Negotiation, Organizations & Markets

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets

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    • Article

    Present Bias Causes and Then Dissipates Auto-enrollment Savings Effects

    By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Peter Maxted

    Present bias causes procrastination, which leads households to stick with auto-enrollment defaults. However, present bias also engenders overconsumption. Separation from each employer generates a rollover of 401(k) balances to an individual retirement account (IRA) that is more liquid than the 401(k) account. Households with sufficient present bias will partially or fully deplete these rollover IRAs before retirement. Present-biased agents may be whipsawed by auto-enrollment. They follow their employer's default while still employed and then spend some or all of the new savings shortly after they separate from each employer.

    • Article

    Present Bias Causes and Then Dissipates Auto-enrollment Savings Effects

    By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Peter Maxted

    Present bias causes procrastination, which leads households to stick with auto-enrollment defaults. However, present bias also engenders overconsumption. Separation from each employer generates a rollover of 401(k) balances to an individual retirement account (IRA) that is more liquid than the 401(k) account. Households with sufficient present...

    • May 2022
    • Article

    Policy Stringency and Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Longitudinal Analysis of Data from 15 Countries

    By: Lara B. Aknin, Bernardo Andretti, Rafael Goldszmidt, John F. Helliwell, Anna Petherick, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Daisy Fancourt, Elkhonon Goldberg, Sarah P. Jones, Ozge Karadag, Elie Karam, Richard Layard, Shekhar Saxena, Emily Thornton, Ashley Whillans and Jamil Zaki

    To date, public health policies implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic have been evaluated on the basis of their ability to reduce transmission and minimise economic harm. We aimed to assess the association between COVID-19 policy restrictions and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    • May 2022
    • Article

    Policy Stringency and Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Longitudinal Analysis of Data from 15 Countries

    By: Lara B. Aknin, Bernardo Andretti, Rafael Goldszmidt, John F. Helliwell, Anna Petherick, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Daisy Fancourt, Elkhonon Goldberg, Sarah P. Jones, Ozge Karadag, Elie Karam, Richard Layard, Shekhar Saxena, Emily Thornton, Ashley Whillans and Jamil Zaki

    To date, public health policies implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic have been evaluated on the basis of their ability to reduce transmission and minimise economic harm. We aimed to assess the association between COVID-19 policy restrictions and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    • May 2022
    • Article

    Complex Disclosure

    By: Ginger Zhe Jin, Michael Luca and Daniel Martin

    We present evidence that unnecessarily complex disclosure can result from strategic incentives to shroud information. In our lab experiment, senders are required to report their private information truthfully, but can choose how complex to make their reports. We find that senders use complex disclosure over half the time. This obfuscation is profitable because receivers make systematic mistakes in assessing complex reports. Regression and structural analysis suggest that these mistakes could be driven by receivers who are naïve about the strategic use of complexity or overconfident about their ability to process complex information.

    • May 2022
    • Article

    Complex Disclosure

    By: Ginger Zhe Jin, Michael Luca and Daniel Martin

    We present evidence that unnecessarily complex disclosure can result from strategic incentives to shroud information. In our lab experiment, senders are required to report their private information truthfully, but can choose how complex to make their reports. We find that senders use complex disclosure over half the time. This obfuscation is...

About the Unit

The NOM Unit seeks to understand and improve the design and management of systems in which people make decisions: that is, design and management of negotiations, organizations, and markets. In addition, members of the group share an abiding interest in the micro foundations of these phenomena.

Our work is grounded in the power of strategic interaction to encourage individuals and organizations to create and sustain value (in negotiations, in organizations, and in markets). We explore these interactions through diverse approaches: Although many of us have training in economics, we also have members with backgrounds in social psychology, sociology, and law.

NOM seeks to apply rigorous scientific methods to real-world problems -- producing research and pedagogy that is compelling to both the academy and practitioners.

Recent Publications

Present Bias Causes and Then Dissipates Auto-enrollment Savings Effects

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Peter Maxted
  • Article |
  • AEA Papers and Proceedings
Present bias causes procrastination, which leads households to stick with auto-enrollment defaults. However, present bias also engenders overconsumption. Separation from each employer generates a rollover of 401(k) balances to an individual retirement account (IRA) that is more liquid than the 401(k) account. Households with sufficient present bias will partially or fully deplete these rollover IRAs before retirement. Present-biased agents may be whipsawed by auto-enrollment. They follow their employer's default while still employed and then spend some or all of the new savings shortly after they separate from each employer.
Related

Policy Stringency and Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Longitudinal Analysis of Data from 15 Countries

By: Lara B. Aknin, Bernardo Andretti, Rafael Goldszmidt, John F. Helliwell, Anna Petherick, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Daisy Fancourt, Elkhonon Goldberg, Sarah P. Jones, Ozge Karadag, Elie Karam, Richard Layard, Shekhar Saxena, Emily Thornton, Ashley Whillans and Jamil Zaki
  • May 2022 |
  • Article |
  • Lancet Public Health
To date, public health policies implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic have been evaluated on the basis of their ability to reduce transmission and minimise economic harm. We aimed to assess the association between COVID-19 policy restrictions and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Keywords: Public Health; COVID-19; Mental Health; Policy; Health Pandemics; Government Administration; Well-being
Related

