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解析作者 | 唧唧堂管理学写作小组:泡泡
审校 | 唧唧堂管理学写作小组:YiYi
编辑 | 小巴
1. 比特币:一个天然的寡头垄断
我们认为,比特币开采硬件的集中生产和所有权是自然产生于比特币挖矿的经济激励。我们把比特币开采模拟成一个两阶段的竞争;矿工们在价格上竞争出售硬件,同时在数量上竞争开采奖励。我们对模型中的均衡进行了描述,并表明运营成本的微小不对称导致了采矿设备所有权的高度集中。我们进一步表明,采矿设备的生产将由拥有最高效硬件的矿工主导,他将向竞争对手出售硬件,同时也可能将其用于采矿。
We argue that the concentrated production and ownership of Bitcoin mining hardware arise naturally from the economic incentives of Bitcoin mining. We model Bitcoin mining as a two-stage competition; miners compete in prices to sell hardware while competing in quantities for mining rewards. We characterize equilibria in our model and show that small asymmetries in operational costs result in highly concentrated ownership of mining equipment. We further show that production of mining equipment will be dominated by the miner with the most efficient hardware, who will sell hardware to competitors while possibly also using it to mine.
参考文献:Nick Arnosti, S. Matthew Weinberg (2022) Bitcoin: A Natural Oligopoly. Management Science 68(7):4755-4771.
2. 利用可重复使用的资源进行在线选品优化
我们考虑一个在线选品优化问题,其中有n个可替代的产品,具有固定的可重复使用能力。在每个时期t,一个具有某些偏好(可能是对抗性选择)的用户从可用产品集合中提供一个产品子集,到达卖方的平台。用户根据偏好模型给定的概率选择产品,并在随机数的时期内使用它,这个随机数是根据某种分布的i.i.d.分布,该分布只取决于j为卖方产生的收入()。卖方的目标是找到一个策略,在有限的时期T内使期望累积收入最大化。我们的主要贡献是表明,一个简单的短视策略(我们从可用的产品中选择短视最优选品组合提供给每个用户)为这个问题提供了一个很好的近似解。特别是,我们表明短视策略有1/2的竞争性,也就是说,短视策略的期望累积收入至少是对用户偏好模型的序列和所有产品的随机使用时间分布具有完全信息的最优策略期望收入的一半。相反,短视策略不需要任何关于未来到达或随机使用时间分布的信息。该分析基于一个耦合论证,使我们能够用短视策略的期望收入来约束最优算法的期望收入。我们还考虑了使用时间分布可能依赖于每个用户的类型的情形,并表明在这种更普遍的情形下,没有在线算法具有非显著的竞争比保证。最后,我们进行了数值实验来比较短视策略与其他自然策略的鲁棒性和性能。
We consider an online assortment optimization problem where we have n substitutable products with fixed reusable capacities . In each period t, a user with some preferences (potentially adversarially chosen) who offers a subset of products, , from the set of available products arrives at the seller’s platform. The user selects product with probability given by the preference model and uses it for a random number of periods, , that is distributed i.i.d. according to some distribution that depends only on j generating a revenue for the seller. The goal of the seller is to find a policy that maximizes the expected cumulative revenue over a finite horizon T. Our main contribution is to show that a simple myopic policy (where we offer the myopically optimal assortment from the available products to each user) provides a good approximation for the problem. In particular, we show that the myopic policy is 1/2-competitive, that is, the expected cumulative revenue of the myopic policy is at least half the expected revenue of the optimal policy with full information about the sequence of user preference models and the distribution of random usage times of all the products. In contrast, the myopic policy does not require any information about future arrivals or the distribution of random usage times. The analysis is based on a coupling argument that allows us to bound the expected revenue of the optimal algorithm in terms of the expected revenue of the myopic policy. We also consider the setting where usage time distributions can depend on the type of each user and show that in this more general case there is no online algorithm with a nontrivial competitive ratio guarantee. Finally, we perform numerical experiments to compare the robustness and performance of myopic policy with other natural policies.
参考文献:Xiao-Yue Gong, Vineet Goyal, Garud N. Iyengar, David Simchi-Levi, Rajan Udwani, Shuangyu Wang (2021) Online Assortment Optimization with Reusable Resources. Management Science 68(7):4772-4785.
3. 为新疫苗设计预先市场承诺
预先市场承诺(AMCs)提供了一个机制以刺激低收入国家产品供应商的投资。在AMC中,捐赠者承诺为低收入国家购买的每单位产品提供特定的补贴,直到基金用完为止,从而加强激励供应商对研究、开发和产能的投资。在过去的十年中,一个15亿美元的试点AMC已经启动,用于向发展中国家分发肺炎球菌疫苗;在当前的大流行病中,AMC的变种被用来资助COVID-19疫苗。本文对AMC进行了首次正式分析。我们构建了一个模型,在这个模型中,一个利他主义的捐赠者在供应商投资后代表一个低收入国家与疫苗供应商进行谈判。我们用这个模型来解释AMC的逻辑--作为一个解决滞留问题的方案,并分析在各种经济条件下(成本不确定性、供应商竞争)的替代设计特征。一个关键的发现是,最优的AMC设计取决于产品在其开发周期的不同阶段而有明显的差异。
Advance market commitments (AMCs) provide a mechanism to stimulate investment by suppliers of products to low-income countries. In an AMC, donors commit to a fund from which a specified subsidy is paid per unit purchased by low-income countries until the fund is exhausted, strengthening suppliers’ incentives to invest in research, development, and capacity. Last decade saw the launch of a $1.5 billion pilot AMC to distribute pneumococcal vaccine to the developing world; in the current pandemic, variations on AMCs are being used to fund COVID-19 vaccines. This paper undertakes the first formal analysis of AMCs. We construct a model in which an altruistic donor negotiates on behalf of a low-income country with a vaccine supplier after the supplier has sunk investments. We use this model to explain the logic of an AMC—as a solution to a hold-up problem—and to analyze alternative design features under various economic conditions (cost uncertainty, supplier competition). A key finding is that optimal AMC design differs markedly depending on where the product is in its development cycle.
参考文献:Michael Kremer, Jonathan Levin, Christopher M. Snyder (2022) Designing Advance Market Commitments for New Vaccines. Management Science 68(7):4786-4814.
4. 道德无知的(非)弹性
无知使个人能够采取不道德的行为。人们对降低道德无知有浓厚的兴趣,这在政策界是众所周知的。在本文中,我们研究了对道德无知的需求如何响应货币激励,以及对无知的需求曲线如何对社会规范信息做出反应。我们提出了一个简单的行为模型,其中个人在面对道德信息时的自私行为会承受道德成本。在几个实验中,我们发现在小的货币激励下,道德上的无知会减少超过30百分点,但我们发现社会规范信息没有显著变化,并且我们记录了道德背景下无知的强烈持续性。我们的研究结果表明,相当简单的信息干预措施对无知的影响可能有限。相反,激励措施的变化可能非常有效。
Ignorance enables individuals to act immorally. This is well known in policy circles, in which there is keen interest in lowering moral ignorance. In this paper, we study how the demand for moral ignorance responds to monetary incentives and how the demand curve for ignorance reacts to social norm messages. We propose a simple behavioral model in which individuals suffer moral costs when behaving selfishly in the face of moral information. In several experiments, we find that moral ignorance decreases by more than 30 percentage points with small monetary incentives, but we find no significant change with social norm messages, and we document strong persistence of ignorance across moral contexts. Our findings indicate that rather simple messaging interventions may have limited effects on ignorance. In contrast, changes in incentives could be highly effective.
参考文献:Marta Serra-Garcia, Nora Szech (2021) The (In)Elasticity of Moral Ignorance. Management Science 68(7):4815-4834.
5. 沉默的声音:当内部人员不进行交易时我们知道什么?
本文研究了内部沉默,即没有内部人交易时期的信息内容。我们假设,为了避免诉讼风险,理性的内部人在预计到坏消息时不会出售自己公司的股票;考虑到不利的前景,他们也不会购买。因此,他们保持沉默。相比之下,内部人在没有预料到重大坏消息的时候会卖出股票。内部人沉默后的未来股票回报率明显低于内部人净卖出后的回报率,尤其是在诉讼风险较高的公司中。我们研究了两个准自然实验,其中新法律导致内部人的股东诉讼风险发生变化。在这两种情形下,股东诉讼风险较高时,内部人保持沉默的股票的回报率明显低于其他股票。
This paper examines the information content of insider silence, periods of no insider trading. We hypothesize that, to avoid litigation risk, rational insiders do not sell own-company shares when they anticipate bad news; neither would they buy, given unfavorable prospects. Thus, they keep silent. By contrast, insiders sell shares when they do not anticipate significant bad news. Future stock returns are significantly lower following insider silence than following insider net selling, especially among firms with higher litigation risk. We examine two quasinatural experiments where new laws result in changes in shareholder litigation risks for insiders. In both cases, with higher shareholder litigation risks, stocks where insiders stay silent earn significantly lower returns than other stocks.
参考文献:George P. Gao, Qingzhong Ma, David T. Ng, Ying Wu (2021) The Sound of Silence: What Do We Know When Insiders Do Not Trade?. Management Science 68(7):4835-4857.
6. 动态众包竞赛中反馈的作用:一个结构性的实证分析。
在本文中,我们实证研究了绩效反馈对众包竞赛结果的影响。我们开发了一个动态结构模型来捕捉驱动竞赛参与者行为的经济过程,并使用关于真实在线标志设计竞赛的详细数据集来估计该模型。我们丰富的模型捕捉到了众包环境的关键特征,包括一个大型的参与者池;整个比赛过程中新参与者的参赛作品;参赛者的开发(修改以前的作品)和探索(彻底的新作品)行为;以及参与者在动态博弈中对参赛、探索和开发这些决策的战略选择。使用反事实模拟,我们比较了众包竞赛在其他反馈披露策略和奖励水平下的结果。我们的模拟结果表明,尽管它在许多平台上很普遍,但完整的反馈策略(在整个比赛期间提供反馈)可能不是最佳的。延迟反馈策略(只在比赛的后半段提供反馈)会导致更好的整体比赛结果。
In this paper, we empirically examine the impact of performance feedback on the outcome of crowdsourcing contests. We develop a dynamic structural model to capture the economic processes that drive contest participants’ behavior and estimate the model using a detailed data set about real online logo design contests. Our rich model captures key features of the crowdsourcing context, including a large participant pool; entries by new participants throughout the contest; exploitation (revision of previous submissions) and exploration (radically novel submissions) behaviors by contest incumbents; and the participants’ strategic choice among these entry, exploration, and exploitation decisions in a dynamic game. Using counterfactual simulations, we compare the outcome of crowdsourcing contests under alternative feedback disclosure policies and award levels. Our simulation results suggest that, despite its prevalence on many platforms, the full feedback policy (providing feedback throughout the contest) may not be optimal. The late feedback policy (providing feedback only in the second half of the contest) leads to a better overall contest outcome.
