Working Papers

These papers are working drafts of research which often appear in final form in academic journals. The published versions may differ from the working versions provided here.

SSRN Research Paper Series

The Social Science Research Network’s Research Paper Series includes working papers produced by Stanford GSB the Rock Center.

You may search for authors and topics and download copies of the work there.

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Going Beyond Black-Box Models by Leveraging Behavioral Insights: an Intent-Based Recommendation Framework

Yuyan Wang, Cheenar Banerjee, Samer Chucri, Minmin Chen
August192024

Modern recommender systems, which rely on large-scale machine learning (ML) models to predict the next item a consumer will engage with, often lack generalizability and understanding of consumer behaviors due to their black-box nature. To address…

Contract Design in Influencer Marketing

Reto Hofstetter, Andreas Lanz, Navdeep S. Sahni
April2024

In influencer marketing, the differing incentives of advertisers and influencers necessitate a delicate balance between control and creativity. Investigating this trade-off, we explore the impact of contractual constraints on advertiser outcomes…

Creating a Beautiful Life

Jennifer Aaker
2024

In this paper, I share a few insights on our remarkable field to explore what creates a beautiful life. I conceptualize that the idea of a “beautiful life” is defined not by transient moments of happiness, but by a profound sense of meaning and…

Fintech Failure: Examining B2B and B2C Solutions for Two-Sided Platform Adoption

Shreya Kankanhalli, Stephen J. Anderson, Leonardo Iacovone, Sridhar Narayanan
December2023

Across emerging economies, physical cash is the ubiquitous means of transaction for retailers and their consumers. Despite the widespread availability, affordability and benefits of Fintech solutions for digital payments in these regions, there…

Novelty in Content Creation: Experimental Results Using Image Recognition on a Large Social Network

Justin Huang, Rupali Kaul, Sridhar Narayanan
November2023

Social networks utilize award recognition and front pages to motivate user content creation, facilitate consumer discovery of content, and provide attention and recognition to the best content. Past research shows that such attention and…

Does Access to Human Coaches Lead To More Weight Loss than with AI Coaches Alone?

Anuj Kapoor, Sridhar Narayanan, Puneet Manchanda
January2023

Obesity and excess weight are major global health challenges. A number of technological solutions, including mobile apps, have been developed to help people lose weight. Many such applications provide access to human coaches who help consumers…

Sophisticated Consumers with Inertia: Long-Term Implications from a Large-Scale Field Experiment

Klaus M. Miller, Navdeep S. Sahni, Avner Strulov-Shlain
January2023

Consumer inertia, the tendency to remain inactive, is a robust and well-documented phenomenon. However, if consumers are aware of their future inertia they can act to mitigate its effects on their outcomes. Using a large-scale randomized field…

Does Emotional Matching Between Video Ads and Content Lead to Better Engagement: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment

Anuj Kapoor, Sridhar Narayanan, Amitt Sharma
October2022

Modern digital advertising platforms allow ads to be targeted in a variety of ways, and generally aim to match the ad being shown with either the user or the content being shown. In this study, we examine the effect of matching in emotional…

How Does A Failure in a Retailer’s Mobile App Impact Purchases in Its Online and Offline Channels?

Unnati Narang, Venkatesh Shankar, Sridhar Narayanan
October2022

How does a failure in a retailer’s mobile app impact shoppers’ purchases in its online (website and app) and offline (brick-and-mortar store) channels? Our main hypothesis is that an app failure has a negative effect on offline purchases and no…

Investigating Complementarities in Subscription Software Usage Using Advertising Experiments

Jon Zeller, Sridhar Narayanan
September2022

In this study, we causally examine complementarity in usage across a set of related software products from a multi-product firm. Digital contexts are characterized by little price variation, bundled pricing plans, and infrequent purchase or…

Learn then Test: Calibrating Predictive Algorithms to Achieve Risk Control

Anastasios N. Angelopoulos, Stephen Bates, Emmanuel J. Candès, Michael I. Jordan, Lihua Lei
April2022

We introduce a framework for calibrating machine learning models so that their predictions satisfy explicit, finite-sample statistical guarantees. Our calibration algorithm works with any underlying model and (unknown) data-generating…

Cross-Border Knowledge Transfer and Performance in Emerging Economic Regions: the Case of Japanese International Joint Ventures in China

Takehiko Isobe, Shige Makino, David Bruce Montgomery
2022

As emerging economic regions (EERs) play a significant role in global economies, managers of multinationals have become increasingly aware of the importance of relevant international expansion in these regions. Facing potential market…

Financial Resources Impact the Relationship between Meaning and Happiness

Rhia Catapano, Jordi Quoidbach, Cassie Mogilner, Jennifer Aaker
2022

Do financial resources relate to how important meaning is for one’s happiness? Across three large-scale datasets spanning over 500,000 individuals across 123 countries, we examined the relationship between meaning and happiness for individuals…

Including Corporate Social Responsibility, Environmental Sustainability, and Ethics in Calibrating MBA Job Preferences

David Bruce Montgomery, Catherine A. Ramus
2022

Our research studies 759 MBAs graduating from eleven business schools to gain insight into what MBAs in the 21st Century care about during their job searches. We update the MBA job preference literature by using adaptive conjoint analysis to…

Psychological Ownership as an Intervention: Improving the Government Benefit Participation Gap

Wendy J. De La Rosa, Stephanie M. Tully, Eesha Sharma, Eric Giannella, Gwen Rino
2022

SCP Annual Conference Best Competitive Paper Award, Runner Up, 2021

The Economic Value of Norm Conformity and Menu-Opt-out Costs

Kwabena Baah Donkor
December2021

This paper theoretically and empirically analyzes the trade-offs between consumption versus norm conformity and choosing from a menu of default (pre-selected) options versus opting to compute a preferred non-menu choice. In the theoretical model…

Machine Learning, Behavioral Targeting and Regression Discontinuity Designs

Sridhar Narayanan, Kirthi Kalyanam
October2021

The availability of behavioral data on customers and advances in machine learning methods have enabled scoring and targeting of customers in a variety of domains, including pricing, advertising, recommendation and personal selling. Typically,…

Automated Bidding and Budget Optimization for Performance Advertising Campaigns

Tong Geng, Fangzhou Sun, Di Wu, Wei Zhou, Harikesh S. Nair, Zhangang Lin
August222021

We present an approach to automate the bidding and budgeting of multi-unit digital advertising campaigns. Such campaigns typically involve groups of ad-units that span multiple user segments, ad-delivery channels and media that together are meant…

Advertising as Information for Ranking E-Commerce Search Listings

Joonhyuk Yang, Navdeep S. Sahni, Harikesh S. Nair
July282021

New products are the lifeblood of many sellers, who increasingly reach consumers via e-commerce platforms. Yet, search engines and e-commerce platforms have substantial difficulty exposing new products to their users on account of an information…

The Impact of Mobile App Failures on Online and Offline Purchases

Unnati Narang, Venkatesh Shankar, Sridhar Narayanan
July2021

Over half of all shopping journeys start with the mobile channel. In particular, the presence of a branded mobile app significantly influences shopping across channels. However, a majority of app users decrease app usage or even abandon an app,…