectations with respect to one law from simultation of another. This importance sampling technique can be implemented with either the likelihood ratio at the end of the simulated time horizon or with a sequence of likelihood ratios at intermediate times. Since a likelihood ratio process is a martingale, the intermediate values are conditional expectations of the final value and their use introduces no bias.
Firms registered outside the United States and listed on a primary U.S. exchange may provide their U.S. shareholders with financial statements prepared under their domestic (non-U.S.) generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). The Securities and Exchange Commission requires such firms to reconcile their reported earnings and shareholders' equity to U.S. GAAP as part of a Form 20-F filing. These reconciliations provide a set of precise measures of the differences created by alternative accounting practices.
If the score in a squash game is tied late in the game, one player has a choice of how many additional points (from a prespecified set of possibilities) are to be played to determine the winner. This paper constructs a Markov chain model of the situation and solves for the optimal strategy. Expressions for the optimal strategy are obtained with a symbolic algebra computer package. Results are given for both international and American scoring systems. The model and analysis are very suitable for educational purposes.
This paper documents the revaluation practice over a ten-year period from 1981 of a large sample of Australian firms and examines the association between these revaluations and stock market prices and returns. The analysis uses several different approaches in order to obtain a thorough understanding of the reevaluation process in Australia. We include a description of hand-collected data from published financial statements, follow-up interviews with chief financial officers of the sample firms, and association tests between hand-collected accounting data and stock market measures.
In this chapter we discuss planning models for multi-echelon systems which allow for uncertain and nonstationary demand and lead time processes. We confine ourselves to so-called PUSH systems with a central decision maker, who possesses continuously or periodically updated information about all inventories of all products at all relevant facilities and production stages; all replenishment decisions in the system are determined centrally on the basis of this information.
This essay reviews the literature on the role of the financial factors in the Depression, and draws some lessons that have more general relevance for the study of the Depression and for macroeconomics. I argue that much of the recent progress that has been made in understanding some of the most important and puzzling aspects of financial-real links in the Depression followed a paradigm shift in economics.
This paper extends the analysis of transactions cost models of vertical integration to multilateral settings. Its main focus is on supply assurance concerns which arise when several downstream firms are competing for inputs in limited supply. Integration reduces supply assurance concerns for an integrating firm but it may increase them for others. Therefore, to explain the scope of any firm, one must consider the overall network of production and distribution relations.
This paper analyzes the role of capital structure in the presence of intrafirm influence activities. The hierarchical structure of large organizations inevitably generates attempts by members to influence the distributive consequences of organizational decisions. In corporations, for example, top management can reallocate or eliminate quasi rents earned by their employees, while at the same time, they must rely on these employees to provide them with information vital to their decision making.
While under some circumstances information sharing in oligopoly may be beneficial, the literature ignores the possibility of strategic information sharing by assuming verifiability of data. I endogenize the incentives for truthful information sharing and prove that if firms have the ability to send misleading information, they will always do so. To overcome this problem I introduce a (costly) mechanism through which the firm will, in its own best interest, reveal the true value of its private information, even though outside verification is impossible.
The sheer number of organizations adopting an innovation can cause a bandwagon pressure, prompting other organizations to adopt this innovation. Institutional bandwagon pressures occur because nonadopters fear appearing different from many adopters. Competitive bandwagon pressures occur because nonadopters fear below-average performance if many competitors profit from adopting.