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.
Consumer research often fails to have broad impact on members of our own discipline, on adjacent disciplines studying related phenomena, and on relevant stakeholders who stand to benefit from the knowledge created by our rigorous research. We propose that impact is limited because consumer researchers have adhered to a set of implicit boundaries or defaults regarding what we study, why we study it, and how we do so. We identify these boundaries and describe how they can be challenged.
The multi-armed bandit problem has been the subject of decades of intense study in statistics, operations research, electrical engineering, computer science, and economics. A “one-armed bandit” is a somewhat antiquated term for a slot machine, which tends to “rob” players of their money. The colorful name for our problem comes from a motivating story in which a gambler enters a casino and sits down at a slot machine with multiple levers, or arms, that can be pulled. When pulled, an arm produces a random payout drawn independently of the past.
What does utility maximization subject to a budget constraint imply for intertemporal choice under uncertainty? Assuming consumers face a two period consumption-portfolio problem where asset markets are incomplete, we address this question following both the standard local infinitesimal and finite data approaches. To focus on the separate roles of time and risk preferences, individuals maximize KPS (Kreps-Porteus-Selden) preferences. The consumption-portfolio problem is decomposed into a one period portfolio problem and a two period certainty consumption-saving problem.
Qualitative research is often used by marketers to develop new brand positionings. This case illustrates how two sequentially applied qualitative approaches were used to generate positionings for a pet food brand. The methods included psychologically oriented focus groups and anthropologically informed ethnographies. When implemented independently by a single market research company, the two approaches inspired highly distinctive brand positionings.
Poor compliance of prescription medication is an ongoing public health crisis. Nearly half of patients do not take their medication as prescribed, harming their own health while also increasing public health care costs. Despite these detrimental consequences, prior research has struggled to establish cost-effective and scalable interventions to improve adherence rates.
Marketing research relies on individual-level estimates to understand the rich heterogeneity of consumers, firms, and products. While much of the literature focuses on capturing static cross-sectional heterogeneity, little research has been done on modeling dynamic heterogeneity, or the heterogeneous evolution of individual-level model parameters. In this work, the authors propose a novel framework for capturing the dynamics of heterogeneity, using individual-level, latent, Bayesian nonparametric Gaussian processes.
To meet the objectives of financial reporting in the IASB's Conceptual Framework, the "balance-sheet approach" embraced by the Framework is necessary but not sufficient. Critical, but largely overlooked, is the role of uncertainty, which we argue defines the role of accrual accounting as a distinctive source of information for investors when investment outcomes are uncertain. This role is in some sense paradoxical: on the one hand, uncertainty undermines both the balance sheet (because uncertain assets are unrecognized) and the income statement (because mismatching is unavoidable).
We study multi-period sales-force incentive contracting where salespeople can engage in effort gaming, a phenomenon that has extensive empirical support. Focusing on a repeated moral hazard scenario with two independent periods and a risk-neutral agent with limited liability, we conduct a theoretical investigation to understand which effort profiles the firm can expect under the optimal contract.
Abundant research has established that first proposals can anchor negotiations and lead to a first-mover advantage. The current research developed and tested a motivated anchor adjustment hypothesis that integrates the literatures on framing and anchoring and highlights how anchoring in negotiations differs in significant ways from standard decision-making contexts.
Short-sale constrained past-winners and losers both underperform strongly in the first year post-formation, earning market-adjusted returns of -13%, and -17%, respectively. However, constrained winners continue to underperform for the following four years, earning a cumulative market-adjusted return of -40% (t = -6.33), while past-losers earn 6% (t = 0.55). This persistence differential cannot be explained by existing models or by simple extensions of existing models.
This article starts with the premise that while Design Thinking has value, there are yawning gaps in the research components of the process. More disciplined research will enable design thinkers to create better, more human-centered designs.
Submitting queries to search engines has become a major way for consumers to search for information and products. The massive amount of search query data available today has the potential to provide valuable information on consumer preferences. In order to unlock this potential, it is necessary to understand how consumers translate their preferences into search queries. Strategic consumers should attempt to maximize the information content of the search results, conditional on a set of beliefs on how the search engine operates.
