Many of the problems facing the world today, such as climate change and poverty, require collaboration across different groups in society. The interests of community groups, vested stakeholders, governments, NGOs and, of course, business, often collide over these issues. Yet there are also times when they work together for a win:win solution. What are the ... Read More

Online product reviews have become ubiquitous on websites aimed at consumers. And while the evidence suggests that on the whole they add to sales, little research has been done at the individual level. What happens when a consumer encounters a product review? Do more reviews equal more profits? And what about the related issue of fake reviews? Using book ... Read More

History is scattered with spectacular asset price bubbles, from the Dutch tulip bubble of the 1600s to the Internet bubble of the late 1990s. These bubbles have been studied in minute detail to understand how and why their price came to exceed their fundamental asset value, but the studies have been disadvantaged by incomplete information and hindsight. What ... Read More

Consumers face multiple choices every time they shop before they make buying decisions. Manufacturers seek to influence those decisions through the way they design, brand, market and distribute their products, but they would also do well to consider the role that consumer deliberation plays in helping people decide whether to buy. That is the key ... Read More

Expatriates are a costly investment for multinational corporations (MNCs). They are meant to bring valuable skills and knowledge to subsidiaries to improve performance, but studies have shown mixed results. So much seems to ride on the “expat” and their technical or functional capabilities, but what about their ability to transfer their knowledge to others ... Read More

Individual stocks options in aggregate may appear to be similar to index options in that they are driven by the same fundamentals and their prices are affected by risk in similar ways. But they are dissimilar in one important way: they are generally traded by two different groups of people, each of whom have different motivations that affect how they trade ... Read More

The terms under which firms borrow can be revealing about what they think of their future prospects, according to investigations by Vidhan Goyal and Wei Wang, who looked at instances when firms chose short- or long-term debt maturity and the likelihood that this was guided by their privately-held information. “Firms with favorable private information ... Read More

Callaway Golf is a leading producer of golf equipment; American Software is a small company specializing in software for supply chain management. Two different companies and two different industries. Yet, as it turns out, Callaway Golf’s returns have an impact on American Software. How can that be? A study by Ling Cen, Kalok Chan, Sudipto Dasgupta and Ning ... Read More

Understanding and estimating consumer demand in durable goods has been a challenge to many marketing scholars and economists since they do not have access to good data to study them. In studying consumer preference and brand competition, researchers typically have used aggregate level sales data for durable goods which are often less than ideal to study such ... Read More

A consumer receives an offer for a new version of a mobile phone that will be released in two months: buy now and enjoy a 15 per cent discount. The offer will last only for a week, but the consumer is of two minds. She hasn’t seen the phone nor read any reviews of it. What if she doesn’t like it? Or, what if the phone is a big hit and the offer turns out to ... Read More