Research, Media Impact, and Awards: Fall 2022
This sampling of recent faculty activity at the Boston College Carroll School of Management includes papers published in leading peer-reviewed journals. Among them: The Journal of Finance, The Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Management Science, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Marketing, Operations Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, and others. Also included in this roundup are recent media spotlights on Carroll School faculty research as well as awards and other distinctions.
Pierluigi Balduzzi
Professor, Finance
Journal of Financial Econometrics
"Anatomy of a Sovereign Debt Crisis: Machine Learning, Real-Time Macro Fundamentals, and CDS Spreads"
Co-authors:
Roberto Savona, University of Brescia
Lucia Alessi, team leader at European Comission Joint Research Centre
"We employ a Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO)-based extension of the Fama–MacBeth procedure to characterize the time-varying dependence of sovereign Credit Default Swap (CDS) spreads on macro indicators during the samples 2009–2013 and 2013–2020."
Curtis Chan
Assistant Professor, Management and Organization
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
"Heroes From Above But Not (Always) From Within? Gig Workers’ Reactions to the Sudden Public Moralization of their Work."
Co-authors:
Lindsey D. Cameron, University of Pennsylvania
Michel Anteby, Boston University
"Our study contributes to literatures on the moralization of work and narratives by explaining why some workers accept a moralized narrative and others reject or wrestle with it, documenting consequences of workers’ reactions to such narratives, and suggesting how a moralized public narrative can backfire."
Nathan Dong
Assistant Professor of the Practice, Finance
The Review of Corporate Finance Studies
"Determinants of LGBTQ+ Corporate Policies"
Co-authors:
Tanja Artiga Gonzalez, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Paul Calluzzo, Queen's University
Georg D. Granic, Erasmus University Rotterdam
"This divisive nature of the societal debate around LGBTQ+ rights can be used to inform us about the circumstances under which firms are more likely to adopt LGBTQ+ friendly firm policies."
Samuel Hartzmark
Professor, Finance
Hillenbrand Family Faculty Fellow
The Journal of Finance
"A New Test of Risk Factor Relevance"
Co-authors:
Alex Chinco, Baruch College
Abigail Sussman, University of Chicago
"Textbook models assume that investors try to insure against bad states of the world associated with specific risk factors when investing. This is a testable assumption and we develop a survey framework for doing so."
Nan Liu
Associate Professor, Business Analytics
William S. McKiernan Family Faculty Fellow
Operations Research
"Dynamic Interday and Intraday Scheduling"
Co-authors:
Christos Zacharias, University of Miami
Mehmet A. Begen, Western University
"Grounded on our theory, we develop a practically implementable and computationally tractable scheduling paradigm with performance guarantees."
Alicia Munnell
Peter F. Drucker Chair in Management Sciences
Director of the Center for Retirement Research
Center for Retirement Research at Boston College
"How to Think About Recent Trends in the Average Retirement Age?"
"After a century of decline, work activity among older men stabilized in the 1980s and began to rise in the 1990s. This turnaround reflected changes in Social Security, retirement plans, the nature of work, education levels, and health coverage. In response, the average retirement age for men has risen by about three years. Interestingly, though, both labor force participation and the average retirement age remain below their levels in the 1960s."
Center for Retirement Research at Boston College
1. "Social Security’s Financial Outlook: The 2022 Update in Perspective"
"The 2022 Trustees Report has no real news about Social Security’s overall future. Interestingly, a lower assumed disability incidence rate allows the DI trust fund to pay full benefits for the next 75 years."
2. "How Many Public Workers Without Social Security Could Fall Short?"
"The workers who lose out are those who leave in mid-career, as their pensions are based on wages when they depart, whose real value erodes over time. This new study finds that this group accounts for about 17 percent of current noncovered workers, so hundreds of thousands could fall short."
Co-authors:
Jean-Pierre Aubry, Laura D. Quinby, and Glenn Springstead
3. "Do Households Save More When the Kids Leave? Take Two"
"When kids leave home, parents consume less but they don’t save more. So where is the money going?"