参考文献:Zhaohui (Zoey) Jiang, Yan Huang, Damian R. Beil (2021) The Role of Feedback in Dynamic Crowdsourcing Contests: A Structural Empirical Analysis. Management Science 68(7):4858-4877.
7. 具有需求学习的隐私保护动态个性化定价。
电子商务的盛行使顾客的详细个人信息很容易被零售商获取,且这些信息被广泛用于定价决策。在使用个性化信息时,如何保护这些信息的隐私成为实践中的一个关键问题。在本文中,我们考虑了一个在T时期内的动态定价问题,其中发布的价格和个性化信息的需求函数未知。在每个时期t,零售商观察到一个到达顾客的个人信息并提供一个价格。然后顾客做出购买决策,零售商将利用这个决策来了解潜在的需求函数。在此过程中可能存在严重的隐私问题:第三方代理可能会根据定价系统中的价格变化来推断个性化信息和购买决策。利用计算机科学中差分隐私的基本框架,我们开发了一种保护隐私的动态定价策略,该策略试图最大化零售商的收入,同时避免个人客户信息和购买决策的信息泄露。为此,我们首先引入了针对动态定价问题量身定制的预期-差分隐私概念。我们的策略同时实现了隐私保证和后悔值的性能保证。粗略地说,对于d维的个性化信息,当客户的信息被逆向选择时,我们的算法实现了的期望后悔。对于随机的个性化信息,后悔的界可以进一步提高到。
The prevalence of e-commerce has made customers’ detailed personal information readily accessible to retailers, and this information has been widely used in pricing decisions. When using personalized information, the question of how to protect the privacy of such information becomes a critical issue in practice. In this paper, we consider a dynamic pricing problem over T time periods with an unknown demand function of posted price and personalized information. At each time t, the retailer observes an arriving customer’s personal information and offers a price. The customer then makes the purchase decision, which will be utilized by the retailer to learn the underlying demand function. There is potentially a serious privacy concern during this process: a third-party agent might infer the personalized information and purchase decisions from price changes in the pricing system. Using the fundamental framework of differential privacy from computer science, we develop a privacy-preserving dynamic pricing policy, which tries to maximize the retailer revenue while avoiding information leakage of individual customer’s information and purchasing decisions. To this end, we first introduce a notion of anticipating-differential privacy that is tailored to the dynamic pricing problem. Our policy achieves both the privacy guarantee and the performance guarantee in terms of regret. Roughly speaking, for d-dimensional personalized information, our algorithm achieves the expected regret at the order of when the customers’ information is adversarially chosen. For stochastic personalized information, the regret bound can be further improved to .
参考文献:Xi Chen, David Simchi-Levi, Yining Wang (2021) Privacy-Preserving Dynamic Personalized Pricing with Demand Learning. Management Science 68(7):4878-4898.
8. 工程社会学习:在线平台限时销售活动的信息设计。
许多在线平台提供限时销售活动,即在预先规定的时间内以固定价格销售产品。在活动期间,平台通常会显示一些关于以前客户购买决策的信息。利用动态贝叶斯说服框架,我们研究了一个收入最大化的平台应该如何在这种情况下优化其信息策略。我们通过减少信息空间和专有历史的维度来重新表述平台的问题。具体来说,三条信息就足够了:一条中性的建议,诱导顾客根据她对产品的私人信号做出购买决策;一条积极的(消极的)建议,通过忽略她的信号来诱导她购买(不购买)。平台的专有历史可以用净购买位置来表示,这是一个单维汇总统计数据,计算收到中性建议的客户的购买和未购买之间的累积差异。随后,我们建立了最优策略的结构属性,并揭示了平台的基本权衡:长期信息(和收入)生成与短期收入提取。此外,我们提出并优化了一类启发式策略。最优启发式策略一直只提供中性建议,直到一个截止客户为止,之后只提供积极或消极的建议,当且仅当截止客户之后的净购买位置超过一个阈值时,才提供积极建议。该策略易于实施,并且在数值上表现良好。最后,我们通过放宽一些信息假设来证明我们方法的通用性和我们研究结果的稳健性。
Many online platforms offer time-locked sales campaigns, whereby products are sold at fixed prices for prespecified lengths of time. Platforms often display some information about previous customers’ purchase decisions during campaigns. Using a dynamic Bayesian persuasion framework, we study how a revenue-maximizing platform should optimize its information policy for such a setting. We reformulate the platform’s problem equivalently by reducing the dimensionality of its message space and proprietary history. Specifically, three messages suffice: a neutral recommendation that induces a customer to make her purchase decision according to her private signal about the product and a positive (respectively (resp.), negative) recommendation that induces her to purchase (resp., not purchase) by ignoring her signal. The platform’s proprietary history can be represented by the net purchase position, a single-dimensional summary statistic that computes the cumulative difference between purchases and nonpurchases made by customers having received the neutral recommendation. Subsequently, we establish structural properties of the optimal policy and uncover the platform’s fundamental trade-off: long-term information (and revenue) generation versus short-term revenue extraction. Further, we propose and optimize over a class of heuristic policies. The optimal heuristic policy provides only neutral recommendations up to a cutoff customer and provides only positive or negative recommendations afterward, with the recommendation being positive if and only if the net purchase position after the cutoff customer exceeds a threshold. This policy is easy to implement and numerically shown to perform well. Finally, we demonstrate the generality of our methodology and the robustness of our findings by relaxing some informational assumptions.
参考文献:Can Küçükgül, Özalp Özer, Shouqiang Wang (2021) Engineering Social Learning: Information Design of Time-Locked Sales Campaigns for Online Platforms. Management Science 68(7):4899-4918.
9. 用于多种相关医学干预临床试验的贝叶斯顺序学习。
我们提出并分析了第一个临床试验设计模型,该模型整合了三个重要趋势,旨在提高临床试验的有效性,为卫生技术采用决策提供依据:适应性设计,动态调整样本量和对不同患者的干预分配;多臂试验设计,同时比较多种干预措施;以及基于价值的设计,关注健康干预措施相对于当前护理标准的成本效益改善。应用实例是无缝II/III期剂量探索试验和测试多种组合疗法的试验。我们的目标是使采用医疗技术的决策在扣除临床试验费用后获得最大的期望人口健康经济效益。我们表明,将适应性、多臂和基于价值的试验设计方法统一起来,可以通过有效的前瞻性策略减少多臂试验的成本和时间,这些策略注重对患者的价值,并考虑到跨臂的相关回报。我们的方法与其他许多随机优化工作不同的特点包括:平衡采样成本和这些样本信息的期望价值的停止时间,新的渐进收敛证明提供的性能保证,以及对不同的臂潜在的不同采样成本的建模。我们提出的解决方案可以进行可行的计算,并且可以对病人进行随机化。基础模型的试验类别假设健康经济数据被快速收集和观察。贝叶斯优化的相关工作可以使我们进一步纳入在治疗开始时间和结果观察之间有中间时间延迟的试验。
We propose and analyze the first model for clinical trial design that integrates each of three important trends intending to improve the effectiveness of clinical trials that inform health-technology adoption decisions: adaptive design, which dynamically adjusts the sample size and allocation of interventions to different patients; multiarm trial design, which compares multiple interventions simultaneously; and value-based design, which focuses on cost-benefit improvements of health interventions over a current standard of care. Example applications are to seamless phase II/III dose-finding trials and to trials that test multiple combinations of therapies. Our objective is to maximize the expected population health-economic benefit of health-technology adoption decisions less clinical trial costs. We show that unifying the adaptive, multiarm, and value-based approaches to trial design can reduce the cost and duration of multiarm trials with efficient adaptive look ahead policies that focus on value to patients and account for correlated rewards across arms. Features that differentiate our approach from much other work on stochastic optimization include stopping times that balance sampling costs and the expected value of information of those samples, performance guarantees offered by new asymptotic convergence proofs, and the modeling of arms’ potentially different sampling costs. Our proposed solution can be computed feasibly and can randomize patients. The class of trials for the base model assumes that health-economic data are collected and observed quickly. Related work from Bayesian optimization can enable the further inclusion of trials with intermediate duration delays between the time of treatment initiation and observation of outcomes.
参考文献:Stephen E. Chick, Noah Gans, Özge Yapar (2021) Bayesian Sequential Learning for Clinical Trials of Multiple Correlated Medical Interventions. Management Science 68(7):4919-4938.
10. 投机交易和泡沫:来自艺术市场的证据。
我们认为,推断性预期推动了战后艺术市场的繁荣-萧条周期。价格上涨与需求基本面的增加相吻合,但随后是可预测的萧条。可预测的变化约占五年价格变化方差的一半。高价格与投机泡沫的许多属性相吻合:交易量、短期交易的份额、战后艺术品的份额和波动性在繁荣期都较高。此外,短期交易的表现逊于长期交易。调查证据进一步证实了信念、价格和交易量动态之间的联系,正如模型中推断性信念助长投机泡沫一样。
We argue that extrapolative expectations drive boom–bust cycles in the postwar art market. Price run-ups coincide with increases in demand fundamentals but are followed by predictable busts. Predictable changes account for about half of the variance of five-year price changes. High prices coincide with many attributes of speculative bubbles: trading volume, the share of short-term trades, the share of postwar art, and volatility are all higher during booms. In addition, short-term transactions underperform long-term transactions. Survey evidence further confirms the link between beliefs, prices, and volume dynamics as in models in which extrapolative beliefs fuel speculative bubbles.
参考文献:Julien Pénasse, Luc Renneboog (2021) Speculative Trading and Bubbles: Evidence from the Art Market. Management Science 68(7):4939-4963.
