Showing results 1 - 10 of 31
January 21, 2021, Paper: "We document a unique driver of consumer behavior: the public disclosure of a firm’s gender pay gap. Four experiments provide causal evidence that when firms are revealed to have gender pay gaps, consumers are less willing to pay for their goods, a reaction driven by consumer perceptions of unfairness. Unlike reactions to CEO‐to‐worker wage gaps, this effect varies by consumers’ gender: compared to men, women show larger…
| David Deming | Jennifer Hochschild | Nathaniel Hendren | Will Dobbie | Daniel Schneider | Sandra Susan Smith | Danielle Allen | Cornell William Brooks | Dani Rodrik | Jason Furman
January 2021, Video; "Each week five experts give their 8- minute pitch for a big question, important finding, promising policy solution, or research frontier for the next generation of work on inequality."
Watch Complete Series Via Harvard Inequality and Social Policy on Youtube
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"This week: 6 Big Ideas. David J. Deming (Harvard Kennedy School) leads the…
December 8, 2020, Paper: "Many consumers struggle to repay their credit card debt, in part because paying small portions of large bills often feels fruitless. We introduce a novel credit card payment option—repayment-by-purchase—and examine its influence on both the amount consumers’ repay and their perception of progress toward reducing their debt. With typical repayment, consumers simply enter the amount they wish to pay toward their total…
2020, Paper: "Two experiments, including one incentive compatible study, examine the impact of cutting pay for executives versus employees in response to COVID-19 on consumer behavior. Study 1 explores the effect of announcing cuts or no cuts to CEO and employee pay, and shows that firms’ commitment to paying employees their full wages leads to the most positive consumer reactions. Study 2 further examines the effects of announcing employee and…
| Leslie John
Procedural Justice and the Risks of Consumer Voting. Leslie John, Michael I. Norton, 2019, Paper, "Firms are increasingly giving consumers the vote. Eight studies demonstrate that when firms empower consumers to vote, consumers infer a series of implicit promises—even in the absence of explicit promises. We identify three implicit promises to which consumers react negatively when violated: representation (Experiments 1A–1C); consistency (…
| Ashley Whillans
Communicating Resource Scarcity. Ashley Whillans, Michael Norton, 2019, Paper, "The development and maintenance of interpersonal relationships require investments of both money and time—resources that are often limited in supply, but in great demand. Indeed, consumers are regularly asked to dedicate their money and time to social engagements, and need to manage these resources efficiently. Therefore, consumers often choose to cite insufficient…
The Secret to Getting More People to Pay Their Taxes. Michael I. Norton, February 11, 2018, Opinion, "When people feel that they don’t have a voice in determining what their government does, they often check out of the political process. One result of that: They do what they can to avoid taxes. But there’s a way to change the way people feel—and increase tax compliance in the process."…
| Rohit Deshpandé
Consumers Avoid Buying from Firms with Higher CEO-to-Worker Pay Ratios. Rohit Deshpandé, Michael I. Norton, January 31, 2018, Paper, "We document a novel driver of consumer behavior: pay ratio disclosure. Swiss corporation performance data gathered during a legally mandated pay ratio referendum reveals that salient high pay ratios are associated with decreased firm sales (Pilot Study). An incentive-compatible field experiment shows that, when…
| Ashley Whillans
Time, Money, and Subjective Well-Being. Ashley Whillans, Michael I. Norton, 2017, Paper, "Time and money are scarce and precious resources: people experience stress about having insufficient time, and worry about having insufficient money. This chapter reviews research showing that the ways in which people spend their time and money, the tradeoffs that people make between having more time or having more money, and the extent to which people…
(Mis)perceptions of Inequality. Michael I. Norton, July 24, 2017, Paper, "Laypeople's beliefs about the current distribution of outcomes such as income and wealth in their country influence their attitudes towards issues ranging from taxation to healthcare–but how accurate are these beliefs? We review the burgeoning literature on (mis)perceptions of inequality. First, we show that people on average misperceive current levels of inequality,…