The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 established a new program called “Opportunity Zones” that created tax advantages for investment locating in Census tracts with relatively low income or high poverty. Importantly, only 25% of eligible tracts in each state could be designated as an Opportunity Zone. We use detailed establishment-level data and a difference-in-difference (DiD) approach to identify the designation of a tract as an Opportunity Zone on job creation.
Philanthropy by entrepreneurs remains an empirically underexplored topic. Combining datasets on U.S. based IPOs with individual philanthropic gifts, we empirically demonstrate that entrepreneurial harvests indeed trigger entrepreneurs’ philanthropic behavior. Furthermore, we distinguish how entrepreneurs’ approach to philanthropy differs from other individuals who experience the same wealth creating event. Entrepreneurs are able to transition more quickly to philanthropy compared to non-entrepreneurs, are more likely to invest in university science and technology, and also provide a greater number of gifts.
Inspired by a data set from the Chinese retailer JD.com, we study the click and purchase behavior of customers in an online retail setting by employing a structural estimation approach.
We investigate the role of information dissemination about cyberattacks through major newswires on municipal finance. Employing a difference-in-differences approach to identify causal effects, we find that county-level cyberattacks covered by the media cause increases in new offer yields and reduce bond issuance.
Firms' payout decisions respond to expected returns: everything else equal, firms invest less and pay out more when their cost of capital increases. Given investors' demand for firm payout, market clearing implies that the dynamics of productivity and payout demand fully determine equilibrium asset prices and returns. We use this logic to propose a payout-based asset pricing framework and we illustrate the analogy between our approach and consumption-based asset pricing in a simple two-period model. Then, we introduce a quantitative payout-based asset pricing model and calibrate the productivity and payout demand processes to match aggregate U.S. corporate output and payout empirical moments. We find that model-implied payout yields and firm returns go a long way in reproducing key attributes of their empirical counterparts.
In the sales process in business markets, customers often are assisted by two types of sales reps: customer-focused reps (CSRs) and operations-focused reps (OSRs), who work together to ensure smooth buying experiences. Because these reps work jointly, selling firms often evaluate reps’ performance according to overall output, without assessing or quantifying their respective individual contributions to customer buying decisions. The authors of this study propose using value-added metrics that pertain to three drivers of value: (1) CSRs, (2) OSRs, and (3) the interface between CSRs and OSRs. This approach leverages variations in CSR–OSR combinations and produces both individual CSR–OSR and dyadic or interface value-added metrics. To address the empirical challenges (i.e., limited variations in CSR–OSR combinations), they use empirical Bayes random effect estimation to produce best linear unbiased prediction.
Healthcare services provided to patients with similar health conditions are known to vary. Standardization of healthcare delivery is a relatively new, yet hotly debated approach to address clinical variations. Previous research on process standardization in health services has focused on measuring adherence to established protocols that are available only for a limited set of disease states. We create an alternate construct that quantifies process standardization measured in terms of consistency of services rendered, and apply it to the healthcare setting using detailed nonpublic inpatient discharge data from about 35 million inpatient stays at 296 acute care hospitals in California between 2008-2016.
What do we mean when we talk about “inequality”? There are numerous ways to measure it, each method with its relative strengths and weaknesses, and we must be clear what we mean when assessing inequality for policymaking.
We use panel data on ISO 9000 quality certification in 85 countries between 1993 and 1998 to better understand the cross-national diffusion of an organizational practice. Following neoinstitutional theory, we focus on the coercive, normative, and mimetic effects that result from the exposure of firms in a given country to a powerful source of critical resources, a common pool of relevant technical knowledge, and the experiences of firms located in other countries. We use social network theory to develop a systematic conceptual understanding of how firms located in different countries influence each other's rates of adoption as a result of cohesive and equivalent network relationships.
Brick-and-mortar (B&M) retailers must enhance the customer in-store experience to better compete with online retailers. Fitting rooms in B&M stores play a critical role in the customer experience as a venue to experience products and examine alternatives. High traffic in fitting rooms, however, obstructs the customer’s ability to choose a product. In this paper, we (1) examine the impact of fitting room traffic on store performance using archival data, (2) identify phantom stockouts as a plausible mechanism for this impact, and (3) provide a potential solution and quantify the magnitude of its impact using two field experiments.
How best to structure the work day is an important operational question for organizations. A key structural consideration is the effective use of breaks from work. Breaks serve the critical purpose of allowing employees to recharge, but in the short term, translate to a loss of time that usually leads to reduced productivity. We evaluate the effects of two types of breaks (expected versus unexpected), and two distinct forms of unexpected breaks, and find that unexpected breaks can, under certain conditions, yield immediate post-break performance increases.
Our national security depends on a safe and secure food supply that is free of contamination, whether unintentional or the result of a terrorist act. In December 2006, Congress and the White House passed the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA), establishing the goal of near-real-time electronic situational awareness to enhance early detection of, rapid response to, and management of public health threats in order to minimize their impact. Meeting this challenge for food safety depends on our ability to collect, interpret, and disseminate electronic information across organizational and jurisdictional boundaries. While events such as 9/11 have elevated the need to share critical intelligence related to security threats, these events have also promoted the proliferation of multiple data systems and tools whose lack of interoperability hinders effective intelligence gathering and timely response. Further, most of the public health and food safety informatics work in the United States—from early detection of food-related outbreaks by local and state health departments to confirmation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) through “fingerprinting” of pathogenic contaminants—takes place at different local, state, and federal jurisdictional levels. As a result, large gaps exist in our ability to meet the challenge of food safety in the United States with regard to PAHPA.
This unique Companion provides a comprehensive overview and critical evaluation of existing conceptualizations and new developments in innovation research.
Although the level of power held by the marketing department can determine key organizational outcomes, including firm performance, this power often is modest and, in many firms, diminishing. To address this apparent disconnect, the authors propose that the board of directors is a critical but overlooked driver of marketing department power.
The spatial diffusion and adoption of rDNA methods, Regional Studies. The 1980 patent granted to Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer for their development of rDNA technology played a critical role in the establishment of the modern biotechnology industry. From the birth of this general-purpose technology in the San Francisco Bay area, rDNA-related knowledge diffused across sectors and regions of the US economy.
The last 20 years have been a period of tremendous growth for the PE industry. From its roots in the 1970s and 80s in the buyout and venture capital spaces, private capital has expanded dramatically in both scope and scale. Funds have gotten larger, the investor pool has broadened and the largest players have transformed themselves into fully diversified alternative asset managers, with offerings across a wide range of geographies and asset classes.
As firms mature, their founders are often replaced with seasoned executives. When founders are retained, the surrounding top management team (TMT) members are viewed as critical resources in helping compensate for the founder's managerial deficiencies. Surprisingly, however, little is known about how TMT members affect a founder‐led firm's performance later in a firm's life.
CEO successions represent critical junctures for firms. Although extant research explores the performance consequences resulting from different succession types, what remains underexplored is what happens when the firm rehires a former CEO (e.g., a “boomerang CEO”).
As live streaming of events (e.g., video games, political commentary, and makeup tutorials, among others) gains traction, pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing strategies are emerging as critical monetization tools. In this research, we assess the viability and efficacy of PWYW by examining the relationship between popularity (i.e., audience size) of a live streaming event and the revenue it generates under a PWYW scheme.