11. 产品销售与按使用付费的服务:竞争性商业模式的战略分析。
我们提出了一个模型,该模型为 “按使用付费”(PPU)商业模式在过去二十年的激增提供了可能的解释。将产品的“一部分”作为服务提供给使用率较低的客户是一种成本优势,但需要额外的交付成本。以前的研究集中在信息商品上(生产成本可以忽略不计),并预测PPU在均衡状态下作为一种差异化产品出现时,从根本上说会取得比直接销售更低的利润。我们通过涵盖双头垄断竞争中具有任何生产成本的商品来扩展这一理论。我们表明,只要交货成本不是太高,PPU的商业模式可以比销售更有利可图(特别是在中等生产成本下),而随着新技术的发展降低了成本,这一要求更容易得到满足。此外,如果企业对其客户的使用情况不完全了解,PPU针对客户不同的使用情况进行有效的定价,比销售有额外的优势。这要求公司采用不会在随机使用水平上不恰当地分配生产成本的会计方法。如果PPU服务的提供受到排队效率低下的影响,这并不从根本上改变PPU和销售模式的相对盈利能力,只要PPU供应商能够吸引足够高的需求,就能从集合经济中获益。
We present a model that suggests possible explanations for the observed proliferation of “pay-per-use” (PPU) business models over the last two decades. Delivering “fractions” of a product as a service offers a cost advantage to customers with lower usage but requires extra delivery costs. Previous research focused on information goods (with negligible production costs) and predicted that PPU, when arising as a differentiation to selling in equilibrium, would fundamentally achieve lower profits than selling. We extend the theory by covering goods with any production cost in duopolistic competition. We show that PPU business models can be more profitable than selling (especially at midrange production costs), as long as their delivery costs are not too high, a requirement that is more easily fulfilled as new technologies reduce these costs. Moreover, if firms are imperfectly informed about their customers’ usage profiles, PPU’s effective pricing of customers’ varying usage offers an additional advantage over selling. This requires companies to employ accounting methods that do not inappropriately allocate production costs over stochastic usage levels. If PPU service provision suffers from queueing inefficiencies, this does not fundamentally change the relative profitability of the PPU and selling models, provided that PPU providers can attract sufficiently high demand to benefit from pooling economies.
参考文献:Konstantinos Ladas, Stylianos Kavadias, Christoph Loch (2021) Product Selling vs. Pay-Per-Use Service: A Strategic Analysis of Competing Business Models. Management Science 68(7):4964-4982.
12. 在上游竞争下与零售商共享需求信息。
我们分析了两个制造商和一个零售商在上游竞争下的需求信息共享合作。制造商生产部分可替代的产品,这些产品由零售商储存并在随机需求的市场上销售。制造商私下了解不确定的需求,并决定是否与零售商共享此信息。我们表明,如果不共享信息,制造商最终会向上扭曲其批发价格,以向零售商传递其私人信息,且在上游竞争下,这种扭曲会传播给竞争制造商。因此,尽管制造商不分享信息的决定可能有利于或损害自己的利润,但总是有利于竞争制造商。在低强度竞争下,信号驱动的扭曲加剧了双重边际效应,伤害了各方;而在更激烈的竞争下,这些扭曲有助于制造商抵消批发价格的下行压力。因此,在均衡状态下,信息相同的两个制造商在前一种情况下共享信息,但在后一种情况下则不共享。此外,当制造商的信息准确度不同时,只有信息更丰富的制造商才会共享信息。零售商总是从两个制造商的信息共享中获益,而当信息更丰富的制造商共享信息时,其获益更大。我们表明,零售商可以采用一种合约机制来实现信息共享。最后,我们分析了制造商的信息获取决策,发现在竞争的情况下,两个制造商获取的信息最少,因此他们在信息共享博弈中最好不共享信息。
We analyze demand information sharing collaboration between two manufacturers and a retailer under upstream competition. The manufacturers produce partially substitutable products, which are stocked by the retailer that sells them in the market characterized by random demand. The manufacturers are privately informed about uncertain demand and decide on whether to share this information with the retailer. We show that by not sharing information, a manufacturer ends up distorting its wholesale price upward to signal its private information to the retailer, and under upstream competition, this distortion is propagated to the competing manufacturer. Thus, although a manufacturer’s decision to not share information may benefit or hurt its own profit, this always benefits the competing manufacturer. Under low intensity of competition, signaling-driven distortions exacerbate double marginalization and hurt all parties, whereas under more intense competition, these distortions help manufacturers offset downward pressure on wholesale prices. Thus, in equilibrium similarly informed manufacturers share information in the former case but not in the latter case. Additionally, when manufacturers differ in their information accuracies, only the better-informed manufacturer shares information. The retailer always benefits from both manufacturers sharing information, and its benefits are larger when the better-informed manufacturer shares information. We show existence of a contracting mechanism the retailer can employ to enable information sharing. Finally, we analyze manufacturers’ information acquisition decisions and find that under competition, two manufacturers acquire minimal information so that they are better off not sharing information in the information sharing game.
参考文献:Aditya Jain (2021) Sharing Demand Information with Retailer Under Upstream Competition. Management Science 68(7):4983-5001.
13. 估计零售店的替代和购物篮效应:对选品规划的影响。
许多零售商为了提高商店的生产力,正在减少商店的占地面积,并相应地缩小选品种类。从选品中删除的商品的部分收入可以由替代产品来弥补,但选品中保留的产品的一些收入可能由于购物篮放弃而损失。在一个实际的环境中,购物篮可能包含数千种产品中的任何子集,估计替代效应和购物篮效应是一个挑战。为了解决这个问题,我们开发了一个需求模型,该模型结合了多项Logit(MNL)模型来估计子类别内的替代性,以及购买-发生率模型来估计购物篮的保留。使用一家办公用品零售连锁店的12家门店的交易和产品可用性数据,我们表明:(i)整个商店的购物篮效应是巨大的(我们具有购物篮效应的模型预测样本外交易的平均绝对误差(MAPE)只有7%,而只带有替代效应的模型则为22%)。(ii) 糟糕的服务水平会显著加剧由放弃的购物篮造成的利润损失,以及(iii)在为小商店选品时考虑购物篮效应可以显著提高这些商店的购物篮保留率并增加利润(高达16%)。
Many retailers are reducing store footprint and downsizing their assortments accordingly to improve store productivity. Some of the revenue for items removed from the assortment may be recouped by substitution, but also some of the revenue for items kept in the assortment may be lost due to basket abandonment. For a practical setting where baskets may contain any subset of items from thousands of products, estimating both substitution and basket effects is a challenge. To address this, we develop a demand model that combines a multinomial logit (MNL) model to estimate substitution within a subcategory and a purchase-incidence model to estimate basket retention. Using transaction and product availability data from 12 stores of an office supplies retail chain that were dramatically downsized from large- to small-format stores, we show that (i) storewide basket effects are substantial (our model with basket effects predicts out-of-sample transactions with mean absolute percent error (MAPE) of only 7% compared with 22% for a model with only substitution effects), (ii) poor service level can significantly exacerbate lost profit due to abandoned baskets at these stores, and (iii) consideration of the basket effect in assortment selection for the small stores can significantly improve basket retention and increase profits (by up to 16%) at these stores.
参考文献:Vidya Mani, Douglas J. Thomas, Saurabh Bansal (2021) Estimating Substitution and Basket Effects in Retail Stores: Implications for Assortment Planning. Management Science 68(7):5002-5024.
14. 具有异质集群偏好的客户评论提供策略。
公司经常在网上发布用户生成的评论,以便不同集群(年龄、地理区域、职业等)的潜在买家可以在购买前从现有客户那里了解体验商品的质量和集群偏好。在本文中,我们评估了两种常见的用户生成评论的提供策略,用于向具有异质偏好的不同集群中的客户销售体验商品。第一个策略称为基于关联的策略 (AP),在该策略下,集群中的客户只能观察同一集群内用户生成的聚合评论(即平均评分)。第二个策略称为基于全局的策略 (GP),在该策略下,每个客户都可以看到跨集群的所有用户生成的汇总评论。我们发现,一般来说,公司会从向客户提供更多 "相关评论 "的策略中获益。当顾客对产品质量更有把握,并且集群更多样化时,AP比GP更有利可图,因为它向顾客提供了特定集群的评论。否则,GP更有利可图,因为它提供了更多相关性较低的评论。此外,我们提出了第三种提供策略,将AP和GP的信息结合起来,并表明它对公司来说更有利可图。尽管第三种策略总能带来比GP更高的消费者福利,但它可能产生比AP更低的消费者福利。
Companies often post user-generated reviews online so that potential buyers in different clusters (age, geographic region, occupation, etc.) can learn from existing customers about the quality of an experience good and cluster preferences before purchasing. In this paper, we evaluate two common user-generated review provision policies for selling experience goods to customers in different clusters with heterogeneous preferences. The first policy is called the association-based policy (AP) under which a customer in a cluster can only observe the aggregate review (i.e., average rating) generated by users within the same cluster. The second policy is called the global-based policy (GP) under which each customer is presented with the aggregate review generated by all users across clusters. We find that, in general, the firm benefits from a policy that provides a larger number of “relevant reviews” to customers. When customers are more certain about the product quality and when clusters are more diverse, AP is more profitable than GP because it provides cluster-specific reviews to customers. Otherwise, GP is more profitable as it provides a larger number of less relevant reviews. Moreover, we propose a third provision policy that imparts the union of the information by AP and GP and show that it is more profitable for the firm. Although the third policy always renders a higher consumer welfare than GP, it may generate a lower consumer welfare than AP.
参考文献:Shihong Xiao, Ying-Ju Chen, Christopher S. Tang (2021) Customer Review Provision Policies with Heterogeneous Cluster Preferences. Management Science 68(7):5025-5048.
15. 集成库存和选品规划的模型。
集成库存和选品规划决策是一项具有挑战性的任务,需要比较通过扩大消费者选择范围来扩大需求的价值和提高库存可用性的价值。我们开发了一个基于缺货的替代品模型,用于在可以补货的情况下衡量这些价值,这是文献中缺少的一个特征。利用单产品情形的显示解,我们为多产品情形开发了一个精确的近似方案。这个近似方案使我们能够通过解决一个具有不动点方程约束的分数整数程序来优化库存决策。当产品的利润率相同时,我们通过对一维参数进行二分来精确地求解整数规划。相反,当产品有不同的利润率时,我们提出了一个分数松弛,也可以通过二分法来解决,并得出接近最优的解决方案。总的来说,我们的方法提供的解决方案在最优策略的0.1%以内,并在我们生成的 80% 的随机实例中找到了最优解决方案。
Integrating inventory and assortment planning decisions is a challenging task that requires comparing the value of demand expansion through broader choice for consumers with the value of higher in-stock availability. We develop a stockout-based substitution model for trading off these values in a setting with inventory replenishment, a feature missing in the literature. Using the closed form solution for the single-product case, we develop an accurate approximation for the multiproduct case. This approximated formulation allows us to optimize inventory decisions by solving a fractional integer program with a fixed point equation constraint. When products have equal margins, we solve the integer program exactly by bisection over a one-dimensional parameter. In contrast, when products have different margins, we propose a fractional relaxation that we can also solve by bisection and that results in near-optimal solutions. Overall, our approach provides solutions within 0.1% of the optimal policy and finds the optimal solution in 80% of the random instances we generate.
