Skip to main content
Official Logo of Columbia Business School
Academics
  • Visit Academics
  • Degree Programs
  • Admissions
  • Tuition & Financial Aid
  • Campus Life
  • Career Management
Faculty & Research
  • Visit Faculty & Research
  • Academic Divisions
  • Search the Directory
  • Research
  • Faculty Resources
  • Teaching Excellence
Executive Education
  • Visit Executive Education
  • For Organizations
  • For Individuals
  • Program Finder
  • Online Programs
  • Certificates
About Us
  • Visit About Us
  • CBS Directory
  • Events Calendar
  • Leadership
  • Our History
  • The CBS Experience
  • Newsroom
Alumni
  • Visit Alumni
  • Update Your Information
  • Lifetime Network
  • Alumni Benefits
  • Alumni Career Management
  • Women's Circle
  • Alumni Clubs
Insights
  • Visit Insights
  • Digital Future
  • Climate
  • Business & Society
  • Entrepreneurship
  • 21st Century Finance
  • Magazine
Leading Insights Landing Image
Faculty & Research
  • Academic Divisions
  • Search the Directory
  • Research
  • Faculty Resources
  • Teaching Excellence
  • More 

Columbia Business School Research

Jump to main content
At the Forefront of Their Fields
The Columbia Advantage

At Columbia Business School, our faculty members are at the forefront of research in their respective fields, offering innovative ideas that directly impact business practice today. A 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.

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:

  • Highly skilled staff of full-time predoctoral fellows, summer research interns, and part-time research assistants
  • Access to centralized funding from the Dean's office and external grants to support research activities
  • Providing a state-of-the-art high-performance grid computing environment
  • Acquisition of proprietary data sets and access to various databases
  • Leading library which provides faculty with latest tools and techniques to enable digital scholarship

All these activities help to facilitate and streamline faculty research, and that of the doctoral students working with them.

Search the repository

Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Journal of Public Economics

Choice Proliferation, Simplicity Seeking, and Asset Allocation

Author
Iyengar, Sheena and Emir Kamenica

In settings such as investing for retirement or choosing a drug plan, individuals typically face a large number of options. In this paper, we analyze how the size of the choice set influences which alternative is selected. We present both laboratory experiments and field data that suggest larger choice sets induce a stronger preference for simple, easy-to-understand options.

Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Journal of Consumer Research

Consumer Expectations and Culture: The Effect of Belief in Karma in India

Author
Kopalle, Praveen, Donald Lehmann , and John Farley

In the customer expectations arena, relatively little attention has been paid to the impact on expectations of variation in cultural variables unique to a country. Here the authors focus on one country, India, and a major cultural influence there — the extent of belief in karma. Prior research in the United States suggests that disconfirmation sensitivity lowers expectations. Here the authors examine whether belief in karma and, consequently, having a long-term orientation, counteracts the tendency to lower expectations in two studies that measure and prime respondents' belief in karma.

Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control

Distributed Coverage Verification in Sensor Networks Without Location Information

Author
Jadbabaie, Ali
In this paper, we present three distributed algorithms for coverage verification in sensor networks with no location information. We demonstrate how, in the absence of localization devices, simplicial complexes and tools from algebraic topology can be used in providing valuable information about the properties of the cover. Our approach is based on computation of homologies of the Rips complex corresponding to the sensor network. First, we present a decentralized scheme based on Laplacian flows to compute a generator of the first homology, which represents coverage holes.
Read More
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Journal of Business Research

How does perceived firm innovativeness affect the consumer?

Author
Kunz, W., Bernd Schmitt , and Alan Meyer

We present a broad-based, consumer-centric view of innovation — referred to as "perceived firm innovativeness" (PFI). PFI is conceptualized as the consumer's perception of an enduring firm capability that results in novel, creative, and impactful ideas and solutions. We develop and validate a PFI scale and show that PFI impacts consumer loyalty via two processing routes: a functional-cognitive route and an affective-experiential route.

Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Journal of Mathematical Psychology

On the coefficient of variation as a predictor of risk sensitivity: Behavioral and neural evidence for the relative encoding of outcome variability

Author
Weber, Elke
Cox and Vjollca (2010) argue that the coefficient of variation (CV) fails as a normative criterion for risk taking in risky choice because it predicts violations of dominance. They suggest that it fails also on descriptive grounds because such violations are not observed in a study they conducted and because people's choices in two other situations were not predicted by the CV. This paper counters the normative argument by suggesting that occasional violations of dominance might be the price that organisms with only limited processing capacity pay to achieve a broad set of goals.
Read More
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Review of Financial Studies

Optimal Mortgage Design

Author
Piskorski, Tomasz and Alexei Tchistyi

This article studies optimal mortgage design in a continuous-time setting with volatile and privately observable income, costly foreclosure, and a stochastic market interest rate. We show that the features of the optimal mortgage are consistent with an option adjustable-rate mortgage (option ARM). Under the optimal contract, the borrower is given discretion of how much to repay until his balance reaches a certain limit. The default rates and interest rate payment on the mortgage correlate positively with the market interest rate.

Read More
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Journal of Financial Economics

Payoff Complementarities and Financial Fragility: Evidence from Mutual Fund Outflows

Author
Chen, Qi, Itay Goldstein, and Wei Jiang
The paper provides empirical evidence that strategic complementarities among investors generate fragility in financial markets. Analyzing mutual fund data, we find that, consistent with a theoretical model, funds with illiquid assets (where complementarities are stronger) exhibit stronger sensitivity of outflows to bad past performance than funds with liquid assets. We also find that this pattern disappears in funds where the shareholder base is composed mostly of large investors.
Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
The Economic History Review

Pre-Colonial Culture, Post-Colonial Economic Success? The Tswana and the African Economic Miracle

Author
Hjort, Jonas
Cultural explanations of economic phenomena have recently enjoyed a renaissance among economists. This article provides further evidence for the salience of culture through an in-depth case study of one of the fastest-growing economies in the world during the last 50 years — Botswana.
Read More
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Journal of Marketing Research

Store Within a Store

Author
Jerath, Kinshuk and Z. John Zhang

On a visit to any major U.S. department store, consumers can observe vendor shops (typically for cosmetics, apparel, apparel accessories, electronics, and toys), each selling a particular brand exclusively and designed to reflect the image of that brand. For these vendor shops, also called boutiques or "stores within a store," retailers rent out retail space to the respective manufacturers and give them complete autonomy over retail-level decisions, such as pricing and in-store service.

Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
European Journal of Social Psychology

The pen is mightier than the word: Object priming of evaluative standards

Author
Rutchick, A.M., Michael Slepian , and B. Ferris
Because red pens are closely associated with error-marking and poor performance, the use of red pens when correcting student work can activate these concepts. People using red pens to complete a word-stem task completed more words related to errors and poor performance than did people using black pens (Study 1), suggesting relatively greater accessibility of these concepts. Moreover, people using red pens to correct essays marked more errors (Study 2) and awarded lower grades (Study 3) than people using blue pens.
Read More
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Journal of Personality and Social Science

When risk seeking becomes a motivational necessity

Author
Scholer, Abigail, Xi Zou, Kentaro Fujita, Steven J. Stroessner, and E. Tory Higgins
Four studies demonstrate the importance of self-regulatory mechanisms for understanding risk-seeking behavior under loss. Findings suggest that risk seeking becomes a motivational necessity under 3 conditions: (a) when an individual is in a state of loss; (b) when the individual is in a prevention-focused regulatory state (E. T. Higgins, 1997); and (c) when the risky option alone offers the possibility of eliminating loss.
Read More
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Strategic Marketing

Be Precisely Effective, Part I

Author
Sexton, Don

Discussion of different marketing strategies to employ during difficult times.  (Reprinted from "Marketing in Difficult Times," Effective Executive, July, 2009, pp. 11-18.)

Read More
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Management and Organization Review

Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship in China

Author
Abrahamson, Eric, P. Phan, and Julia Zhou

As the largest and fastest growing transition economy in the world, China's entrance onto the global stage has been swift and dramatic. As such, almost every facet of entrepreneurship, from the identification of nascent opportunities to the challenges of managing triple-digit growth to the transformation of firms from dying to emerging industries, can be studied as natural experiments. The four papers in this issue are dedicated to exploring entrepreneurial innovation in the Chinese private economy.