Co-authors:
Andrew G. Biggs and Anqi Chen
4. "Medicare’s Finances and the Aduhelm Saga"
"Thus, policymakers should give Medicare some negotiating authority to ensure that much-needed drugs don’t bankrupt either Medicare or individuals."
Co-authors:
Patrick Hubbard
5: "What Share of Noncovered Public Employees Will Earn Benefits that Fall Short of Social Security?" (Working Paper)
"While only a fraction of noncovered workers are at risk of falling short, the problem is still serious. Social Security is intended to provide a minimum level of retirement income for all Americans. Thus, learning that between 750 thousand to 1 million noncovered workers annually could ultimately be at risk of not receiving that minimum is concerning."
Co-authors:
Jean-Pierre Aubry, Siyan Liu, Laura D. Quinby, and Glenn Springstead
Michael Pratt
Professor, Management and Organization
O'Connor Family Professor
Academy of Management Journal (forthcoming)
"How Organizations Influence Interpersonal Trust Repair: The Case of a French Antiterrorist Unit"
Co-author:
Gabriel R. Sala, Northeastern University
"Through an inductive qualitative study of a French anti-terrorist unit, we move beyond dyadic treatments of interpersonal trust repair to theorize a model that elucidates the organizational practices that can be used to guide members through the trust repair process."
Jonathan Reuter
Associate Professor, Finance
AEA Papers and Proceedings
"Do State-Sponsored Retirement Plans Boost Retirement Saving?"
Co-authors:
John Chalmers, University of Oregon
Olivia Mitchell, University of Pennsylvania
Mingli Zhong, research associate at the Urban Institute
"Oregon recently launched an automatic-enrollment retirement savings program for private sector workers lacking access to other workplace retirement plans. [...] Overall, we conclude that OregonSaves has meaningfully increased employee savings by reducing search costs."
Kathleen Seiders and Gergana Nenkov
Professor and Chairperson, Marketing; Wargo Family Faculty Fellow (Seiders)
Associate Professor, Marketing (Nenkov)
Journal of Marketing
"How Industries Use Direct-to-Public Persuasion in Policy Conflicts: Asymmetries in Public Voting Responses"
Co-author:
Andrea Godfrey Flynn, University of San Diego
"This research introduces a theoretically derived and empirically supported framework that draws from multiple areas, including marketing persuasion, political campaign strategy, sociopolitical legitimacy, and perceptual fit, to identify important differences in the effectiveness of these persuasion strategies on attitudes and voting behavior."
Tuomas Tomunen
Assistant Professor, Finance
Centre for Economic Policy Research (discussion paper)
"Is Physical Climate Risk Priced? Evidence from Regional Variation in Exposure to Heat Stress"
Co-authors:
Viral V. Acharya, New York University
Timothy C. Johnson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Suresh M. Sundaresan, Columbia University
"We exploit regional variations in exposure to heat stress to study if physical climate risk is priced in municipal and corporate bonds as well as in equity markets."
Hanyi (Livia) Yi
Assistant Professor, Finance
Journal of Financial Economics
"Launching with a Parachute: The Gig Economy and New Business Formation"
Co-authors:
John M. Barrios, Washington University in St. Louis
Yael V. Hochberg, Rice University
"Our findings suggest that the introduction of the gig economy creates fallback opportunities for would-be entrepreneurs that reduce risk and encourage new business formation."
Journal of Public Economics, 2022
"Aging and Public Financing Costs: Evidence from U.S. Municipal Bond Markets" (Lead Article)
Co-author:
Alexander W. Butler, Rice University
"We examine the impact of population aging on municipal access to credit...Our findings highlight the challenges municipalities face to cope with systemic demographic transition."
Mary Ellen Carter
Professor, Accounting
Joseph L. Sweeney Chair
Strategic Finance Magazine
"COVID-Related Pay Cuts for CEOs"
Co-authors:
Luann J. Lynch, University of Virginia
Xiaoxia Peng, University of Utah
"New research examines the potential factors and motivations that led companies to reduce CEO compensation during the pandemic."