参考文献:Victor Martínez-de-Albéniz, Sumit Kunnumkal (2021) A Model for Integrated Inventory and Assortment Planning. Management Science 68(7):5049-5067.
16. 基于股票的激励对库存管理的影响。
经典库存理论通常关注运营权衡以优化库存决策。然而,获得基于股票激励的上市公司的经理可能会改变库存运营以影响股票价格。我们建立了一个风格化的模型,该模型显示,在对股票价格感兴趣的情况下,即使市场预计会出现此类行为,当库存可以提高销售额或降低报告的商品销售成本时,经理人也会过多地储存库存。我们分析了基于股票的激励措施的联合效应和边际效应和利用库存管理收益的成本,这可能为检测库存扭曲和设计管理层的激励计划提供有益的启示。然后,我们基于美国公开上市的零售商和制造商的财务数据进行了实证分析。我们发现企业的异常过剩库存与企业高层管理人员的股票激励(库存操纵成本)之间存在正(负)相关关系。此外,当库存操纵成本为中等时,基于股票的激励对异常超额库存的边际效应最强。我们的实证分析还表明,在《萨班斯-奥克斯利法案》通过后,这种影响在统计上变得更弱。这与我们的分析模型对财务报告准确性影响的预测是一致的。
Classic inventory theories typically focus on the operational trade-offs to optimize inventory decisions. However, managers of public firms who obtain stock-based incentives may alter inventory operations to influence the stock price. We develop a stylized model, which shows that, in the presence of an interest in the stock price, managers over-install inventory when it can either inflate sales or deflate the reported cost of goods sold even if the market anticipates such actions. We analyze the joint and marginal effects of the stock-based incentives and the cost of using inventory to manage earnings, which may provide useful implications for the detection of inventory distortion and the design of management incentive plans. We then conduct an empirical analysis based on the financial data of U.S. publicly listed retailers and manufacturers. We find positive (negative) correlation between firms’ abnormal excess inventory and the stock-based incentives of their top executives (the inventory manipulation cost). Moreover, the marginal effect of the stock-based incentives on the abnormal excess inventory is the strongest when the inventory manipulation cost is intermediate. Our empirical analysis also shows that this effect becomes statistically weaker after the passage of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act. This is in line with the prediction of our analytical model about the effect of the accuracy of financial reporting.
参考文献:Qi Wu, Guoming Lai (2021) The Effects of Stock-Based Incentives on Inventory Management. Management Science 68(7):5068-5086.
17. 平行抽奖:来自阿拉斯加狩猎许可证分配的启示。
我们分析了阿拉斯加州用于分配狩猎许可证的平行抽奖。每个参与者都会得到彩票,在不同类型项目的抽奖中进行分配。赢得多件物品的参与者会得到他们最喜欢的物品,而新的获奖者会在抽奖中抽出无人认领的物品。当供应稀缺时,平行抽奖的均衡结果近似于平等收入的竞争均衡(CEEI),这是帕累托有效的。当供给适中时,平行抽奖表现出两个无效率的来源。首先,一些代理人可能从交易概率份额中获益。第二,结果可能是 "浪费 "的:即使可接受的项目仍未分配,代理人也可能什么都得不到。我们对这两种低效率的来源进行了约束,并表明通过给申请人适当的票数k来消除每一种低效率:当k=1时,交易永远不会受益,当k→∞时,浪费被消除。此外,我们还表明,k票平行抽奖的浪费性有一些好处:与任何非浪费的无嫉妒机制相比,具有强烈偏好的代理人可能更喜欢平行抽奖的结果。这些代理人更喜欢小的k值,而具有弱偏好的代理人更喜欢较大的 k 值。这些结果共同表明,k票平行抽奖在大多数情况下表现良好,并且可能适用于物品配给的其他情境。
We analyze the parallel lottery that is used to allocate hunting permits in the state of Alaska. Each participant is given tickets to distribute among lotteries for different types of items. Participants who win multiple items receive their favorite, and new winners are drawn from the lotteries with unclaimed items. When supply is scarce, equilibrium outcomes of parallel lotteries approximate a competitive equilibrium from equal incomes (CEEI), which is Pareto efficient. When supply is moderate, parallel lotteries exhibit two sources of inefficiency. First, some agents may benefit from trading probability shares. Second, outcomes may be “wasteful”: agents may receive nothing even if acceptable items remain unallocated. We bound both sources of inefficiency and show that each is eliminated by giving applicants a suitable number of tickets k: trades are never beneficial when k = 1, and waste is eliminated as k→∞. In addition, we show that the wastefulness of the k-ticket parallel lottery has some benefits: agents with strong preferences may prefer parallel lottery outcomes to those of any nonwasteful envy-free mechanism. These agents prefer small values of k, while agents with weak preferences prefer large values of k. Together, these results suggest that the k-ticket parallel lottery performs well under most circumstances and may be suitable for other settings where items are rationed.
参考文献:Nick Arnosti, Tim Randolph (2021) Parallel Lotteries: Insights from Alaskan Hunting Permit Allocation. Management Science 68(7):5087-5108.
18. 全有或全无约束下的销售努力管理。
我们考虑的是一个全有或全无约束下的销售努力管理问题。如果销售量在销售期限结束时未能达到预定的目标,卖方将得不到奖金/收入。在整个销售期限内,销售者可以通过代价高昂的努力来调节销售过程。我们表明,最佳销售率关于剩余时间或为达到目标所需的销售量来说是非单调的。一般来说,它具有分水岭结构,对于任何所需的销售量,在剩余时间上存在一个分界点,在这个分界点以上,最佳销售率在剩余时间内下降,在这个分界点以下,最佳销售率在剩余时间内上升。然后,我们研究可以有效实施的易于计算的启发式方法。我们从随机问题的确定性模拟的静态启发式开始。在全有或全无的约束下,我们表明静态启发式的性能取决于利润最大化率对目标率的表现,其中目标率被定义为销售目标除以销售期限的长度。当利润最大化率高于目标率时,采用最优确定率的静态启发式算法是渐近最优的,损失可以忽略不计。另一方面,当利润最大化率低于目标率时,任何渐近最优静态启发式算法的性能损失都大于规模参数的平方根。为了解决后一种情况下静态启发式算法的性能较差问题,我们提出了一种改进的解析启发式算法,并表明它是渐近最优的,并且实现了对数性能损失。
We consider a sales effort management problem under an all-or-nothing constraint. The seller will receive no bonus/revenue if the sales volume fails to reach a predetermined target at the end of the sales horizon. Throughout the sales horizon, the sales process can be moderated by the seller through costly effort. We show that the optimal sales rate is nonmonotonic with respect to the remaining time or the outstanding sales volume required to reach the target. Generally, it has a watershed structure, such that for any needed sales volume, there exists a cutoff point on the remaining time above which the optimal sales rate decreases in the remaining time and below which it increases in the remaining time. We then study easy-to-compute heuristics that can be implemented efficiently. We start with a static heuristic derived from the deterministic analog of the stochastic problem. With an all-or-nothing constraint, we show that the performance of the static heuristic hinges on how the profit-maximizing rate fares against the target rate, which is defined as the sales target divided by the length of the sales horizon. When the profit-maximizing rate is higher than the target rate, the static heuristic adopting the optimal deterministic rate is asymptotically optimal with negligible loss. On the other hand, when the profit-maximizing rate is lower than the target rate, the performance loss of any asymptotically optimal static heuristic is of an order greater than the square root of the scale parameter. To address the poor performance of the static heuristic in the latter case, we propose a modified resolving heuristic and show that it is asymptotically optimal and achieves a logarithmic performance loss.
参考文献:Longyuan Du, Ming Hu, Jiahua Wu (2021) Sales Effort Management Under All-or-Nothing Constraint. Management Science 68(7):5109-5126.
19. 非营利性所有权对公司业绩有影响吗?疗养院的财务困境和所有权转换。
在过去的二十年里,许多疗养院的所有权状态从非营利性转变为营利性(NP-to-FP)。这些转换引起了公众的关注,并引发了关于所有权转换对疗养院绩效影响的争论。探索2006年至2017年美国养老院的全国性面板数据集,我们观察到,财务状况较差的养老院与NP-to-FP转换的可能性较高有关。转换后的营业利润率显著提高。转型后的养老院在保持居民净收入不变的情况下,通过降低运营成本改善了财务状况。削减注册护士人员和削减管理费用都有助于降低运营成本;然而,只有前一种降低成本的措施对质量产生了负面影响。平均而言,转换后的护理质量有所下降。NP 到 FP 转换对疗养院的影响被转换前的财务压力调节:高压力的养老院积极削减注册护士人员,质量严重下降,而低压力的养老院则保持注册护士人员不变,基本避免了质量下降。这些发现带来了政策和管理方面的启示。对于养老院的监管者,我们建议加强对转型前财务状况较差的养老院从NP转为FP的监督。对于正在经历 NP 到 FP 转换的疗养院管理人员,我们的研究结果表明,尽管降低成本是提高财务绩效的有效策略,但他们需要避免削减注册护士人员的陷阱,而是专注于简化间接费用操作,以便在不影响质量的情况下提高运营效率。
In the past two decades, many nursing homes converted their ownership status from nonprofit to for-profit (NP-to-FP). These conversions have drawn public scrutiny and triggered a debate about the implications of ownership conversions on nursing home performance. Exploring a nationwide panel data set of U.S. nursing homes from 2006 to 2017, we observe that nursing homes with higher financial distress are associated with higher likelihood of NP-to-FP conversions. The postconversion operating margins increased significantly. Converted nursing homes improved their financial performance by reducing operating costs while keeping net resident revenues unchanged. Both cutting registered nurse staffing and cutting overhead staffing contributed to reductions in operating costs; however, only the former cost-reduction measure had a negative impact on quality. On average, the postconversion quality of care declined. The effects of NP-to-FP conversions on nursing homes were moderated by preconversion financial distress: High-distress nursing homes aggressively cut registered nurse staffing and experienced severe quality decline, whereas low-distress ones kept registered nurse staffing unchanged and largely avoided quality decline. These findings lead to both policy and managerial insights. To nursing home regulators, we recommend increased oversight on NP-to-FP conversions of nursing homes with high preconversion financial distress. To managers of nursing homes undergoing NP-to-FP conversions, our findings suggest that although cost reduction is an effective strategy to improve financial performance, they need to avoid the pitfall of cutting registered nurse staffing and instead focus on streamlining overhead operations in order to increase operating efficiency without compromising quality.