Submitting queries to search engines has become a major way for consumers to search for information and products. The massive amount of search query data available today has the potential to provide valuable information on consumer preferences. In order to unlock this potential, it is necessary to understand how consumers translate their preferences into search queries. Strategic consumers should attempt to maximize the information content of the search results, conditional on a set of beliefs on how the search engine operates.
We find that people who experience social marginalization are more likely to share COVID-19 news indiscriminately, that is, sharing news that is factually untrue and true, as well as news that seems surprising and unsurprising. This effect, driven by their general motivation to seek meaning, holds when people self-identify as being socially marginalized (i.e., experiencing frequent feelings of discrimination) and when they are situationally induced to feel marginalized. We demonstrate that an intervention to help people obtain a temporary sense of meaning by having high (vs.
Once artificial intelligence (AI) is indistinguishable from human intelligence, and robots are highly similar in appearance and behavior to humans, there should be no reason to treat AI and robots differently from humans. However, even perfect AI and robots may still be subject to a bias (referred to as speciesism in this article), which will disadvantage them and be a barrier to their commercial adoption as chatbots, decision and recommendation systems, and staff in retail and service settings.
Many financial markets are operated as electronic limit order books (LOBs). Over short time scales, seconds to minutes, LOBs can be best understood and modeled as stochastic dynamical systems, and, specifically, ones that exhibit interesting and relevant queueing phenomena. I will offer a brief overview of algorithmic trading in a limit order book, and highlight how queueing phenomena play an important role in trade execution, and as a consequence in market behavior.
We examine the statistical term structure model of Cochrane and Piazzesi (2005) and its affine counterpart, developed in Cochrane and Piazzesi (2008), in several out-of-sample analyzes. The model's one-factor forecasting structure characterizes the term structures of additional currencies in samples ending in 2003. In post-2003 data one-factor structures again characterize each currency's term structure, but we reject equality of the coefficients across the two samples.
Teamwork and team incentives are increasingly prevalent in modern organizations. Performance measures used to evaluate individuals' contributions to teamwork are often non-verifiable. We study a principal-multi-agent model of relational (self-enforcing) contracts in which the optimal contract resembles a bonus pool. It specifies a minimum joint bonus floor the principal is required to pay out to the agents, and gives the principal discretion to use non-verifiable performance measures to both increase the size of the pool and to allocate the pool to the agents.
We explored the balance between societal benefits that negatively affect firms' financial performance by eroding their competitive advantage and positive effects that enhanced their reputations as technological leaders to study the effects of forward citations upon firms' financial performance.
The acceleration of start-up activity is often cited as a rationale for the R&D tax credit, a key innovation policy instrument adopted increasingly by US states over the past quarter century. While there is a strong empirical base linking the R&D tax credit to increased R&D expenditures and innovation, prior work has not provided causal evidence that this policy effects the rate of formation and growth potential of new businesses.
Our panel has been asked to consider the interaction of markets and policy. In my remarks today, I will specifically consider the interaction between the stock market and the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve, which is set to foster economic conditions that achieve the dual-mandate objectives of maximal employment and price stability (targeted as a 2 percent inflation rate). I want to reconcile seemingly conflicting evidence when we interpret the stock market in its aggregate and when we consider an individual firm that trades in the market.
In this research, we investigate the prevalence, robustness and possible reasons underlying the polarity of online review distributions with the majority of the reviews at the positive end of the rating scale, a few reviews in the mid-range and some reviews at the negative end of the scale.
At each stage in customers' journeys, they encounter different types of numeric information that they process using different judgment strategies. Relevant numbers might include budgets, price, product attributes, product counts, product ratings, numbers in brand names, health and nutrition information, financial information, time-related information, and others. This manuscript provides a review of the vast array of numerical information presented to consumers at different stages of the customer journey.
