We are interested in understanding how credit crises spread through the real economy. To this end we focus on an understudied aspect of financial crises, the effect of borrowers' defaults on the contracts the bank writes with other borrowers. In a crisis this is one means by which restrictive credit environments pass from borrower to borrower. We provide ... Read More

Modern technology has brought us unprecedented access to information. We can exchange ideas with people all over the world, monitor the performance of our investment portfolios in real-time, and learn about our risks of developing a variety of medical conditions long before experiencing any symptoms. And yet, many do not avail themselves of this information ... Read More

Despite its immense popularity, the freemium business model remains a complex strategy to master and often a topic of heated debate. In this research, we ask when and why a firm should offer a zero price on its low-end product when users’ product usages generate network effects on each other. Without network effects, freemium never emerges as optimal, and the ... Read More

What are the best incentives to recruit more productive (entry-level) workers? The difficulty in effective screening of job applicants is one of the key drivers of low labor productivity. Firms often consider financial incentives such as high salary or bonus as well as career incentives such as tenure and promotion. We study how career and wage incentives ... Read More

We model a multi-phase and high-volume recruitment process as a large-scale dynamic program. The success of the process is measured by a reward, which is the total assessment score of accepted candidates minus the penalty cost of the number of accepted candidates in the end deviating from a preset hiring target. For a recruiter, two questions are important ... Read More

How and why can irrelevant, short-lived factors shape investment decisions? This can happen in investment decisions in nascent, seed-stage startups, where information is scarce and uncertainty is intense. Taking sunshine on the day of deal evaluation as a context, we show that in the face of intense uncertainty, sunnier days may affect investors’ mood and ... Read More

Managing new products is important for many firms. One challenging problem is how to predict the success of a new product, especially in their early life cycle. Using large-scale retailer data, we find the novel prediction that the early success of a new product among certain customers may have negative—rather than positive—implications for the long-term ... Read More

We exploit a setting where lawyers are selected before the assignment of a judge and find that large Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings resolve 17%--25% faster when at least one lead counsel lawyer for the debtor has a connection to the judge. The most effective connections arise through previous in-court interactions. Connected cases are more likely to emerge ... Read More

Political science studies show that judge ideology influences judicial votes in federal courts, with judges appointed by Democratic presidents being more liberal than those appointed by Republican presidents. Although legal doctrine plays an important role in deciding case outcomes, judges are more likely to obey legal doctrine when such doctrine supports ... Read More