参考文献:Lauren Xiaoyuan Lu, Susan Feng Lu (2021) Does Nonprofit Ownership Matter for Firm Performance? Financial Distress and Ownership Conversion of Nursing Homes. Management Science 68(7):5127-5145.
20. 多期采购中的不完整合同。
我们分析了一个买方从几个供应商之一购买长期项目的问题。不断变化的世界状态影响着供应商的成本。我们区分了以世界状态的所有未来实现为条件的完整合同和世界状态发生变化时重新协商的不完整合同。我们提供的条件使不完整的合同不会造成问题。如果世界状态的变化是可以公开观察的,而且买方在项目的生命周期内不能在供应商之间进行转换,那么无论合同是完整的还是不完整的,买方都能获得相同的盈余。每当世界状况发生变化时,进行英式拍卖,然后重新谈判是最佳的。为了确定买方应该考虑起草完整合同的条件,我们通过考虑关于世界状态变化和供应商转换的私人信息来扩展分析。在这两种情况下,不完整的合同都会带来问题。在对采购顾问的调查中,我们确认通过价格指数公开观察的世界状态在采购中发挥了重要作用。此外,顾问们确认,在采购实践中,供应商的转换并不频繁。因此,在相当大一部分采购项目中,不完整的合同是一个较小的问题。然而,完整的合同很有用,可以更经常地使用。
We analyze the problem of a buyer who purchases a long-term project from one of several suppliers. A changing state of the world influences the costs of the suppliers. We distinguish between complete contracts conditioning on all future realizations of the state of the world and incomplete contracts renegotiated whenever the state of the world changes. We provide conditions such that incomplete contracting does not pose a problem. If the changing state of the world is publicly observable and the buyer cannot switch between suppliers during the lifetime of the project, the buyer achieves the same surplus irrespective of whether contracts are complete or incomplete. An English auction followed by renegotiation whenever the state of the world changes is optimal. To identify conditions when buyers should consider drafting complete contracts, we extend the analysis by considering private information about the changing state of the world and supplier switching. In both cases, incomplete contracting poses a problem. In a survey of procurement consultants, we confirm that publicly observable states of the world via price indexes play an important role in procurement. Moreover, the consultants confirm that supplier switching is infrequent in procurement practice. Thus, incomplete contracting is less of a problem in a considerable share of procurement projects. However, complete contracts are useful and could be used more often.
参考文献:Vitali Gretschko, Martin Pollrich (2021) Incomplete Contracts in Multi-period Procurement. Management Science 68(7):5146-5161.
21. 时间性风险:效用与概率加权。
本文报告了两个实验,在这两个实验中,对时间性风险解决的态度是从两种结果的彩票之间的选择中得到的,彩票在未来某个固定的日期支付,并且可以现在或以后解决。我们表明,在Kreps和Porteus的递归预期效用下,匹配概率通过效用标度提供了一种简单的方法来测量对时间性风险解决的态度。我们还使用一个一般的递归模型来分析我们的数据,该模型可以通过效用标度和/或概率加权标度来揭示对时间性风险解决的态度。在拟合度以及预测准确性方面,我们的结果表明概率加权法的性能更好。更具体地说,我们表明,当彩票在较晚的时候而非现在解决时,个人对中奖概率的敏感度和悲观度会降低。
This paper reports two experiments in which attitudes toward temporal risk resolution is elicited from choices between two-outcome lotteries that pay out at some future fixed date and can be resolved either now or later. We show that matching probabilities provides a simple method to measure attitudes toward temporal resolution—via the utility scale—under the recursive expected utility of Kreps and Porteus. We also analyze our data using a general recursive model that can reveal attitudes toward temporal risk resolution through the utility scale and/or the probability weighting scale. In terms of goodness of fit, as well as of prediction accuracy, our results point to a better performance of the probability weighting approach. More specifically, we show that individuals become less sensitive and more pessimistic with respect to winning probabilities when lotteries are resolved later rather than now.
参考文献:Mohammed Abdellaoui, Enrico Diecidue, Emmanuel Kemel, Ayse Onculer (2022) Temporal Risk: Utility vs. Probability Weighting. Management Science 68(7):5162-5186.
22. 背地交谈:沟通和团队合作。
沟通是促进团队合作的最有效手段之一。然而,不对称的沟通有时会滋生串通,损害团队效率。在这里,我们提供的实验证据表明,将一个成员排除在团队沟通之外会损害团队合作;沟通的成员在利润分配上对被排除的成员进行串通,而后者的反应是减少努力。允许成员们接触被排除在外的成员,可以部分地恢复合作和利润分配的公平性,但这并不能阻止成员们在该成员的背后交谈,即使他们可以公开交谈。合伙人有时会通过欺骗被排除在外的成员做出贡献,然后将所有利润据为己有来玩弄系统。
Communication is one of the most effective devices in promoting team cooperation. However, asymmetric communication sometimes breeds collusion and hurts team efficiency. Here, we present experimental evidence showing that excluding one member from team communication hurts team cooperation; the communicating partners collude in profit allocation against the excluded member, and the latter reacts by exerting less effort. Allowing the partners to reach out to the excluded member partially restores cooperation and fairness in profit allocation, but it does not stop the partners from talking behind that member’s back even when they could have talked publicly. The partners sometimes game the system by tricking the excluded member into contributing but then grabbing all profits for themselves.
参考文献:Klaus Abbink, Lu Dong, Lingbo Huang (2021) Talking Behind Your Back: Communication and Team Cooperation. Management Science 68(7):5187-5200.
23. 概率加权和认知能力。
概率加权是适应系统偏离预期效用理论的一个主要概念。我们通过两个实验来研究概率加权和认知能力之间的关系:一个是招募认知能力差异较大的受试者,另一个是在抽签选择和认知测试中使用时间限制的主体内操纵。我们发现似然不敏感性(概率加权的认知成分)与认知限制之间存在显著关联,因此认知分数较低或由于时间压力而导致认知中断较多的受试者对中间概率的反应较少,而对极端概率的反应更为敏感。我们的发现揭示了违背预期效用理论的异常选择的来源。
Probability weighting is a major concept for accommodating systematic departures from expected utility theory. We examine the relation between probability weighting and cognitive ability with two experiments: one recruiting subjects with a large variation in cognitive ability and the other using the within-subject manipulation of time constraints in lottery choices and cognitive tests. We find a significant association between likelihood insensitivity—the cognitive component of probability weighting—and cognitive limitation such that subjects with a lower cognitive score or more interrupted cognition due to time pressure respond less discriminately to intermediate probabilities and more over-sensitively to extreme probabilities. Our findings shed light on the sources of anomalous choices against expected utility theory.
参考文献:Syngjoo Choi, Jeongbin Kim, Eungik Lee, Jungmin Lee (2022) Probability Weighting and Cognitive Ability. Management Science 68(7):5201-5215.
24. 实验市场中的预测技能:幻想还是现实?
关于预测者从市场信号中得出正确推断的能力在多大程度上是真实的还是虚幻的,一直存在争议。本文试图通过研究个人特征如何影响或不影响预测者的成功来阐明这场争论。具体来说,我们研究了流体智力、操纵性和心智理论对实验资产市场预测准确性的作用。我们发现,当市场错误定价较低时,智力可以提高预测者的表现;当错误定价较高时,操纵性可以提高预测者的表现;而心智理论技能的重要程度则取决于错误定价的程度和信息的显示方式。这三个结果都与之前文献中的假设一致。此外,我们观察到,在控制了智力、操纵性和心智理论技能以及风险规避之后,男性预测者的表现优于女性预测者。有趣的是,我们没有发现任何证据表明预测者的表现会随着跨市场或市场内的经验而改善。
There is an ongoing debate regarding the degree to which a forecaster’s ability to draw correct inferences from market signals is real or illusory. This paper attempts to shed light on the debate by examining how personal characteristics do or do not affect forecaster success. Specifically, we investigate the role of fluid intelligence, manipulativeness, and theory of mind on forecast accuracy in experimental asset markets. We find that intelligence improves forecaster performance when market mispricing is low, manipulativeness improves forecaster performance when mispricing is high, and the degree to which theory of mind skills matter depends on both the level of mispricing and how information is displayed. All three of these results are consistent with hypotheses derived from the previous literature. Additionally, we observe that male forecasters outperform female forecasters after controlling for intelligence, manipulativeness, and theory of mind skills as well as risk aversion. Interestingly, we do not find any evidence that forecaster performance improves with experience across markets or within markets.
参考文献:Brice Corgnet, Cary Deck, Mark DeSantis, David Porter (2021) Forecasting Skills in Experimental Markets: Illusion or Reality?. Management Science 68(7):5216-5232.