Thomas Chemmanur
Professor, Finance
Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice
"Top Management Team Quality and Innovation in Venture-Backed Private Firms and IPO Market Rewards to Innovative Activity"
Co-authors:
Manish Gupta, University of Nottingham
Karén Simonyan, Suffolk University
"We hypothesize that firms with higher quality top management teams invest more in innovative projects and select better projects, yielding higher innovation productivity; pursue explorative rather than exploitative innovation strategies; and hire more high quality inventors."
Vyacheslav (Slava) Fos
Professor, Finance
Hillenbrand Family Faculty Fellow
The Review of Financial Studies
"Tuition, Debt, and Human Capital"
Co-authors:
Rajashri Chakrabarti, head of equitable growth studies at Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Andres Liberman, chief information officer at Betterfly
Constantine Yannelis, University of Chicago
"This paper investigates the effects of college tuition on student debt and human capital accumulation."
Miao Liu
Assistant Professor, Accounting
Journal of Accounting Research
"Assessing Human Information Processing in Lending Decisions: A Machine Learning Approach"
"I show that a machine learning model substantially outperforms loan officers in processing hard information. Loan officers can only process a sparse set of useful hard information identified by the machine learning model and focus their attention on salient signals such as large jumps in cash flows. However, the loan officers use salient hard information as “red flags” to highlight where to acquire more soft information. This result suggests that salient information is an attention allocation device: It guides humans to allocate their limited cognitive resources to acquire soft information, a task in which humans have an advantage over machines."
Dmitry Mitrofanov
Assistant Professor, Business Analytics
Harvard Business Review
"Why You Should Warn Customers When You’re Running Low on Stock"
Co-author:
Benjamin Knight, senior data scientist at Instacart
"Customers respond better if they’re warned there’s a chance an item is out of stock than if they find out after ordering. These experimental results suggest that, as with so many things, honesty is the best policy."
Hristina Nikolova and Gergana Nenkov
Assistant Professor, Marketing and The Diane Harkins Coughlin and Christopher J. Coughlin Sesquicentennial Assistant Professor (Nikolova)
Associate Professor, Marketing (Nenkov)
Journal of Marketing Research
"I Will Be Green for Us: When Consumers Compensate for Their Partners’ Unsustainable Behavior"
Co-author:
Aylin Cakanlar, Jönköping University
"This research shows that how consumers respond to their partners’ unsustainable behaviors depends on the amount of relationship power they possess: high-relationship-power individuals compensate for their partners’ unsustainable behavior by acting in a more sustainable manner relative to their baseline tendencies, but low-relationship-power individuals do not increase their own sustainable behavior."
Sam Ransbotham
Professor, Business Analytics
Management Science
"Learning to Successfully Hire in Online Labor Markets"
Co-author:
Marios Kokkodis, research data scientist at Meta
"This work is the first to investigate how employers learn to make successful hiring choices in online labor markets. As a result, it provides platform managers with new knowledge and analytics tools to target employer interventions."
MIS Quarterly (forthcoming)
"Asymmetric Reputation Spillover Effects from Digital Agencies in Online Markets"
Co-authors:
Panagiotis Adamopoulos, New York University
Marios Kokkodis, research data scientist at Meta
"We theorize how variation in creator and agency reputation leads to asymmetric and heterogeneous effects, including that (1) more-reputable agencies have stronger positive effects on less-reputable creators than they have on more-reputable creators, while (2) less-reputable agencies hurt more-reputable creators more than they hurt less-reputable ones."
MIT Sloan Management Review
"Achieving Individual—and Organizational—Value With AI"
Co-authors:
David Kiron, editorial director of MIT Sloan Management Review
François Candelon, managing director and senior partner at Boston Consulting Group (BGC)
Shervin Khodabandeh, managing director and senior partner at Boston Consulting Group (BGC)
Michael Chu, Harvard University
"New research shows that employees derive individual value from AI when using the technology improves their sense of competency, autonomy, and relatedness. Likewise, organizations are far more likely to obtain value from AI when their workers do. This report offers key insights for leaders on achieving individual and organizational value with artificial intelligence in their organizations."
Beth Schinoff
Assistant Professor, Management and Organization
MIT Sloan Management Review
"Disrespected Employees Are Quitting. What Can Managers Do Differently?"