Complex Disclosure

By: Ginger Zhe Jin, Michael Luca and Daniel Martin
  • May 2022 |
  • Article |
  • Management Science
We present evidence that unnecessarily complex disclosure can result from strategic incentives to shroud information. In our lab experiment, senders are required to report their private information truthfully, but can choose how complex to make their reports. We find that senders use complex disclosure over half the time. This obfuscation is profitable because receivers make systematic mistakes in assessing complex reports. Regression and structural analysis suggest that these mistakes could be driven by receivers who are naïve about the strategic use of complexity or overconfident about their ability to process complex information.
Keywords: Disclosure; Experiments; Naiveté; Overconfidence; Corporate Disclosure; Policy; Information; Complexity; Strategy; Consumer Behavior
Related

Decision Leadership: Empowering Others to Make Better Choices

By: Don A. Moore and Max H. Bazerman
  • 2022 |
  • Book |
  • Faculty Research
When we think of leaders, we often imagine lone, inspirational figures lauded for their behaviors, attributes, and personal decisions, and leadership books often reinforce that view. However, this approach ignores a leader’s mission to empower others. Applying decades of behavioral science research, we offer a passionate corrective to this view, casting today’s organizations as decision factories in which effective leaders are decision architects, enabling those around them to make wise, ethical choices consistent with their own interests and the organization’s highest values. As a result, a leader’s impact grows because it ripples out instead of relying on one individual to play the part of heroic figure. Filled with real-life stories and examples of the structures, incentives, and systems that successful leaders have used, this playbook equips each of us to facilitate wise decisions.
Keywords: Empowerment Leadership; Leadership; Employees; Decision Making; Management Style
Related

The Conversational Circumplex: Identifying, Prioritizing, and Pursuing Informational and Relational Motives in Conversation

By: Michael Yeomans, Maurice E. Schweitzer and Alison Wood Brooks
  • Article |
  • Current Opinion in Psychology
The meaning of success in conversation depends on people’s goals. Often, individuals pursue multiple goals simultaneously, such as establishing shared understanding, making a favorable impression, and persuading a conversation partner. In this article, we introduce a novel theoretical framework, the Conversational Circumplex, to classify conversational motives along two key dimensions: 1) Informational: the extent to which a speaker’s motive focuses on giving and/or receiving accurate information and 2) Relational: the extent to which a speaker’s motive focuses on building the relationship. We use the conversational circumplex to underscore the multiplicity of conversational goals that people hold, and highlight the potential for individuals to have conflicting conversational goals (both intrapersonally and interpersonally) that make successful conversation a difficult challenge.
Keywords: Conversation; Goal Pursuit; Communication; Interpersonal Communication; Goals and Objectives; Framework
Related

Consumers Value Effort over Ease When Caring for Close Others

By: Ximena Garcia-Rada, Mary Steffel, Elanor F. Williams and Michael I. Norton
  • April 2022 |
  • Article |
  • Journal of Consumer Research
Many products and services are designed to make caregiving easier, from premade meals for feeding families to robo-cribs that automatically rock babies to sleep. Yet, using these products may come with a cost: consumers may feel they have not exerted enough effort. Nine experiments show that consumers feel like better caregivers when they put more effort into caregiving tasks than when they use effort-reducing products to perform such tasks. The beneficial effect of effort on caregivers’ self-perceptions is driven by the symbolic meaning of caregiving (i.e., the task’s ability to show love) independent of the quality of care provided (i.e., the task’s ability to meet needs) and is most pronounced when expressing symbolic meaning is most important: when caregivers are providing emotional support rather than physical support, when they are caring for another person with whom they have a close relationship, and when there is a relationship norm that investing effort shows love. Finally, this work demonstrates that marketers can make effort-reducing products more appealing by acknowledging caregivers’ efforts rather than emphasizing how these products make caregiving less effortful. Together, these findings expand our current understanding of effort, caregiving, and consumer choice in close relationships.
Keywords: Effor; Caregiving; Close Relationships; Symbolic Meaning; Signaling; Relationships; Consumer Behavior; Perception
Related

Predictable Financial Crises

By: Robin Greenwood, Samuel G. Hanson, Andrei Shleifer and Jakob Ahm Sørensen
  • April 2022 |
  • Article |
  • Journal of Finance
Using historical data on post-war financial crises around the world, we show that crises are substantially predictable. The combination of rapid credit and asset price growth over the prior three years, whether in the nonfinancial business or the household sector, is associated with about a 40% probability of entering a financial crisis within the next three years. This compares with a roughly 7% probability in normal times, when neither credit nor asset price growth has been elevated. Our evidence cuts against the view that financial crises are unpredictable “bolts from the sky” and points toward the Kindleberger-Minsky view that crises are the byproduct of predictable, boom-bust credit cycles. The predictability we document favors macro-financial policies that “lean against the wind” of credit market booms.
Keywords: Financial Crisis; Global Range; Forecasting and Prediction; Mathematical Methods
Related

Inclusive Innovation at Mass General Brigham

By: Katherine Coffman and Olivia Hull
  • March 2022 |
  • Teaching Note |
  • Faculty Research
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 921-006, “Inclusive Innovation at Mass General Brigham." This case invites students to explore the individual and structural factors that lead to an under-representation of women in male-dominated domains, and to think critically about managerial strategies for addressing gender gaps. The case asks students to consider the challenges of Mass General Brigham (MGB) CEO Anne Klibanski and Chief Innovation Officer Christopher Coburn. While the two leaders have shepherded a great deal of research commercialization at MGB, they recognize that participation among women has lagged. The key questions are why, and what can be done about it. While the case discussion outlined below starts by tackling these questions within the specific context of MGB, the discussion builds to generalizable takeaways and research-backed frameworks for addressing gender gaps across a range of settings.
Keywords: Inclusion; Gender Gap; Gender Inclusivity; Gender; Equality and Inequality; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques
Related
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Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit
Harvard Business School
Baker Library | Bloomberg Center
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
NOM@hbs.edu