25. 创造者经济:管理生态系统供应、收入分享和平台设计。
许多数字平台给用户提供来自众多创作者的捆绑商品,通过消费这些商品产生收入,并通过分享收入激励创作者。本文研究当用户(观众)对商品(内容)的消费由第三方广告商资助时,平台的设计选择以及创作者的参与和供应决策。该模型规定了平台的规模:创作者和提供的内容的数量以及观众、广告商和收入的规模。我研究了创作者能力的分布如何影响创作者之间的市场集中度,以及它如何受到平台设计的影响。当平台有足够的内容和观众但广告需求较低时,广告管理和分析工具的影响更大。相反,当平台对广告商有强烈需求时,通过更好的匹配和时机来减少观众对广告的厌恶——这可以在整个生态系统中创造双赢效应——是很重要的。必须谨慎选择激励创作者提供更多内容的平台基础设施改进(例如,开发工具包),以避免在少数强大的创作者中造成更高的集中度。当平台规模较小且迫切需要吸引更多观众时,对第一方内容的投资最为重要。我表明,收入分享(只是部分)是平台和创作者之间的拉锯战,因为适度的分享公式会加强整个生态系统和所有参与者的利润。然而,收入分享的紧张关系表明,需要用更丰富的收入分享安排来扩展对所有创作者一视同仁的做法,从而更好地适应创作者之间的异质性。
Many digital platforms give users a bundle of goods sourced from numerous creators, generate revenue through consumption of these goods, and motivate creators by sharing of revenue. This paper studies the platform’s design choices and creators’ participation and supply decisions when users’ (viewers’) consumption of goods (content) is financed by third-party advertisers. The model specifies the platform’s scale: number of creators and content supplied and magnitudes of viewers, advertisers, and revenues. I examine how the distribution of creator capabilities affects market concentration among creators and how it can be influenced by platform design. Tools for ad management and analytics are more impactful when the platform has sufficient content and viewers but has low ad demand. Conversely, reducing viewers’ distaste for ads through better matching and timing—which can create win–win–win effects throughout the ecosystem—is important when the platform has strong demand from advertisers. Platform infrastructure improvements that motivate creators to supply more content (e.g., development toolkits) must be chosen carefully to avoid creating higher concentration among a few powerful creators. Investments in first-party content are most consequential when the platform scale is small and when it has greater urgency to attract more viewers. I show that revenue sharing is (only partly) a tug of war between the platform and creators because a moderate sharing formula strengthens the overall ecosystem and profits of all participants. However, revenue-sharing tensions indicate a need to extend the one-rate-for-all creators approach with richer revenue-sharing arrangements that can better accommodate heterogeneity among creators.
参考文献:Hemant K. Bhargava (2021) The Creator Economy: Managing Ecosystem Supply, Revenue Sharing, and Platform Design. Management Science 68(7):5233-5251.
26. 金融建议值多少钱?社会交易中的透明度-收入矛盾。
在社会交易中,经验不足的投资者(追随者)在支付一定费用后可以实时复制专家(交易者)的交易。这样的复制交易机制往往会遇到透明度和收入的矛盾。一方面,社会交易平台需要尽可能透明地发布交易者的交易,以使追随者能够准确评估交易者。另一方面,完全透明可能会削弱平台的收入,因为追随者可以搭便车。也就是说,追随者可以手动复制交易者的交易,以避免支付后续费用。本研究通过延迟发布与交易者执行的交易有关的交易信息来优化透明度水平,从而解决这一关键的矛盾。我们使用利润差距和延迟利润的概念来捕捉延迟的经济影响。我们提出了一种机制来阐明利润差距和延迟利润对追随者的经济影响,进而影响交易者的资金数量:保护效应和评估效应。实证调查发现这两种效应得到了支持。然后,我们开发了一个优化平台收入的随机控制公式,其中控制是在交易者层面定制的最佳延迟,并根据交易者的当前金额和交易者资料页面上的查看次数计算得出。优化的收入可以被纳入一个算法中,以一种系统的方式将平台的目标渗透到交易者的排名中。我们进行了一项反事实研究,利用在外汇市场运作的一个领先的社会交易平台的数据来证明最佳延迟策略(与恒定延迟策略相比)的性能。
In social trading, less experienced investors (followers) are allowed to copy the trades of experts (traders) in real time after paying a fee. Such a copy-trading mechanism often runs into a transparency-revenue tension. On the one hand, social trading platforms need to release traders’ trades as transparently as possible to allow followers to evaluate traders accurately. On the other hand, complete transparency may undercut the platform’s revenue because followers can free ride. That is, followers can manually copy the trades of a trader to avoid paying the following fees. This study addresses this critical tension by optimizing the level of transparency through delaying the release of trading information pertaining to the trades executed by traders. We capture the economic impact of the delay using the notions of profit-gap and delayed-profit. We propose a mechanism that elucidates the economic effects of the profit-gap and delayed-profit on followers and, consequently, the amount of money following a trader: protection effect and evaluation effect. Empirical investigations find support for these two effects. We then develop a stochastic control formulation that optimizes platform revenue, where the control is the optimal delay customized at the trader level and calculated as a function of the current amount of money following a trader and the number of views on the trader’s profile page. The optimized revenue can be incorporated into an algorithm to provide a systematic way to infuse the platform’s goals into the ranking of the traders. A counterfactual study is conducted to demonstrate the performance of the optimal delay policy (versus a constant-delay policy) using data from a leading social trading platform operating in the foreign exchange market.
参考文献:Mingwen Yang, Zhiqiang (Eric) Zheng, Vijay Mookerjee (2021) How Much Is Financial Advice Worth? The Transparency-Revenue Tension in Social Trading. Management Science 68(7):5252-5268.
27. 应对数字勒索:利益诉求和规范诉求的实验研究。
数字勒索已经成为依赖信息技术运作的组织的一个重要威胁。我们利用人类主体实验,研究了信息诉求在鼓励防御者采取两种缓解策略(安全投资和拒绝支付赎金)对数字勒索威胁方面的有效性。为此,我们探索了两种类型的诉求,利益诉求和规范诉求。我们发现防御者(代表任何可能成为潜在受害者的组织)的决定偏离了博弈论的预测。然而,鉴于防御者和攻击者之间的战略互动以及嘈杂的决策行为,要解开诉求对防御者的影响是很有挑战性的。我们基于定量反应均衡框架开发了一个结构模型,以衡量信息诉求如何改变防御者的投资和拒绝付款的效用。尽管干预措施可能成功地提高了投资和/或拒绝付款的效用,但它们对投资率和付款率的影响被攻击者减少赎金的做法所减弱。因此,干预措施要显著提高社区的投资率或抑制赎金支付率是具有挑战性的。我们描述了一个社区的安全结果(包括预期赎金、攻击率、投资率和支付率)是如何随着防御者的投资和拒绝支付的效用而变化的。
Digital extortion has emerged as a significant threat to organizations that rely on information technologies for their operations. Using human subject experimentation, we study the effectiveness of message appeals in encouraging defenders to adopt two mitigation strategies, investment in security and refusal to pay ransoms, to digital extortion threats. We explore two types of appeals, benefit and normative, for this purpose. We find that the decisions of the defenders (representing any organization that can be a potential victim) deviate from the predictions of game theory. However, given the strategic interactions between the defenders and the attacker as well as noisy decision-making behaviors, it is challenging to untangle the influence of the appeals on the defenders. We develop a structural model based on the quantal response equilibrium framework to measure how message appeals change the defenders’ utilities of investment and payment refusal. Although the interventions may be successful in increasing the utilities of investment and/or payment refusal, their impacts on investment rate and payment rate are mitigated by the attacker reducing ransoms. Thus, it is challenging for an intervention to significantly boost a community’s investment rate or to suppress the ransom payment rate. We characterize how security outcomes of a community (including expected ransom, attack rate, investment rate, and payment rate) vary with the defenders’ utilities of investment and pay refusal.
参考文献:Kay-Yut Chen, Jingguo Wang, Yan Lang (2021) Coping with Digital Extortion: An Experimental Study of Benefit Appeals and Normative Appeals. Management Science 68(7):5269-5286.
28. 由公共语言分隔:代码差异的性质如何影响沟通成功和代码融合。
当个人共享交流代码(刺激因素和标签之间的映射)时,组织内部和组织之间的协调行为会更容易。因为代码是特定于它们作为惯例出现的群体的,所以在制定了自己独特代码的组织单位之间进行协作通常很困难。然而,并非所有代码差异对沟通困难和初始具有不同代码的个人发展公共代码的能力的影响都是相同的。利用计算模型,我们开发了一个关于初始交流代码差异的性质以及它们如何影响公共代码融合的理论。我们的结果表明,代码融合的困难不在于学习新的代码,而在于解除对现有代码的学习。对交流的最严重挑战来自于 "代码冲突",即代码包含相同标签和刺激因素之间的不同映射。此外,当智能体在不同的任务环境中开发了各自的代码,但却使用了一套共同的标签时,这种冲突可能是最难恢复的,反映了 "被公共语言分隔 "的危险。
Coordinated action within and between organizations is easier when individuals share communication codes—mappings between stimuli and labels. Because codes are specific to the groups within which they arise as conventions, collaboration across organizational units that have developed their own distinctive codes is often difficult. However, not all code differences are equal in their implications for communication difficulty and the capacity of individuals starting out with different codes to develop a shared code. Using computational models, we develop a theory about the nature of differences in initial communication codes and how they impact convergence on a common code. Our results show that the difficulty of code convergence lies not as much in learning new codes as in unlearning existing ones. The most severe challenges to communication stem from “code clashes” where codes contain different mappings between the same labels and stimuli. Furthermore, clashes that arise when agents have developed their individual codes in different task environments but draw on a common set of labels are likely to be the hardest to recover from, reflecting the perils of being “separated by a common language.”
参考文献:Özgecan Koçak, Phanish Puranam (2022) Separated by a Common Language: How the Nature of Code Differences Shapes Communication Success and Code Convergence. Management Science 68(7):5287-5310.
29. 地位的规范作用:评价者地位奖和评价中观察到的性别偏见。
我们认为,地位奖励将对评价者产生约束作用,改变他们的评价方式。具体来说,地位奖励将导致评价者减少对候选人质量的不可靠指标(例如性别)的重视。我们使用Yelp上的餐厅评价数据来检验这一理论,重点关注评价者的餐厅评级与他们在评论文本中报告的由男性或女性提供服务之间的关系。我们使用Yelp的评价者地位奖("精英")来分析在评价者获得这一地位奖后,在给餐厅的星级评价中观察到的性别偏见是否会减少。我们发现,评价者在获得该奖后对餐厅的评价更加相似,无论他们报告说是由男性还是由女性提供服务。在本文背景下,地位奖将餐厅评价中的性别差距缩小了56.5%(从 -0.13 星的初始评分差距提高了 0.07 星)。这种性别偏见的减少主要是由于评价中提到女性服务员的极低(1星)评分的减少。关于地位和评价的研究大多集中在评价者对候选人地位的提高有何反应。我们证明了评价者地位的重要性,它是减少评价中观察到的性别差异的一个机制。
We theorize that status awards will have a disciplining effect on evaluators, changing how they evaluate. Specifically, status awards will lead evaluators to place less weight on unreliable indicators of candidate quality, such as gender. We test this theory using data from restaurant evaluations on Yelp, focusing on the relationship between an evaluator’s restaurant rating and their reporting of being served by a man or a woman in their review text. We use Yelp’s evaluator status award (“Elite”) to analyze whether observed gender bias in the star ratings given to restaurants decreases after an evaluator receives this status award. We find that evaluators rate restaurants more similarly after receiving the award, regardless of whether they report being served by a man or a woman. Status awards in our context close the gender gap in restaurant ratings by 56.5% (a 0.07 stars improvement out of an initial rating gap of −0.13 stars). This reduction in gender bias is mostly due to a decrease in the number of extremely low (1 star) ratings in reviews that reference female servers. Research on status and evaluations has mostly focused on how evaluators react to increases in candidate status. We demonstrate the importance of evaluator status as a mechanism for decreasing observed gender differences in evaluations.
