Governments often contract with private firms to provide public services such as health care and education. To decrease firms' incentives to selectively enroll low-cost individuals, governments frequently "risk-adjust" payments to firms based on enrollees' characteristics. We model how risk...

Governments often contract with private firms to provide public services such as health care and education. To decrease firms' incentives to selectively enroll low-cost individuals, governments frequently "risk-adjust" payments to firms based on enrollees' characteristics. We model how risk...

California’s initiative to create the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), which sponsors human embryonic stem cell research within the state, has been significantly delayed by a series of political and legal battles over the structure, procedures and policies of CIRM,...

All modern information and communications technology (ICT) industries use the platform organization. A platform in computing is a reconfigurable base of compatible components on which firms and users build applications. Applications share the general purpose components, which leads to the...

We study workers’ reactions to changes in the gender composition of top management during a merger or acquisition, finding that an increase in the number of female top managers within their occupation makes male workers more likely to quit, and female workers less likely to quit. These effects...

Although experimentation is critical to the innovation process in startups, little research has explored the link between different experimentation strategies and entrepreneurial innovation. We use unique data on experimentation strategies and innovation outcomes of firms producing iPhone...

The mobile applications (apps) industry has exhibited rapid entry and growth in the midst of a recession. Using unique data from the iPhone application ecosystem, we examine how the development of “killer apps” (apps appearing in the top grossing rank) varies by market and app...

California’s initiative to create the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), which sponsors human embryonic stem cell research within the state, has been significantly delayed by a series of political and legal battles over the structure, procedures and policies of CIRM,...

We present a simple framework to illustrate the welfare consequences of a “top up” health insurance policy that allows patients to pay the incremental price for more expensive treatment options. We contrast it with common alternative policies that require essentially no incremental payments...

We study how class size and class composition affect the academic and labor market performance of college students, two crucial policy questions given the secular increase in college enrollment. Our identification strategy relies on the random assignment of students to teaching classes. We find...