In light of consumers’ growing dependence on their smartphones, this article investigates the nature of the relationship that consumers form with their smartphone and its underlying mechanisms. We propose that in addition to obvious functional benefits, consumers in fact derive emotional benefits from their smartphone—in particular, feelings of psychological comfort and, if needed, actual stress relief. In other words, in a sense, smartphones are not unlike adult pacifiers.
Trickle-down theories suggest that status symbols and fashion trends originate from the elites and move downward, but some high-end restaurants serve lowbrow food (e.g., potato chips, macaroni and cheese), and some high-status individuals wear downscale clothing (e.g., ripped jeans, duct-taped shoes). Why would high-status actors adopt items traditionally associated with low-status groups?
Words are part of almost every marketplace interaction. Online reviews, customer service calls, press releases, marketing communications, and other interactions create a wealth of textual data. But how can marketers best use such data? This article provides an overview of automated textual analysis and details how it can be used to generate marketing insights. The authors discuss how text reflects qualities of the text producer (and the context in which the text was produced) and impacts the audience or text recipient.
Entrepreneurial motivation is important to the process of economic growth. However, evidence on the motivations of innovative entrepreneurs, and how those motivations differ across fundamental characteristics, remains scant. We conduct three interrelated field experiments with the MIT Inclusive Innovation Challenge to study how innovative entrepreneurs respond to messages of money and social impact, and how this varies across gender and culture.
Amazon's entry into Finland had been expected for years by S Group, Finland's largest retailer. Now that the company's arrival in their home market was imminent, S Group needed to decide quickly on the best strategy for survival and the optimal path to future growth. The company's executive board had several options: staying focused on the Finnish market, expanding into global markets, or tapping their world-class data and logistics expertise to forge another path.
Cryptocurrencies provide an important dimension of innovation to the evolution of the exchange medium we call money. There are now over 2,000 such currencies, and their potential and volume is growing. How- ever, they will, collectively and in volume, create real problems for the monetary system of a country. Central banks, which are institutions tasked with providing monetary stability, are more essential than ever.
The Emerging Video Cloud System
Few questions are fraught with more long-term implications than the way we shape our communications system. If the medium is indeed the message, and if these messages influence people and institutions, then tomorrow’s media, and today’s media policies, will govern future society, culture, and economy.
Although the gender wage gap in the U.S. has narrowed, women's career trajectories diverge from men's after the birth of children, suggesting a potential role for family-friendly policies. We provide new evidence on employer provision of these policies. Using the American Time Use Survey, we find that women are less likely than men to have access to any employer-provided paid leave and this differential is entirely explained by part-time status. Using the NLSY97, we find that young women are more likely to have access to specifically designated paid parental leave, even in part-time jobs.
In a multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem a gambler needs to choose at each round of play one of K arms, each characterized by an unknown reward distribution. Reward realizations are only observed when an arm is selected, and the gambler's objective is to maximize cumulative expected earnings over some planning horizon of length T. To do this, the gambler needs to acquire information about arms (exploration) while simultaneously optimizing immediate rewards (exploitation). The gambler's policy is measured relative to a (static) oracle that knows the identity of the best arm a priori.
Why do young firms pay less? Using confidential microdata from the US Census Bureau, we find lower earnings among workers at young firms. However, we argue that such measurement is likely subject to worker and firm selection. Exploiting the two-sided panel nature of the data to control for relevant dimensions of worker and firm heterogeneity, we uncover a positive and significant young-firm pay premium. Furthermore, we show that worker selection at firm birth is related to future firm dynamics, including survival and growth.
In thenance literature, a common practice is to create characteristic portfolios by sorting on characteristics associated with average returns. We show that the resulting portfolios are likely to capture not only the priced risk associated with the characteristic, but also unpriced risk. We develop a procedure to remove this unpriced risk using covariance information estimated from past returns. We apply our methodology to the ve Fama and French (2015) characteristic portfolios.
We examine economic consequences of US bank regulators' phased removal of the prudential filter for accumulated other comprehensive income for advanced approaches banks beginning on January 1, 2014. The primary effect of the AOCI filter is to exclude unrealized gains and losses on available-for-sale securities from banks' regulatory capital.