Co-author:
Kristie Rogers, Marquette University
"[...] Respect at work is needed more than ever. Ironically, though, the ways for managers to effectively show their remote employees respect seem to be less clear than ever because the typical signals of respect that research prescribes largely necessitate in-person interaction."
Susan Shu and Benjamin Yost
Associate Professor, Accounting (Shu)
Assistant Professor, Accounting (Yost)
Journal of Accounting and Economics
"Does Tax Enforcement Deter Managers' Self-Dealing?"
"We hypothesize that IRS scrutiny from a corporate tax audit raises managers' perceived risk of detection, who refrain from making manipulated stock gifts while the firm is under audit. Using a novel, firm-specific measure to identify firms under audit, we find direct evidence that heightened scrutiny from tax enforcement serves as an effective monitoring mechanism and reduces managers' self-dealing behavior."
Mei Xue
Associate Professor, Business Analytics
Journal of Management Information Systems (forthcoming)
"Is College Education Less Necessary with AI? Evidence from Firm-level Labor Structure Changes"
Co-authors:
Xing Cao, Harbin Institute of Technology
Xu Feng, Tianjin University
Bin Gu, Boston University
Yongjie Zhang, Tianjin University
"The study indicates that AI applications were positively associated with the overall employment as well as the employment of nonacademically- trained workers with no college degrees at the firm level. These associations were more significant in the service sector than in the manufacturing sector."
The Truth About Performance Goals
Can tying CEO compensation to performance goals make contracts too complicated and ultimately lead to lower firm performance? Research from Joseph L. Sweeney Chair and Accounting Professor Mary Ellen Carter says yes. Her working paper, “Complexity of CEO Compensation Packages,” co-authored by Ana M. Albuquerque and Zhe (Michael) Guo (both Boston University), and Luann J. Lynch (University of Virginia), was featured on the Columbia Law School blog. Their findings were also highlighted by the Boston Business Journal.
The Scarcity Effect
“Consumers might even end up spending more in these categories before the benefit runs out…something consumers should be more mindful of,” says Associate Professor of Marketing Min Zhao, who weighed in on the value of a credit card with bonus rewards on purchases. In an interview with Wallethub, she warned cardholders against excessive spending because of the appeal of a “limited time” offer.
Me, Myself, and AI
How is artificial intelligence shaping the business world today? Professor of Business Analytics Sam Ransbotham dug deep into the issue over the course of the fourth and fifth seasons of his podcast "Me, Myself, and AI," produced by MIT Sloan Management Review, featuring industry leaders from companies like Boeing, Peloton, Estee Lauder, and more.
Death in the Middle
Marketing Senior Lecturer John Fisher commented to CNN about the decline of department store giant Kohl’s, which illustrates a broader downturn in the department store sector in recent years because of their market position in between discount brands and luxury stores. “It’s hard to be unique,” Fisher says. “I think Kohl’s is caught right now by death in the middle.”
It's Not Easy Being Green
If you saw your partner throwing something away instead of recycling it, would you feel more compelled to recycle? That answer might depend on who has decision-making power in the relationship, according to a study conducted by Assistant Professor of Marketing Hristina Nikolova, Associate Professor of Marketing Gergana Nenkov, and a co-author, recently highlighted by The Wall Street Journal.
An Economic View of Pollution
Many companies that claim to divest pollutive assets actually retain relationships with the buyers of these assets, which means they face fewer regulatory fines even though they ultimately aren’t reducing pollution. That's according to research conducted by Giuriceo Family Faculty Fellow and Finance Professor Ran Duchin, with co-authors Janet Gao (Georgetown University) and Qiping Xu (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), reported by ProMarket.
The Bottom Line
Hillenbrand Family Faculty Fellow and Professor of Finance Vyacheslav (Slava) Fos garnered mentions from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, among other outlets, for his paper "The Political Polarization of Corporate America,” co-written with Elisabeth Kempf (Harvard University) and Margarita Tsoutsoura (Washington University in St. Louis).
Sensible and Sustainable
Galligan Chair of Strategy and Professor of Management Sandra Waddock shared with Politico how during an economic downturn, sustainable practices might be a win for companies. Waddock, who is also a Carroll School Scholar of Corporate Responsibility, added that sustainability initiatives are often “sensible measures that actually save money for the firm.”