Read More
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Decision making and Testosterone: When the Ends Justify the Means

Author
Mason, Malia
Behavioral endocrinology research suggests that testosterone may play a role in moral decision making. Studies involving human and nonhuman animals indicate that high basal testosterone is associated with decreased aversion to risk and an increased threshold for conflict, fear, stress, and threat. We tested the role of testosterone in moral decision making. We predicted and found that individuals high in testosterone are more likely to make utilitarian decisions — specifically when doing so involves acts of aggression and social cost.
Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology

Moral Decisions and Testosterone: When the Ends Justify the Means

Author
Mason, Malia

Behavioral endocrinology research suggests that testosterone may play a role in moral decision making. Studies involving human and nonhuman animals indicate that high basal testosterone is associated with decreased aversion to risk and an increased threshold for conflict, fear, stress, and threat. We tested the role of testosterone in moral decision making. We predicted and found that individuals high in testosterone are more likely to make utilitarian decisions—specifically when doing so involves acts of aggression and social cost.

Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Shedding light on insight: Priming bright ideas

Author
Slepian, Michael, M. Weisbuch, A.M. Rutchick, L.S. Newman, and N. Ambady
Previous research has characterized insight as the product of internal processes, and has thus investigated the cognitive and motivational processes that immediately precede it. In this research, however, we investigate whether insight can be catalyzed by a cultural artifact, an external object imbued with learned meaning. Specifically, we exposed participants to an illuminating lightbulb—an iconic image of insight—prior to or during insight problem-solving.
Read More
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Management Science

Structural estimation of the effect of out-of-stocks

Author
Olivares, Marcelo, Andrés Musalem, Eric Bradlow, Christian Terwiesch, and Daniel Corsten

We develop a structural demand model that endogenously captures the effect of out-of-stocks on customer choice by simulating a time-varying set of available alternatives. Our estimation method uses store-level data on sales and partial information on product availability. Our model allows for flexible substitution patterns, which are based on utility maximization principles and can accommodate categorical and continuous product characteristics.

Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010

Trouble in Store: The Emergence and Success of Protests against Wal-Mart Store Openings in America

Author
Ingram, Paul, Lori Yue , and Hayagreeva Rao

The authors consider how uncertainty over protest occurrence shapes the strategic interaction between companies and activists. Analyzing Wal‐Mart, the authors find support for their theory that companies respond to this uncertainty through a “test for protest” approach. In Wal‐Mart’s case, this consists of low‐cost probes in the form of new store proposals. They then withdraw if they face protests, especially when those protests signal future problems. Wal‐Mart is more likely to open stores that are particularly profitable, even if they are protested.

Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Social Cognition

Shared reality effects on memory: Communicating to fulfill epistemic needs

Author
Kopietz, Renee, Jens Hellman, E. Tory Higgins , and Gerald Echterhoff

Communicators' tuning of a message to suit their audience's attitude about a target can bias their subsequent memory of the target. Research shows that this effect occurs to the extent that the message serves the creation of a shared reality with the audience. In two experiments we investigated the motivational processes underlying such audience-tuning memory biases. Experiment 1 found that when audience tuning was motivated by a shared-reality motive (vs.

Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010

Longitudinal Patterns of Group Decisions: An Exploratory Analysis

Author
Corfman, Kim, Joel Steckel, and Donald Lehmann
Read More
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Motivation and Emotion

Feeling right or being right: When strong assessment yields strong correction

Author
Appelt, Kirstin, Xi Zou, and E. Tory Higgins

Negotiators in regulatory fit report feeling right about an upcoming negotiation more than those in non-fit, and this intensifies their responses to negotiation preparation (Appelt et al. in Soc Cogn 27(3), 365-384, 2009). High assessors emphasize critical evaluation and being right (Higgins et al. in Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol 35, pp 293-344, 2003).

Read More
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
American Economic Review

A New Approach to Estimating the Production Function for Housing

Author
Epple, Dennis and Holger Seig
Dating to the classic works of Alonso, Mills, and Muth, the production function for housing has played a central role in urban economics and local public finance. This paper provides a new flexible approach for estimating the housing production function which treats housing quantities and prices as latent variables. The empirical analysis is based on a comprehensive database of recently built properties in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. We find that the new method proposed in this paper works well in the application and provides reasonable estimates for the underlying production function.
Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Advances and Applications in Statistical Sciences

Agent based simulation of recent changes in agricultural systems of the Argentine Pampas

Author
Podesta, G., S. Rovere, Xavier Gonzalez, Angel Menendez, F. Toranzo, M. Torrent, M. North, C. Macal, P. Sydelko, and Elke Weber
Read More
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Social Cognitive Affective Neuroscience

Culture, attribution and automaticity: A social cognitive neuroscience view

Author
Mason, Malia and Michael Morris
Read More
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Abacus

Financial Forecasting, Risk, and Valuation: Accounting for the Future

Author
Penman, Stephen

Valuation involves forecasting payoffs and discounting expected payoffs for risk. Forecasting is often seen as the province of the statistician, risk determination the province of asset pricing. This paper elaborates on the idea that financial forecasting, risk determination and valuation are a matter of accounting. Accounting not only provides information to forecast payoffs but also specifies the payoffs to be forecasted.

