Abstract
Digital tracing alerts have emerged as an effective means to share information with agility in responding to disaster outbreaks. Governments are able to instantaneously coordinate the available information to provide information related to the disaster and promote preventive actions. However, despite the opportunities granted by these innovative technologies in managing disasters, privacy concerns can arise regarding how much of individuals' private information should be collected and disclosed. With these considerations, we examine the extent to which instant digital tracing alerts and the information included in the alerts affect people's actions toward disaster management in the context of South Korea. We leverage 4,029,696 subdistrict and hour level data set, including population movement and digital tracing alert transmission information. Our results show that digital tracing alerts are effective in inducing population movement out of the infected area and decreasing the population density. Specifically, instant messaging induces movement among 2.45% of an infected district's population to other administrative areas in a given hour and decreases population density by 3.68%. Furthermore, the effectiveness of digital tracing alerts hinges on the inclusion of different private information of individuals on case confirmation. We find the heterogeneous effect of digital alerts, with the effects being more pronounced among young and male individuals and in business-centric areas. Further analysis reveals that digital tracing alerts are particularly effective at the early stage of the disaster. In addition, sending more than three messages within a day has a valid counter-effect (i.e., fatigue effects), whereas messages sent when the cumulative number of confirmed cases is high exert a less positive effect than when the verified cases are low (i.e., desensitization effects). Our results provide policy makers and law enforcement with novel insights into whether and how the use of information technology can facilitate disaster management and to what extent they should collect and expose private information to effectively safeguards public health and safety during a crisis.
Abstract
Through a randomized field experiment, this study compares the economic effects of two categories of nudges-self-assurance- and pressure-based interventions-on consumers' purchase and return behaviors. In contrast to pressure-oriented nudges, such as quantity scarcity, time scarcity, and social persuasion, self-assurance nudges are intended to facilitate the validation of product choice and style/size characteristics as well as the self-assurance-grounded justification of the purchase. The findings reveal that self-assurance nudges designed to help consumers make better choices have both short-term (high sales) and long-term (few product returns) benefits. Although pressure-driven nudges offer slightly higher short-term benefits (high sales), they eventually engender unfavorable long-term outcomes (high product returns) for consumers and online retailers. Finally, using return-adjusted net sales as performance measures, the authors find that self-assurance-based nudges are as effective in stimulating purchase as those that capitalize on scarcity and social pressure.
Abstract
Building on the literature on resource reconfiguration theory, we formulate a new theoretical framework that explains how executive redeployment within a diversified firm transfers different types of human capital embodied in executives to different units facing specific business challenges. In the empirical context of Korean business groups, we find that executives with unit-specific human capital, like turnaround experience, competitive experience, and international expansion experience, are redeployed to units with corresponding business challenges like financial difficulties, intensifying competition, and early-stage international expansion, respectively. We also show that executives with unit-generic human capital, like corporate management practices and interunit coordination experiences, are redeployed to younger units seeking to establish corporate-level policies and practices. Additional analyses also show that the value of firm-specific human capital in driving the redeployment of executives is contingent on their functional orientation and seniority.
Abstract
With the help of more than 700 reviewers, we assess the reproducibility of nearly 500 articles published in the journal Management Science before and after the introduction of a new Data and Code Disclosure policy in 2019. When considering only articles for which data accessibility and hardware and software requirements were not an obstacle for reviewers, the results of more than 95% of articles under the new disclosure policy could be fully or largely computationally reproduced. However, for 29% of articles, at least part of the data set was not accessible to the reviewer. Considering all articles in our sample reduces the share of reproduced articles to 68%. These figures represent a significant increase compared with the period before the introduction of the disclosure policy, where only 12% of articles voluntarily provided replication materials, of which 55% could be (largely) reproduced. Substantial heterogeneity in reproducibility rates across different fields is mainly driven by differences in data set accessibility. Other reasons for unsuccessful reproduction attempts include missing code, unresolvable code errors, weak or missing documentation, and software and hardware requirements and code complexity. Our findings highlight the importance of journal code and data disclosure policies and suggest potential avenues for enhancing their effectiveness.
Abstract
Government plays a critical role in developing and adopting new products with social benefits. We study how the government should mix two different subsidies-a technology-push subsidy, which awards manufacturers for cost-reducing R&D efforts, and a demand-pull subsidy, which directly rewards customers-when multiple firms compete in the presence of spillover. We develop a model with the government and two firms: The government first announces a subsidy policy, then the two firms decide R&D investments to reduce production costs and sell the products. We analyze how the optimal subsidy policy and resultant market outcomes change in the social benefit of the product and the spillover level. We find that the government should use a different subsidy policy depending on the social benefit of the product. When the social benefit is low, no subsidy should be given, letting the two firms make discretionary R&D efforts without any inducement. When the social benefit is modest, the government should only give a push subsidy and let the firms lead production adoptions with cost-reducing R&D. When the social benefit is large, the government should provide both subsidies, but the dependence on the pull subsidy increases. We also study how the spillover level influences the optimal subsidy. As knowledge spillover increases, we find that the government should increase the push subsidy to offset the losses incurred by the cost leader. We contribute to the literature by offering policy insights on how the government should design subsidies to maximize the adoption of products with social benefits.