Knowledge that Transforms

We investigate the epistemology of trust in social networks. We posit trust as a special epistemic state that depends on actors' beliefs about each others' beliefs as well as about states of the world. It offers new ideas and tools for representing the core elements of trust both within dyads and larger groups and presents an approach that makes trust measurable in a noncircular and predictive, rather than merely postdictive, fashion. After advancing arguments for the importance of interactive belief systems to the successful coordination of behavior, we tune our investigation of trust by focusing on beliefs that are important to mobilization and coordination and show how trust functions to influence social capital arising from network structure. We present empirical evidence corroborating the importance of higher-order beliefs to understanding trust and the interactive analysis of trust to the likelihood of successful coordination.

How much are we influenced by an author's identity when evaluating his or her work? This paper exploits a natural experiment to measure the impact of status signals in the context of open standards development. For a period of time, e-mails announcing new submissions to the Internet Engineering Task Force would replace individual author names with “et al.” if submission volumes were unusually high. We measure the impact of status signals by comparing the effect of obscuring high- versus low-status author names. Our results show that name-based signals can explain up to three-quarters of the difference in publication rates between high- and low-status authors. The signaling effect disappears for a set of prescreened proposals that receive more scrutiny than a typical submission, suggesting that status signals are more important when attention is scarce (or search costs high). We also show that submissions from high-status authors receive more attention on electronic discussion boards, which may help high-status authors to develop their ideas and bring them forward to publication.

Labels certify that a product meets some standard for quality, but often consumers are unsure of the exact standard that the label represents. Focusing on the case of ecolabels for environmental quality, we show how even small amounts of uncertainty can create consumer confusion that reduces or eliminates the value to firms of adopting voluntary labels. First, consumers are most suspicious of a label when a product with a bad reputation has it, so labels are often unpersuasive at showing that a seemingly bad product is actually good. Second, label proliferation aggravates the effect of uncertainty, causing the informativeness of labels to decrease rather than increase. Third, uncertainty makes labeling and nonlabeling equilibria more likely to coexist as the number of labels increases, so consumers face greater strategic uncertainty over how to interpret the presence or absence of a label. Finally, a label can be legitimitized or spoiled for other products when a product with a good or bad reputation displays it, so firms may adopt labels strategically to manipulate such information spillovers, which further exacerbates label confusion. Managers can reduce label confusion by supporting mandatory labeling or by undertaking investments to make certain labels “focal.”

Many durable products cannot be used without a contingent consumable product, e.g., printers require ink, iPods require songs, razors require blades, etc. For such products, manufacturers may be able to lock in consumers by making their products incompatible with consumables that are produced by other firms. We examine the effectiveness of such a strategy in the presence of strategic consumers who anticipate the future prices of both the durable product and the contingent consumable. Under a lock-in strategy, the manufacturer has pricing power over the contingent consumable, which she can use to extract additional rents from higher valuation consumers, but such pricing power may also reduce consumers' willingness to pay for the durable because it subjects them to being held up with higher consumables prices in the future. Restricting our attention to linear pricing policies, we find that if the manufacturer can commit to shutting down production of her durable after an initial one-time sale, then competition from another consumable of an appropriately degraded level of quality can benefit the manufacturer by mitigating consumers' fears of being held up. On the other hand, when the manufacturer cannot commit to shutting down production of her durable, then her own output of additional durables gives her an incentive to keep consumables prices low, and competition in the consumables market is less beneficial.

We examine, in a strategic setting, the broad issue of how retail channel structures—retail monopoly versus retail duopoly—impact a manufacturer's optimal new product design, both in terms of engineering design specifications as well as manufacturer and retailer profits. Our strategic framework enables manufacturers in specific contexts to anticipate the reactions of the retailers and competitive manufacturers to new designs in terms of the retail and wholesale pricing and to understand how different channel structures and channel strategies (such as an exclusive channel strategy) impact the engineering design of the new product, conditional on consumer preference distributions and competitor product attributes. Based on a simple numerical and a power tool design example, we illustrate how the insight from the framework translates to design guidelines; specifically, understanding which designs are optimal under differing channel structure conditions, and which design variables need precise targeting given their profit sensitivity.

Is the right amount of effort exerted in multiperson tournaments where contestants have two different levels of initial endowments (termed “favorites” and “underdogs”)? We develop theoretical predictions for the level of effort and the effect of varying the prize structure. We test these predictions for three-person tournaments using an economic experiment in a social environment where contest outcomes are publicly announced. We find that both favorites and underdogs overexert effort relative to the theoretical point predictions. Moreover, in the treatment with two favorites and one underdog, favorites increase their effort when the number of prizes is increased from one to two, contrary to the theory prediction. We show that a generalized model that allows for psychological losses from losing for favorites and psychological gains from winning for underdogs because of social comparisons tracks the experimental results better than the standard theoretical model.

Aubiquitous feature of even the fastest self-service technology transactions is the wait. Conventional wisdom and operations theory suggest that the longer people wait, the less satisfied they become; we demonstrate that because of what we term the labor illusion, when websites engage in operational transparency by signaling that they are exerting effort, people can actually prefer websites with longer waits to those that return instantaneous results—even when those results are identical. In five experiments that simulate service experiences in the domains of online travel and online dating, we demonstrate the impact of the labor illusion on service value perceptions, demonstrate that perceptions of service provider effort induce feelings of reciprocity that together mediate the link between operational transparency and increased valuation, and explore boundary conditions and alternative explanations.

In this paper, we focus on modeling and predicting the loss distribution for credit risky assets such as bonds and loans. We model the probability of default and the recovery rate given default based on shared covariates. We develop a new class of default models that explicitly accounts for sector specific and regime dependent unobservable heterogeneity in firm characteristics. Based on the analysis of a large default and recovery data set over the horizon 1980–2008, we document that the specification of the default model has a major impact on the predicted loss distribution, whereas the specification of the recovery model is less important. In particular, we find evidence that industry factors and regime dynamics affect the performance of default models, implying that the appropriate choice of default models for loss prediction will depend on the credit cycle and on portfolio characteristics. Finally, we show that default probabilities and recovery rates predicted out of sample are negatively correlated and that the magnitude of the correlation varies with seniority class, industry, and credit cycle.

Numerous theoretical predictions such as precautionary saving or preventive behavior have been derived for prudent decision makers. Further, prudence can be characterized as downside risk aversion and plays a key role in preference for skewness. We use a simple experimental method to test for prudence and skewness preference in the laboratory and compare the two. To this end, we introduce a novel graphical representation of compound lotteries that is easily accessible to subjects and test it for robustness, using a factorial design. Prudence is observed on the aggregate and individual level. We find that prudence does not boil down to skewness seeking. We further provide some theoretical explanations for this result.

We explore substitution patterns across advertising platforms. Using data on the advertising prices paid by lawyers for 139 Google search terms in 195 locations, we exploit a natural experiment in “ambulance-chaser” regulations across states. When lawyers cannot contact clients by mail, advertising prices per click for search engine advertisements are 5%–7% higher. Therefore, online advertising substitutes for offline advertising. This substitution toward online advertising is strongest in markets with fewer customers, suggesting that the relationship between the online and offline media is mediated by the marketers' need to target their communications.