When firms recruit inventors, they acquire not only the use of their skills but also enhanced access to their stock of ideas. But do hiring firms actually increase their use of the new recruits' prior inventions? Our estimates suggest they do, quite significantly in fact, by approximately 202%...

Free market advocates consider consumer choice unambiguously welfare-enhancing but consumers are often unable to make choices aligned with their well-being, and being disempowered might sometimes drive preference for products with questionable impact. We contribute to this debate on corporate...

The emerging practice of “impact investing” optimizes both financial and social outcomes, and thus promises to support hybrid organizations that simultaneously pursue financial and social goals. We argue, however, that impact investing decisions may be prone to behavioral factors that limit...

Firms commonly undertake philanthropic campaigns as a means of attracting and retaining customers. Such campaigns often take the form of charity-linked promotions, whereby a firm donates a specific amount to a charitable cause when a customer takes up the promotion through a related purchase. We...

Research summary: Companies often justify their corporate social initiatives by citing talent management benefits. We examine the extent of, and the reasons for, employee interest in such an initiative in a global management consulting firm. We find a large fraction of employees to be interested...

Geographic localization of knowledge spillovers is a central tenet in multiple streams of literature. However, empirical studies have examined this phenomenon for only one geographic unit - country, state or metropolitan area - at a time, and have also rarely accounted for spatial distance. We...

Free market advocates consider consumer choice unambiguously welfare-enhancing, but critics argue that availability of certain products can be detrimental for society. Contributing to this debate, we study the case of controversial skin whitening products sold widely in emerging markets....

Firms serving base-of-the-pyramid markets often employ community-mediated exchange strategies that build and maintain exchange relationships with customers collectively, through community interactions. Prior research suggests that such strategies may engender positive peer influence that leads...

There continues to be substantial debate on whether and how providing inclusive access to finance through microcredit promotes entrepreneurship-led development at the base of the pyramid. We contribute to this literature by examining differences in household-level outcomes associated with...