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Audits as Signals
(University of Chicago Law Review, 2014)
A broad array of law enforcement strategies, from income tax to bank regulation, involve self-reporting by regulated agents and auditing of some fraction of the reports by the regulating bureau. Standard models of ...
Solomonic Separation: Risk Decisions as Productivity Indicators
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2012)
A principal provides budgets to agents (e.g., divisions of a firm or the principal's children) whose expenditures provide her benefits, either materially or because of altruism. Only agents know their potential to generate ...
Variable Temptations and Black Mark Reputations
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2012)
In a world of imperfect information, reputations often guide the sequential decisions to trust and to reward trust. We consider two-player situations, where the players meet but once. One player – the truster – decides ...
Social Class and (Un)ethical Behavior: Evidence from a Large Population Sample
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2012)
We test whether and how membership in the upper class affects ethical behavior in a large representative population sample. Using objective measures of socioeconomic status to define class, we find no evidence of a general ...
Jobs and Kids: Female Employment and Fertility in China
(SpringerOpen, 2013)
Data on 2,355 married women from the 2006 China Health and Nutrition Survey are used to study how female employment affects fertility in China. China has deep concerns with both population size and female employment, so ...
Trust and the Reference Points for Trustworthiness in Gulf and Western Countries
(Oxford University Press, 2010)
Why is private investment so low in Gulf compared to Western countries? We investigate cross-regional differences in trust and reference points for trustworthiness as possible factors. Experiments controlling for cross-regional ...
Assessing Uncertainty in Intelligence
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2012)
This article addresses the challenge of managing uncertainty when producing estimative intelligence. Much of the theory and practice of estimative intelligence aims to eliminate or reduce uncertainty, but this is often ...
The Disgust-Promotes-Disposal Effect
(Springer, 2012)
Individuals tend toward status quo bias: preferring existing options over
new ones. There is a countervailing phenomenon: Humans naturally dispose of
objects that disgust them, such as foul-smelling food. But what if the ...
Responding to Threats of Climate Change Mega-Catastrophes
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2010)
There is a low but uncertain probability that climate change could trigger “mega-catastrophes,” severe and at least partly irreversible adverse effects across broad regions. This paper first discusses the state of current ...
The Methodology of Positive Policy Analysis
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2010)
Policy analyses frequently clash. Their disagreements stem from many sources, such as models, empirical estimates, values, who should have standing, and weighting of different criteria. We provide a simple taxonomy of ...