Kicks with Perks
Would you buy a pair of sneakers if they got you extra benefits, like backstage access to a concert? Adjunct Professor of Business Analytics Bennett Collen thinks you might. Featured in The Boston Globe, his new startup Endstate sells sneakers that come with NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, that offer limited edition privileges to the buyers.
A Hot Topic
Conversations around climate change and the economy are heating up. Assistant Professor of Finance Tuomas Tomunen spoke with The Washington Post, Bloomberg, and The Business Standard regarding his research on how a hotter planet is already being reflected in stock prices, corporate debt, and municipal bonds.
The Business Case for Diversity
How can white collar crime be stopped? Adding women to corporate boards might help. Forbes cites research from Associate Professor of Finance Darren Kisgen’s paper in the Journal of Financial Economics, “Gender and Corporate Finance: Are Male Executives Overconfident Relative to Female Executives?,” co-authored by Jiekun Huang (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). Their findings suggest that male executives exhibit overconfidence in corporate decision making compared to women.
"Unretirement" on the Rise
“The bottom line is that older workers have gone back to work,” said Alicia Munnell, director of the Boston College Center for Retirement Research and Peter F. Drucker Chair of Management Sciences. Her research on older Americans heading back to work, or “unretiring” after declaring early retirement, was referenced in The New York Times. In addition to her regular contributions to MarketWatch's blogs on the subject of retirement, Munnell was also quoted by The Washington Post, Barron’s, Forbes, and other major outlets.
Real Estate Woes
Newton Centre restaurant Ellana’s Kitchen closed after the landlord sold the property and the owners were unable to afford to buy the space for themselves. Small businesses almost always have to rent space, Business Law and Society Senior Lecturer Edward Chazen told The Boston Globe. If they tie up money in real estate, they lack the capital for other essential expenses like inventory and hiring workers.
Are the Sacrifices Required to be an “Ideal Worker” Worth It?
Research by Management and Organization Assistant Professor Vanessa Conzon, along with co-authors Lindsey Cameron (University of Pennsylvania) and Bobbi Thomason (Pepperdine University) examines the tactics gig workers have used to protect themselves and their reputations during the pandemic and was highlighted by The Gig Work Life.
What Does R-E-S-P-E-C-T Mean to Employees?
How can management show respect for their employees, both remotely and in-person? Assistant Professor of Management and Organization Beth Schinoff and co-author Kristie Rogers of Marquette University explore this question with her recent research, also featured in an article from MIT Sloan Management Review.
A Historical Approach
The Economist highlighted research from Assistant Professor of Finance Paul Schmelzing, together with Kenneth Rogoff (Harvard University) and Barbara Rossi (University of Pompeu Fabra), indicating that “bond yields have fallen with metronomic regularity” since 1311 and are “on pace to drop below zero for good in 2066.”
Responding to Stockouts
New research by Assistant Professor of Business Analytics Dmitry Mitrofanov and co-author Benjamin Knight, featured in Harvard Business Review, revealed that customers using online grocery delivery services like Instacart were overall more satisfied with their experience and spent more money when they received a warning that an item they had selected was “likely out of stock.”
Assistant Professor of Finance Simcha Barkai was named one of the inaugural Chicago Booth Stigler Center Affiliate Fellows. The new three-year fellowship supports research on political economy, regulatory capture, and competitive markets.
Nan Liu, William S. McKiernan Family Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor of Business Analytics, received an honorable mention in the Production and Operations Management Society's (POMS) College of Humanitarian Operations & Crisis Management Best Paper Award for his working paper, “Treatment Planning of Victims with Heterogeneous Time-sensitivities in Mass Casualty Incidents," written with co-authors Yunting Shi and Guohua Wan, both from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
This year’s Early Career Women in Finance Conference, which took place in June, was co-organized by Assistant Professor of Finance Nancy Xu. The annual event celebrates research by women in finance by providing a forum for junior female faculty members to present their work.