参考文献:Tristan L. Botelho, Marina Gertsberg (2021) The Disciplining Effect of Status: Evaluator Status Awards and Observed Gender Bias in Evaluations. Management Science 68(7):5311-5329.
30. 实验监管:事前批准、事后撤回和责任。
我们分析了在一个两阶段的信息扩散模型中,动态采用具有不确定报酬的活动时,事前实验和事后学习的最佳组合。在第一个引入前阶段,进行代价高昂的实验以决定是否采用一项活动或放弃实验。在采用后的第二阶段,学习可能会以不同的速度继续,而活动仍然存在;在积累了足够多的坏消息后,会选择退出。我们从法律和经济学的角度比较了三种监管框架的表现,这些框架通常用于管理私人实验和采用激励措施:责任、撤回和授权监管。责任应该被排除在外,以避免产生巨大的正外部性的活动被扼杀,这与豁免原则是一致的。责任应被用来阻止产生小的正外部性的活动的过度实验。授权监管在使用时应该是宽松的,这与许多领域(从产品安全到反垄断)的监管组织相一致。
We analyze the optimal mix of ex ante experimentation and ex post learning for the dynamic adoption of activities with uncertain payoffs in a two-phase model of information diffusion. In a first preintroduction phase, costly experimentation is undertaken to decide whether to adopt an activity or abandon experimentation. In a second stage following adoption, learning can continue possibly at a different pace while the activity remains in place; the withdrawal option is exercised following the accumulation of sufficiently bad news. We compare from a law and economics perspective the performance of three regulatory frameworks commonly adopted to govern private experimentation and adoption incentives: liability, withdrawal, and authorization regulation. Liability should be preempted to avoid chilling of activities that generate large positive externalities consistent with the preemption doctrine. Liability should be used to discourage excessive experimentation for activities that generate small positive externalities. Authorization regulation should be lenient whenever it is used consistent with the organization of regulation in a number of areas, ranging from product safety to antitrust.
参考文献:Emeric Henry, Marco Loseto, Marco Ottaviani (2021) Regulation with Experimentation: Ex Ante Approval, Ex Post Withdrawal, and Liability. Management Science 68(7):5330-5347.
31. 品牌溢出作为一种营销策略。
当弱品牌企业和强品牌企业从一个共同的合同制造商那里采购时,弱品牌企业可以通过宣传这种关系来推广自己的产品。本文研究了弱品牌企业是否应该将这种品牌溢出作为一种营销策略,以及这种决定如何取决于企业的特征和市场条件。我们建立了一个博弈论模型,其包括一个合同制造商和两个具有不对称品牌力量的公司。合同制造商决定两个企业的批发价格,然后每个企业决定是否从合同制造商那里采购。如果两家企业都向合同制造商采购,那么弱品牌企业可以选择是否通过品牌溢出来推广其产品。尽管品牌溢出可以免费提高弱品牌企业产品的吸引力,但我们发现,如果(1)其原有的品牌力量足够低或者(2)合同制造商没有明显的成本优势,弱品牌企业就不应该使用品牌溢出。有趣的是,在某些情况下,弱品牌企业采用品牌溢出可以使三方都受益。然而,当合同制造商具有明显的成本优势时,在均衡状态下,强品牌公司将受到品牌溢出的伤害,因此应该采取行动来阻止它。
When a weak-brand firm and a strong-brand firm source from a common contract manufacturer, the weak-brand firm may advertise this relationship to promote its own product. This paper investigates whether the weak-brand firm should use such brand spillover as a marketing strategy and how this decision depends on the firms’ characteristics and market conditions. We develop a game theoretic model consisting of one contract manufacturer and two firms with asymmetric brand power. The contract manufacturer determines the wholesale prices for the two firms and then each firm decides whether to source from the contract manufacturer. If both firms outsource to the contract manufacturer, then the weak-brand firm may choose whether to promote its product through brand spillover. Although brand spillover improves the attractiveness of the weak-brand firm’s product at no cost, we find that the weak-brand firm should not use brand spillover if (1) its original brand power is sufficiently low or (2) the contract manufacturer does not have a significant cost advantage. Interestingly, the adoption of brand spillover by the weak-brand firm can benefit all three parties under certain circumstances. Nevertheless, when the contract manufacturer has a significant cost advantage, in equilibrium the strong-brand firm will be hurt by brand spillover and hence should take actions to prevent it.
参考文献:Xiaole Wu, Fuqiang Zhang, Yu Zhou (2021) Brand Spillover as a Marketing Strategy. Management Science 68(7):5348-5363.
32. 合并的可能性是否会减少竞争?
我们在具有噪声共谋的动态模型中研究反竞争的横向合并。在每一时刻,企业要么私下选择产出水平,要么合并形成垄断,在避免价格战的好处与合并的成本之间进行权衡。合并的可能性减少了合并前的共谋,因为价格战带来的惩罚被削弱了。因此,我们扩展了Davidson和Deneckere的结果[Davidson C, Deneckere R (1984) Horizontal mergers and collusive behavior. Internat. J. Indust. Organ. 2(2):117-132.],他们分析了合并后惩罚措施的弱化,证明了在一个完全随机的模型中,合并前的共谋行为被削弱。因此,尽管反竞争合并在事后损害了竞争,但其含义是,应该减少由于监管而产生的合并障碍和成本,以促进事前的竞争。
We study anticompetitive horizontal mergers in a dynamic model with noisy collusion. At each instant, firms either privately choose output levels or merge to form a monopoly, trading off the benefits of avoiding price wars against the costs of merging. The potential to merge decreases pre-merger collusion, as punishments effected by price wars are weakened. We thus extend the result of Davidson and Deneckere [Davidson C, Deneckere R (1984) Horizontal mergers and collusive behavior. Internat. J. Indust. Organ. 2(2):117–132.], who analyzed the weakening of punishments post-merger, demonstrating that pre-merger collusion is weakened, in a fully stochastic model. Thus, although anticompetitive mergers harm competition ex post, the implication is that barriers and costs of merging due to regulation should be reduced to promote competition exante.
参考文献:Dirk Hackbarth, Bart Taub (2021) Does the Potential to Merge Reduce Competition?. Management Science 68(7):5364-5383.
33. 通过团体或个人养老金计划储蓄:这有多大区别?
机构投资者提供的服务质量已经引起了相当大的关注。本文对这一争论进行了补充,表明在设置固定缴费的个人计划上的机构差异对回报有经济和统计上的显著影响。使用1990年7月至2019年6月期间的10,326个英国固定缴款个人养老基金的样本,我表明有第三方参与合同制定和后续监督的养老基金比直接向公众提供的、没有任何知情第三方参与的养老基金的总回报率高0.96%-1.67%,收取的费用低0.7%。我还表明,2015年引入额外的治理机构,导致业绩差距扩大,这进一步支持了投资治理对基金业绩有实质性影响的观点。这些结果强调了投资监督的重要性,并呼吁为个人投资者提供更多保护。
The quality of services provided by institutional investors has attracted considerable attention. This paper adds to the debate by showing that institutional differences in setting up defined contribution personal schemes have an economically and statistically significant impact on the returns. Using a sample of 10,326 UK defined contribution personal pension funds over July 1990–June 2019, I show that pension funds that have a third party involved in contract setting and subsequent oversight deliver 0.96%–1.67% higher gross returns and charge 0.7% lower fees than pension funds offered directly to the public without any well-informed third party involved. I also show that the introduction of additional governance bodies in 2015 resulted in a widening of the performance gap, which further supports the notion that investment governance has a material impact on fund performance. The results highlight the importance of investment oversight and call for more protection for individual investors.
参考文献:Anna (Ania) Zalewska (2021) Saving with Group or Individual Personal Pension Schemes: How Much Difference Does It Make?. Management Science 68(7):5384-5402.
34. 工会和产品质量失败。
在本文中,我们研究了工会对产品质量失败的影响。我们使用产品召回作为质量失败的衡量标准,因为它是一个客观的衡量标准,适用于广泛的行业截面。我们的分析在回归不连续性设计框架中采用工会面板设置和紧密工会选择来克服识别问题。在面板回归中,我们发现加入工会的企业和工会化率较高的企业出现质量失败的频率更高。在一个子样本中,我们可以确定与被召回产品相关的制造机构,甚至在更细化的机构层面上也能得到这样的结果。在比较接近选择中的企业时,我们发现工会获胜的企业的产品质量结果明显低于工会失败的企业。这些结果在没有工作权的州被放大,因为那里的工会对劳动力的影响相对更大。我们发现,工会化增加了企业的成本和经营杠杆,因此挤出了可能影响质量的投资。我们还发现了一些暗示性证据,表明工会可能会通过损害员工士气和抵制公司的技术升级来损害质量。总体而言,我们的结果表明工会对产品召回有不利影响,因此,产品质量是工会影响企业的一个重要方面。
In this paper, we study the impact of labor unions on product quality failures. We use a product recall as our measure of quality failure because it is an objective metric that is applicable to a broad cross-section of industries. Our analysis employs a union panel setting and close union elections in a regression discontinuity design framework to overcome identification issues. In the panel regressions, we find that firms that are unionized and those that have higher unionization rates experience a greater frequency of quality failures. The results obtain even at a more granular establishment level in a subsample in which we can identify the manufacturing establishment associated with the recalled product. When comparing firms in close elections, we find that firms with close union wins are followed by significantly worse product quality outcomes than those with close union losses. These results are amplified in non–right-to-work states, where unions have a relatively greater influence on the workforce. We find that unionization increases firms’ costs and operating leverage and, consequently, crowds out investments that potentially impact quality. We also find some suggestive evidence that unions may compromise quality by hurting employee morale and by resisting technological upgrades in the firm. Overall, our results suggest that unions have an adverse impact on product recalls, and thus, product quality is an important dimension along which unions impact businesses.
参考文献:Omesh Kini, Mo Shen, Jaideep Shenoy, Venkat Subramaniam (2021) Labor Unions and Product Quality Failures. Management Science 68(7):5403-5440.