Read More
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Journal of Finance

Information and Incentives Inside the Firm: Evidence from Loan Officer Rotation

Author
Hertzberg, Andrew and Jose Maria Liberti

We present evidence that reassigning tasks among agents can alleviate moral hazard in communication. A rotation policy that routinely reassigns loan officers to borrowers of a commercial bank affects the officers' reporting behavior. When an officer anticipates rotation, reports are more accurate and contain more bad news about the borrower's repayment prospects. As a result, the rotation policy makes bank lending decisions more sensitive to officer reports.

Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010

Marketing competition in the 21st Century

Author
Heil, Oliver, Donald Lehmann , and Stefan Stremersch
Read More
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Journal of Asian Economics

Monetary Policy Flexibility, Risk Management, and Financial Disruptions

Author
Mishkin, Frederic

This paper argues that the monetary policy that is appropriate during an episode of financial market disruption is likely to be quite different than in times of normal market functioning. When financial markets experience a significant disruption, a systematic approach to risk management requires policymakers to be preemptive in responding to the macroeconomic implications of incoming financial market information, and decisive actions may be required to reduce the likelihood of an adverse feedback loop.

Read More
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Journal of Financial Economics

Profiting from government stakes in a command economy: Evidence from Chinese asset sales

Author
Wang, Yongxiang and Charles Calomiris

We document the market response to an unexpected announcement of proposed sales of government-owned shares in China. In contrast to the "privatization premium" found in earlier work, we find a negative effect of government ownership on returns at the announcement date and a symmetric positive effect in response to the announced cancellation of the government sell-off.

Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Review of Accounting Studies

The Effect of Pension Accounting on Corporate Pension Asset Allocation

Author
Guan, Yanling and Dennis Oswald
We examine the impact of new pension disclosures and subsequent full pension recognition under FRS 17 and IAS 19 in the United Kingdom and SFAS 158 in the United States on pension asset allocation. These standards require recognition of net pension surplus/deficit on the balance sheet and actuarial gains/losses in other comprehensive income. Therefore, these standards introduce volatility into comprehensive income and balance sheets. We identify a disclosure period during which UK companies disclosed all the required data under FRS 17 in the notes without recognition.
Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Marketing Science

The Evolving Social Network of Marketing Scholars

Author
Goldenberg, Jacob, Barak Libai, Eitan Muller, and Stefan Stremerch

The interest in social networks among marketing scholars and practitioners has sharply increased in the last decade. One social network of which network scholars increasingly recognize the unique value is the academic collaboration (coauthor) network.

Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Political Psychology

Regulatory focus and political decision making: When people favor reform over the status quo

Author
Boldero, Jennifer and E. Tory Higgins

Two studies examined the impact of self-reported use of promotion- and prevention-related strategies when making “risky” or “conservative” decisions about economic reform. Chronic strength of prevention focus (Study 1) or experimentally induced prevention focus (Study 2) was associated with using strategic vigilance in decision making, whereas chronic strength of promotion focus (Study 1) or experimentally induced promotion focus (Study 2) was associated with using strategic eagerness (when economic conditions were perceived as not so good).

Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Forum for Health Economics & Policy

Are Increasing 5-Year Survival Rates Evidence of Success Against Cancer? A Reexamination Using Data from the U.S. and Australia

Author
Lichtenberg, Frank

Previous investigators argued that increasing 5-year survival for cancer patients should not be taken as evidence of improved prevention, screening, or therapy, because they found little correlation between the change in 5-year survival for a specific tumor and the change in tumor-related mortality. However, they did not control for the change in incidence, which influences mortality and is correlated with 5-year survival. The purpose of this study was to reexamine the question of whether increasing 5-year survival rates constitute evidence of success against cancer.

Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Behavioural Processes

Continuous punishment and the potential of gentle rule enforcement

Author
Erev, Ido, Paul Ingram , Ornit Raz, and Dror Shany

The paper explores the conditions that determine the effect of rule enforcement policies that imply an attempt to punish all the visible violations of the rule. We start with a simple game theoretic analysis that highlights the value of gentle COntinuous Punishment (Gentle COP) policies. If the subjects of the rule are rational, Gentle COP can eliminate violations even when the rule enforcer has limited resources. The second part of the paper uses simulations to examine the robustness of Gentle COP policies when the subjects of the rule are adaptive learners.

Read More
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Journal of Development Economics

Do External Interventions Work? The Case of Trade Reform Conditions in IMF Supported Programs

Author
Wei, Shang-Jin and Zhiwi Zhang

Trade reform conditions are common in IMF supported programs. Of the 99 countries that had IMF programs during 1993–2003, 77 had trade reform conditions in their programs. Since the WTO has not been found especially effective in promoting trade openness for most developing countries, it is of great interest to see if the IMF has been more effective as it combines carrots and sticks not available to the WTO. Yet, the effectiveness of these trade conditions has not been systematically studied. Using a unique dataset, this paper provides such an assessment.

Read More
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health

Does organisational justice protect from sickness absence following a major life event? A Finnish public sector study

Author
Elovainio, Marko, M. Kivimaki, A. Linna, Joel Brockner , Kees Van den Bos, Jerald Greenberg, J. Pentti, M. Virtanen, and J. Vahtera

Background: It has been shown that fairness perceptions have a strong impact on health, especially under conditions of great work stress. The aim of this study was to extend previous research in studying whether working in high justice workplace would protect from health effects following environmental stressors outside work.

Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
The American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings

Issuer Credit Quality and the Price of Asset-Backed Securities

Author
Faltin-Traeger, Oliver, Kathleen Johnson, and Christopher Mayer
Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings

Long-Run Risk, the Wealth-Consumption Ratio, and the Temporal Pricing of Risk

Author
Koijen, Ralph, Hanno Lustig, Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh , and Adrien Verdelhan
Representative agent consumption based asset pricing models have made great strides in accounting for many important features of asset returns. The long run risk (LRR) models of Ravi Bansal and Amir Yaron (2004) are a prime example of this progress. Yet, several other representative agent models, such as the external habit model of John Y. Campbell and John H. Cochrane (1999) and the variable rare disasters model of Xavier Gabaix (2008), seem to be able to match a similar set of asset pricing moments. Additional moments would be useful to help distinguish between these models.
Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
American Economic Review

Political Limits to Globalization

Author
Acemoglu, Daron and Pierre Yared

Despite the major advances in information technology that have shaped the recent wave of globalization, openness to trade is still a political choice, and trade policy can change with shifts in domestic political equilibria. This paper suggests that a particular threat and a limiting factor to globalization and its future developments may be militarist sentiments that appear to be on the rise among many nations around the globe today.

Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Journal of Applied Economics

Regulation of Entry and the Distortion of Industrial Organization

Author
Sarria-Allende, Virginia

We study the distortions of industrial organization caused by entry regulation. We take advantage of heterogeneity across industries in their natural barriers and growth opportunities to examine whether industries are differentially affected in countries according to entry regulation. First, we consider the effect of entry regulation on the (static) industry structure. We find that regulation has a greater impact in industries with lower natural barriers to entry, both on the number of firms and on the average size of firms.

Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Journal of Economic Theory

Risky Human Capital and Deferred Capital Income Taxation

Author
Grochulski, Borys and Tomasz Piskorski

We study the structure of optimal wedges and capital taxes in a dynamic Mirrlees economy with endogenous distribution of skills. Human capital is a private, stochastic state variable that drives the skill process of each individual. Building on the findings of the labor literature, we construct a tractable life-cycle model of human capital evolution with risky investment and stochastic depreciation.

Read More
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Labour Economics

Subjective and Objective Evaluations of Teacher Effectiveness: Evidence from New York City

Author
Rockoff, Jonah and Cecilia Speroni

In this paper, we measure the extent to which subjective and objective evaluations of new teachers in New York City can predict their future impacts on student achievement. Specifically, we examine evaluations of applicants to an alternative certification program, evaluations of new teachers by mentors that work with them during their first year, and evaluations based on student achievement data from their first year of teaching. We use a large sample, relative to prior work, and, unlike other studies (with the exception of John H. Tyler et al.

Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory

Universal reinforcement learning

Author
Farias, Vivek, Ciamac Moallemi , Benjamin Van Roy, and Tsachy Weissman

We consider an agent interacting with an unmodeled environment. At each time, the agent makes an observation, takes an action, and incurs a cost. Its actions can influence future observations and costs. The goal is to minimize the long-term average cost. We propose a novel algorithm, known as the active LZ algorithm, for optimal control based on ideas from the Lempel-Ziv scheme for universal data compression and prediction.

Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Psychological Science

Physical Contact and Financial Risk-Taking

Author
Argo, Jennifer
We show that minimal physical contact can increase people's sense of security and consequently lead them to increased risk-taking behavior. In three experiments, with both hypothetical and real payoffs, we show that a light, comforting pat on the shoulder by a female leads to greater financial risk-taking. Further, this effect was both mediated and moderated by feelings of security in both male and female participants.
Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory

Convergence of min-sum message-passing for convex optimization

Author
Moallemi, Ciamac and Benjamin Van Roy

We establish that the min-sum message-passing algorithm and its asynchronous variants converge for a large class of unconstrained convex optimization problems, generalizing existing results for pairwise quadratic optimization problems. The main sufficient condition is that of scaled diagonal dominance. This condition is similar to known sufficient conditions for asynchronous convergence of other decentralized optimization algorithms, such as coordinate descent and gradient descent.

Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Journal of Marketing Research

Deriving Value from Social Commerce Networks

Author
Stephen, Andrew T. and Olivier Toubia

Social commerce is an emerging trend in which sellers are connected in online social networks, and where sellers are individuals instead of firms. This paper examines the economic value implications of a social network between sellers in a large online social commerce marketplace. In this marketplace each seller creates his or her own shop, and network ties between sellers are directed hyperlinks between their shops.

Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Review of Economic Dynamics

How Much Does Household Collateral Constrain Regional Risk Sharing?

Author
Lustig, Hanno and Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh
We construct a new data set of consumption and income data for the largest U.S. metropolitan areas, and we show that the extent of risk-sharing between regions varies substantially over time. In times when U.S. housing collateral is scarce nationally, regional consumption is about twice as sensitive to income shocks. We also document higher sensitivity in regions with lower housing collateral. Household-level borrowing frictions can explain this new stylized fact.
Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
The Review of Economic Studies

Information Acquisition and Under-Diversification

Author
Van Nieuwerburgh, Stijn and Laura Veldkamp

If an investor wants to form a portfolio of risky assets and can exert effort to collect information on the future value of these assets before he invests, which assets should he learn about? The best assets to acquire information about are ones the investor expects to hold. But the assets the investor holds depend on the information he observes. We build a framework to solve jointly for investment and information choices, with general preferences and information cost functions.

Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Journal of Political Economy

Order in Product Customization Decisions: Evidence from Field Experiments

Author
Heitmann, Mark, Andreas Herrmann, and Sheena Iyengar

Differentiated product models are predicated on the belief that a product's utility can be derived from the summation of utilities for its individual attributes. In one framed field experiment and two natural field experiments, we test this assumption by experimentally manipulating the order of attribute presentation in the product customization process of custom-made suits and automobiles.

Read More
Download PDF
Type
Journal Article
Date
2010
Journal
Review of Economic Studies

Politicians, Taxes, and Debt

Author
Yared, Pierre

The standard analysis of the efficient management of income taxes and debt assumes a benevolent government and ignores potential distortions arising from rent-seeking politicians. This paper departs from this framework by assuming that a rent-seeking politician chooses policies. If the politician chooses extractive policies, citizens throw him out of power. We analyze the efficient sustainable equilibrium. Unlike in the standard economy, temporary economic shocks generate volatile and persistent changes in taxes along the equilibrium path.

Read More
Download PDF

Pagination

  • First page 1
  • Ellipsis …
  • Page 30
  • Page 31
  • Page 32
  • Page 33
  • Current page 34
  • Page 35
  • Page 36
  • Page 37
  • Page 38
  • Ellipsis …
  • Last page 85

External CSS

Homepage Breadcrumb Block

Official Logo of Columbia Business School

Columbia University in the City of New York
665 West 130th Street, New York, NY 10027
Tel. 212-854-1100

Maps and Directions
    • Centers & Programs
    • Current Students
    • Corporate
    • Directory
    • Support Us
    • Recruiters & Partners
    • Faculty & Staff
    • Newsroom
    • Careers
    • Contact Us
    • Accessibility
    • Privacy & Policy Statements
Back to Top Upward arrow
TOP

© Columbia University

  • X
  • Instagram
  • Facebook
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn