Amid the turbulence in stock markets, retail investors continue to look for investment ideas. With thousands of publicly-traded stocks available, many retail investors often resort to their recent personal experiences when deciding on which stocks to buy or sell. In a recent paper, we find a predictable, recurring, and robust pattern between investor ... Read More

This paper develops a new algorithm for increasing the revenue in a dynamic product assortment problem. Then, it identifies the challenges faced by managers in practice and discusses the conditions under which workers follow the algorithm. To do so, I conducted a field experiment with a beverage vending machine business. The experiment shows that, on average ... Read More

The old adage, “You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar,” suggests that it is easier to get what we want by being nice and flattering to others, than it is to be tough and demanding. We explored whether this rule of thumb holds true in a negotiation context. In four experiments, both in the laboratory and in the field, we find that negotiators who ... Read More

The paper looks at how superstitions affect financial markets by examining limit orders (an offer to trade shares at a given price) in the Taiwanese stock market. The authors measured the strength of traders’ superstitions by the regularity with which they chose prices ending in eight, and how strenuously they avoided the number four. Institutional investors ... Read More

Marketers and other agents use a variety of tactics to influence us. One commonly-used persuasion tactic is flattery. But does flattery really work, or do we see right through it? Professor Jaideep Sengupta draws on his extensive research on persuasion techniques to present insights into this topic. He highlights the unexpected long-term effects of flattery ... Read More

Gift giving generates large revenues for businesses, corresponding to 17.6 percent of retail sales in Hong Kong. Despite their importance for the retail industry, retailers tend to follow the same pricing strategies as for other regular products or services. Yet, consumers purchase decisions for gifts are fundamentally different compared to purchases for own ... Read More

This paper identifies the causal effect of U.S. multinationals’ technology shocks on their subsidiaries’ and nearby domestic firms’ productivity in China. By combining firm-level data from both the U.S. and China, I match U.S. multinationals with their manufacturing subsidiaries in China and measure the multinationals’ technology shocks to the local firms in ... Read More

The shift away from manual and routine cognitive work, and towards non-routine cognitive work is a key feature of labor markets. There is no evidence, however, if the relative importance of various tasks differs between workers performing seemingly similar jobs in different countries. We develop worker-level, survey-based measures of task content of jobs – ... Read More

We examine the impact of corporate board reforms on firm value in 41 countries. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that board reforms increase firm value. Reforms involving board and audit committee independence, but not reforms involving separation of chairman and CEO positions, drive the valuation increases. In addition, while comply-or ... Read More