Many products and services are best (and typically) described in prose. In extant preference-measurement methods, however, due to the challenge of numerically representing prose in econometric models, products can only be described to participants and portrayed in the utility model as a list of...

We identify a new phenomenon – “Plebeian bias” – in the crowdsourcing of creative designs. Stardom, an emphasis on established individuals, has long been observed in many offline contexts. Does this phenomenon carry over to online communities? We investigate a large-scale dataset...

Online crowdfunding is a popular new tool for raising capital to commercialize product innovation. Product innovation must be both novel and useful (1-4). Therefore, we study the role of novelty and usefulness claims on Kickstarter. Startlingly, we find that a single claim of novelty increases...

People can be surprisingly insensitive to quantities in valuation judgments — a phenomenon called scope insensitivity that is generally attributed to the operation of affective processes in judgment. Building on research showing that affect is inherently a decision-making system of the...

When asked to delay consumption, people are impatient and discount future rewards more than when offered the chance to accelerate consumption. Three experiments provide a process-level account for this asymmetry, with implications for the design of decision environments that promote less...

We propose a regional inequality-based mechanism to explain the heterogeneity in the spread of Covid-19 and test it using data from India. We argue that an area characterized by coreperiphery economic structure creates regional inequality in which the periphery remains dependent on the core for...

We propose a regional inequality-based mechanism to explain the heterogeneity in the spread of Covid-19 and test it using data from India. We argue that a core-periphery economic structure is likely to increase the spread of infection because it involves movement of goods and people across the...

We study the role of formal institutions of contract enforcement in facilitating investments in small and medium firms(MSME). In a framework where established entrepreneurs can enforce contracts informally using their network ties and hierarchical advantage, we argue that an efficient formal...