Assistant Professor of Management and Organization Vanessa Conzon received the Kathleen Christiansen Dissertation Award, co-sponsored by the Work and Family Researchers Network and the Society for Human Resource Management. Conzon was unanimously recommended by the award selection committee because of the “ambition of her dissertation work, its methodological strengths, as well as its contributions to theory and practice.” She was also recognized as a runner-up to the Louis Pondy Best Paper Dissertation Award and a finalist for the Industry Studies Association Dissertation Award.
Hillenbrand Family Faculty Fellow and Management and Organization Associate Professor Elizabeth (Bess) Rouse was appointed as an Associate Editor at the Academy of Management Journal.
Business Analytics Assistant Professor Dmitry Mitrofanov and Benjamin Knight (senior data scientist at Instacart) drew honorable mention in the 2022 INFORMS Behavioral Operations Management Best Working Paper Competition, for their paper, "Disclosing Low Product Availability: An Online Retailer's Strategy for Mitigating Stockout Risk."
The 2022 Spängler IQAM Prize in Financial Economics—Review of Finance Best Paper was awarded to Associate Professor of Finance Jonathan Reuter and co-author Eric Zitzewitz (Dartmouth College) for their paper, “How Much Does Size Erode Mutual Fund Performance? A Regression Discontinuity Approach.”
Professor of Business Law and Society David Twomey was named by President Biden to an emergency board helping to resolve disputes between freight rail carriers and their unions. An expert on employment and labor law, Twomey has previously served on similar boards.
The Administrative Science Quarterly Award for Scholarly Contribution, given to the paper published five years earlier that has subsequently wielded the greatest influence on the field of organization studies, was given to Assistant Professor of Management and Organization Curtis Chan and Michel Anteby (Boston University) for their paper, “Task Segregation as a Mechanism for Within-job Inequality: Women and Men of the Transportation Security Administration.” Chan was also recognized by the Academy of Management Review with a Developmental Reviewer Award for his efforts in crafting reviews that provide constructive feedback in a developmental and positive manner.
Accounting Department Chair and Professor Mark Bradshaw won a Financial Accounting and Reporting Section (FARS) Outstanding Discussion Award for his discussion on the subject of attributes and use of financial analyst outputs at the 2022 FARS Midyear Meeting. In addition, he received a 2022 Referee of the Year award from the Journal of Accounting Research, where he was previously honored for his “Excellence in Refereeing” in 2021. These recognitions highlight his work as an expert in the field to review, or “referee,” research submitted to the journal.
The Review of Asset Pricing Studies has bestowed its Best Paper Award on Hillenbrand Family Faculty Fellow and Finance Professor Vyacheslav (Slava) Fos and co-author Alex Chinco (Baruch College) for their paper “The Sound of Many Funds Rebalancing.”
Associate Professor of Management and Organization Judith Clair was honored, along with co-author Katina B. Sawyer (University of Arizona), with the 2022 Award for Outstanding Published Article in Positive Organizational Scholarship for their paper, “Hope Cultures in Organizations: Tackling the Grand Challenge of Commercial Sex Exploitation,” originally published in Administrative Science Quarterly. The award was presented by the Michigan Ross Center for Positive Organizations at the University of Michigan.
O’Connor Family Professor of Management and Organization Michael Pratt was recognized with the Coughlin Distinguished Teaching Award by the Carroll School.
The American Marketing Association honored Getting Price Right: The Behavioral Economics of Profitable Pricing, authored by Associate Professor of Marketing Gerald Smith, with the 2022 Leonard L. Berry Marketing Book Award. This award recognizes innovative ideas within recently published books that have made a significant impact on the field of marketing.
The Federation of European Securities Exchanges (FESE) De la Vega Prize—awarded for an outstanding paper on financial markets—went to Samuel Hartzmark, Hillenbrand Family Faculty Fellow and Professor of Finance, and David Solomon, David J. Mastrocola Faculty Fellow and Professor of Finance, for their paper, “Predictable Price Pressure.”
The American Accounting Association (AAA) awarded Accounting Professor Jeffrey Cohen the Deloitte Foundation Wildman Medal Award for the paper “PCAOB Inspections: Public Accounting Firms on Trial," co-authored by Greg Trompeter (University of Central Florida) and Kimberly D. Westermann (California Polytechnic State University), and published in Contemporary Accounting Research.