35. 在证券竞价拍卖中为风险厌恶的代理人提供公平的竞争环境。
我们在证券竞价拍卖中引入了风险厌恶的竞标者,以分析证券设计如何影响竞标者的均衡行为,从而影响拍卖的收益和效率。我们表明,更陡峭的证券提供了更多的保险,因为它们允许竞标者在变现中平滑收益。这种保险为更加风险厌恶的投标人提供了公平的竞争环境,促使他们更积极地投标。因此,当卖方从较平坦的证券转为较陡峭的证券时,拍卖的分配效率会微弱地增加。此外,我们还证明,当投标人具有同质性和充分的风险厌恶时,唯一能保证帕累托效率的证券是最陡峭的,也就是看涨期权。我们还确定了证券设计和拍卖形式之间的关系。特别是,我们表明,对于凸和超凸的证券系列,只要有技术条件,第一价格的拍卖就会产生更高的预期收入,而对于次凸家族,只要竞标者有适度的风险厌恶,第二价格拍卖就会产生更高的预期收入。最后,我们表明,从事前的角度来看,当进入成本较高时,更陡峭的证券也会吸引更多的人进入,并讨论了风险厌恶的存在对非正式拍卖的影响。
We introduce risk-averse bidders in a security-bid auction to analyze how the security design affects bidders’ equilibrium behavior and, as a result, the revenue and efficiency of the auction. We show that steeper securities provide more insurance because they allow bidders to smooth payoffs across realizations. Such insurance levels the playing field for more-risk-averse bidders, inducing them to bid more aggressively. As a consequence, the auction’s allocative efficiency weakly increases when the seller switches from a flatter to a steeper security. Furthermore, we prove that when bidders are homogeneously and sufficiently risk averse, the only security that guarantees Pareto efficiency is the steepest, that is, a call option. We also determine the relationship between the security design and the auction format. In particular, we show that for convex and superconvex families of securities, the first-price auction yields higher expected revenues, provided a technical condition, whereas for subconvex families, the second price yields higher expected revenues, provided that bidders are moderately risk averse. Finally, we show that steeper securities also attract higher entry from an ex ante perspective, when entry is costly, and discuss the effects that the presence of risk aversion has on informal auctions.
参考文献:Andrés Fioriti, Allan Hernandez-Chanto (2021) Leveling the Playing Field for Risk-Averse Agents in Security-Bid Auctions. Management Science 68(7):5441-5463.
36. 奖金季节:周期性劳动力市场和协调奖金的理论。
我们提出了一个一般均衡模型,在这个模型中,企业和工人协调薪酬,使流动率在某些时期很高,在其他时期很低。这确保了企业和工人通常在其他企业和工人可用时寻找新的匹配项。如果企业和工人发现自己处于一个周期性的均衡状态,那么合同的特点往往是在劳动力市场高流动期之前支付大量奖金。该理论的预测与高级金融和大律师行业的报酬和流动性的典型事实相吻合。
We present a general equilibrium model in which firms and workers coordinate compensation so that turnover is high in some periods and low in others. This ensures that firms and workers typically search for new matches when other firms and workers are available. If firms and workers find themselves in a periodic equilibrium, contracts often feature large bonuses paid just prior to periods of high labor market turnover. The theory’s predictions match stylized facts concerning compensation and turnover in high finance and biglaw.
参考文献:Edward D. Van Wesep, Brian Waters (2022) Bonus Season: A Theory of Periodic Labor Markets and Coordinated Bonuses. Management Science 68(7):5464-5492.
37. 时间是相对的:时间估计的框架如何影响成本信息的准确性。
准确的成本信息对于组织内的有效决策至关重要。成本计算通常依赖于员工对不同任务消耗的时间量的主观判断。在实验环境中,我们检查了两种常见方法的准确性,以得出对准确成本信息至关重要的主观时间估计。具体来说,我们比较了员工估计 (i) 一项任务的所有迭代的总时间(池方法)与 (ii) 一项任务的一次迭代的平均时间(单元方法)时的估计误差。这两种方法已引起从业者和研究人员的兴趣,并且是传统的基于活动的成本 (ABC) 和时间驱动的 ABC 之间差异的核心。虽然在数学上是等效的,但我们假设并发现这两种方法会引起不同的认知过程,从而导致估计误差的差异。相对于单元方法,池方法在不同任务间的时间分配上产生了更大的误差,但只有当每个任务的迭代次数在不同任务间变化时才会产生。此外,池方法导致对生产时间的高估,而单元方法导致对生产时间的低估。我们的研究结果对池方法的不同响应模式(以绝对时间单位和百分比估计)是稳健的。这项研究与成本和绩效测量系统的设计者和用户相关,因为分配错误会导致成本交叉补贴和资源分配决策不佳,而总体错误会破坏产能利用决策。
Accurate cost information is critical to effective decision making within organizations. Cost computations often rely on subjective judgments by employees regarding the amount of time that different tasks consume. In an experimental setting, we examine the accuracy of two common approaches to eliciting subjective time estimates vital for accurate cost information. Specifically, we compare estimation error when employees estimate (i) the total time for all iterations of a task (the pool approach) versus (ii) the average time for one iteration of a task (the unit approach). These two approaches have received interest by both practitioners and researchers and are at the heart of the difference between conventional activity-based costing (ABC) and time-driven ABC. While mathematically equivalent, we hypothesize and find that the two approaches evoke different cognitive processes that lead to differences in estimation error. Relative to the unit approach, the pool approach produces larger error in the allocation of time among different tasks, but only when the number of iterations per task varies across tasks. Further, the pool approach results in overestimation of productive time, whereas the unit approach leads to underestimation of productive time. Our findings are robust to different response modes of the pool approach (estimates in absolute time units and in percentages). This study is relevant for designers and users of cost and performance-measurement systems in that allocation errors lead to cost cross-subsidization and poor resource-allocation decisions, while overall errors undermine capacity utilization decisions.
参考文献:Karl Schuhmacher, Michael Burkert (2021) Time Is Relative: How Framing of Time Estimation Affects the Accuracy of Cost Information. Management Science 68(7):5493-5513.
38. 披露情绪:机器学习与字典方法。
我们比较了基于字典的方法和机器学习方法在10-K申报和电话会议日期捕获披露情绪的能力。像Loughran和McDonald [Loughran T, McDonald B (2011) When is a liability not a liability? Textual analysis, dictionaries, and 10-Ks. J. Finance 66(1):35–65.],我们使用回报来评估情绪。我们发现,基于机器学习的测量在解释能力上比基于字典的测量有很大的改进。具体来说,机器学习测量解释了10-K申报日期的回报,而基于Loughran和McDonald字典的措施只解释了他们研究时间段内10-K申报日期的回报。此外,在电话会议日期,机器学习方法对Loughran和McDonald字典方法的改进,比Loughran和McDonald字典对哈佛社会心理学字典的改进幅度更大。我们进一步发现,与其他算法相比,随机森林-回归树方法能更好地捕捉到披露的情绪,从而简化了机器学习方法的应用。总体而言,我们的结果表明,与基于字典的方法相比,机器学习方法提供了一种易于实施、更强大、更可靠的披露情绪测量方法。
We compare the ability of dictionary-based and machine-learning methods to capture disclosure sentiment at 10-K filing and conference-call dates. Like Loughran and McDonald [Loughran T, McDonald B (2011) When is a liability not a liability? Textual analysis, dictionaries, and 10-Ks. J. Finance 66(1):35–65.], we use returns to assess sentiment. We find that measures based on machine learning offer a significant improvement in explanatory power over dictionary-based measures. Specifically, machine-learning measures explain returns at 10-K filing dates, whereas measures based on the Loughran and McDonald dictionary only explain returns at 10-K filing dates during the time period of their study. Moreover, at conference-call dates, machine-learning methods offer an improvement over the Loughran and McDonald dictionary method of a greater magnitude than the improvement of the Loughran and McDonald dictionary over the Harvard Psychosociological Dictionary. We further find that the random-forest-regression-tree method better captures disclosure sentiment than alternative algorithms, simplifying the application of the machine-learning approach. Overall, our results suggest that machine-learning methods offer an easily implementable, more powerful, and reliable measure of disclosure sentiment than dictionary-based methods.
参考文献:Richard Frankel, Jared Jennings, Joshua Lee (2021) Disclosure Sentiment: Machine Learning vs. Dictionary Methods. Management Science 68(7):5514-5532.
39. 使用伪财政年度对收入平滑的测试。
我们研究的目的是进一步了解影响报告收益波动性的管理激励。先前的研究表明,第四季度收益的波动性可能会受到整体会计方法(即“解决”财政年度前三个季度的应计估计错误)或盈余管理的影响,以实现某些报告目标(例如,分析师的预测)。我们认为影响第四季度收益的另一个因素是管理者有意平滑财政年度的收益。对于每家公司,我们利用报告的财政年度的四个季度以外的连续四个季度来创建伪年度收益。然后,我们将伪年度的收益波动率与公司自己报告的财政年度的收益波动率进行比较。我们发现与第四季度应计项目一致的证据反映了管理层对平滑财政年度收益的激励。这一结论通过几个横截面测试、季度现金流和应计项目的模式以及几个稳健性测试得到验证。总体而言,我们为探索财政年度和第四季度收益差异波动性的替代解释的文献做出了贡献。
The purpose of our study is to further understand managerial incentives that affect the volatility of reported earnings. Prior research suggests that the volatility of fourth-quarter earnings may be affected by the integral approach to accounting (i.e., “settling up” of accrual estimation errors in the first three quarters of the fiscal year) or earnings management to meet certain reporting objectives (e.g., analyst forecasts). We suggest that another factor affecting fourth-quarter earnings is managers’ intentional smoothing of fiscal-year earnings. For each firm, we create pseudo-year earnings using four consecutive quarters other than the four quarters of the reported fiscal year. We then compare the earnings volatility of pseudo years to the earnings volatility of the firm’s own reported fiscal year. We find evidence consistent with fourth-quarter accruals reflecting managerial incentives to smooth fiscal-year earnings. This conclusion is validated by several cross-sectional tests, the pattern in quarterly cash flows and accruals, and several robustness tests. Overall, we contribute to the literature exploring alternative explanations for the differential volatility of fiscal-year and fourth-quarter earnings.
参考文献:Dirk E. Black, Spencer R. Pierce, Wayne B. Thomas (2021) A Test of Income Smoothing Using Pseudo Fiscal Years. Management Science 68(7):5533-5555.
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