Research: Faculty Publications

IOANNIS GAMVROS, RICHARD NIDEL & S. RAGHAVAN

"Investment Analysis and Budget Allocation at Catholic Relief Services," Interfaces, Vol. 36, No. 5, September–October 2006, pp. 400–406

Catholic Relief Services, a not-for-profit agency that funds development programs and humanitarian relief efforts throughout the world, faces a challenging budget-allocation problem annually. The authors developed a mathematical model and a spreadsheet tool that allocates available funds based on the impact these investments will have in different countries.

RUSSELL HALPER & S. RAGHAVAN

"Efficient Utilization of Mobile Facilities in Humanitarian Logistics"

The management of humanitarian relief is increasingly complex. Relief requests are diverse and varied; they occur across different sectors including educational activities, health, disaster relief, refugee assistance, poverty eradication, etc. The authors’ research develops algorithms for the efficient routing and utilization of mobile facilities.

"The Mobile Facility Routing Problem"

In many applications, ranging from cellular communications to humanitarian relief logistics, mobile facilities are used to provide a service to a region with temporal and spatially distributed demand. The authors describe three heuristics for creating routes for the fleet of mobile facilities and evaluate their performance.

Ming-Hui HUANG & Roland T. Rust

"Sustainability and Consumption," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 39(1), 40-54. (2011)

We consider the implications of the three pillars of sustainability (environment, economy and social justice) on consumption in a wealthy country. Building a theoretical model that includes consumers, business, government, the environment, and economic and political relations between nations, we explore how sustainability should affect the consumption behavior of consumers, charitable aid to poorer countries, and responsible environmental practices by businesses. Our model enables us to provide normative implications for consumers, society and business. Importantly, we assume that all stakeholders will optimize their self-interest, and that altruism will only partly explain behavior consistent with sustainability. Among the more non-obvious findings are that (1) the poorer the poor countries are, the less the rich countries should consume, (2) the more sensitive the global political climate is to economic inequity between the rich and poor nations, the less the rich countries should consume, and (3) if aid to poor countries is effective enough, then the more materialistic the society is, the more charitable aid it should give. We also confirm a number of more intuitive findings, such as that business should use more green technology as the taxes on pollution and/or efficiency of green technology increase, and the more resource-intensive consumption is, the less consumers should consume. Taken as a whole, the findings imply that societal consumption patterns should be sensitive to aspects of environmental impact and social justice, even if altruistic motivations are absent.

LORI KIYATKIN & ROBERT BAUM

"Employee Health: A Value Creating Organizational Resource," Presented at the 2009 Academy of Management Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois, August 2009

Draws upon the resource-based view and past research on health promotion and health care cost management to examine the implications of employee health and its underlying components as organizational level constructs. The authors develop a model that explains the process by which the components (health motivation, health risk, and healthy behaviors) impact organizational outcomes.

"Performance Implications of Employees' Healthy Behaviors," In preparation for journal submission.

The authors develop a model that explains how two distinct categories of employees’ healthy behaviors – ‘healthy consumption’ and ‘physical/mental fitness’ importantly and uniquely impact organizations’ medical costs and productivity.

LORI KIYATKIN, RHONDA REGER & ROBERT BAUM

"The Purpose of Business: Corporations Are More Progressive than U.S. Business Schools," Working paper presented at three conferences. Selected for inclusion in the poster session and Virtual Global Forum at the 2009 Global Forum for Business as an Agent of World Benefit: "Manage by Designing in an Era of Massive Innovation," held June 2-5, 2009, in Cleveland.

Examines how leading corporations and U.S. business schools are differently characterizing the purpose of business on their organizational websites, and what needs to change in order for U.S. business schools to assume their proper role as thought leaders for social progress.

MINGFENG LIN, NAGPURNANAND PRABHALA & SIVA VISWANATHAN

"Judging Borrowers by the Company They Keep: Social Networks and Adverse Selection in Online Peer-to-Peer Lending," Presented at the Western Finance Association 2009 Annual Meeting.

The authors study the online market for peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, in which individuals bid on unsecured microloans sought by other individual borrowers. Using a large sample of consummated and failed listings from the largest online P2P lending marketplace - Prosper.com, the authors test whether social networks lead to better lending outcomes, focusing on the distinction between the structural and relational aspects of networks. While the structural aspects have limited to no significance, the relational aspects are consistently significant predictors of lending outcomes, with a striking gradation based on the verifiability and visibility of a borrower's social capital.

VOJISLAV MAKSIMOVIC

"How Well Do Institutional Theories Explain Firms’ Perceptions of Property Rights?," Review of Financial Studies, 2008, 1831-1871

How do firms in different countries perceive the protection of property rights? The author examines the effect on institutions and the legal system, as well as the effect of ethnic differences on property rights.

"Financing Patterns Around the World: The Role of Institutions," Journal of Financial Economics, 2008, 467-487

Is small firms’ access to capital different than large firms, especially in developing countries? Do institutions matter?

KISLAYA PRASAD

"Corruption in Hierarchies"

Corruption is a widespread phenomenon and the cause of great social harm. The author investigates how corruption spreads within organizations, and what can be done to root it out. The distinctive feature of this study is a focus on organization level variables as determinants of behavior. The approach to the study of the problem is computational. An agent-based model was developed for the study of the phenomenon which is used to address the following questions:

• What steady states emerge during the evolution of the system?
• Does organization form matter for the amount of corruption?
• Specifically, do recruitment, promotion and retirement rules matter?
• Do the number of layers in the hierarchy matter?
• What is the optimal set of policies to control corruption?

The study deepens the understanding of how corruption takes root, how it spreads, and what can be done to control it.

LOUIQA RASCHID

"Sahana: Overview of a Disaster Management System," Proceedings of the International Conference on Information and Automation, December 15-17, 2006, Colombo, Sri Lanka

Sahana is a Free and Open Source Disaster Management system. It is a web based collaboration tool that addresses the common coordination problems during a disaster from finding missing people, managing aid, managing volunteers, tracking camps effectively between Government groups, the civil society (NGOs) and the victims themselves.

LEMMA SENBET

"Bank Incentives, Economic Specialization, and Financial Crises in Emerging Economies," Journal of International Money and Finance, 27 (5), Sept 2008, pp. 707-732

The author models the vulnerability of an economy to a financial crisis as arising from the interaction of the degree of economic specialization and bank debt financing.

ROBERT M. SHEEHAN

"Mission Gap: The Missing Driver for Nonprofit Strategy"

Examines the differing purposes of for profits and nonprofits, and the implications of those differences for strategy development. The concept of “mission gap” is offered as a tool for translating notions of competitive strategy into the nonprofit environment.

DAVID M. WAGUESPEACK

"Technological development and political stability: Patenting in Latin America and the Caribbean," Research Policy, 34(10): 1570-1590

The author examines the effect of national political institutions on patent application rates, using a 27-year panel of Latin American and Caribbean nations, estimating U.S. patent applications and domestic patent applications by local inventors for each observation, and holding other economic and technological inputs to innovation constant.

SUSAN WHITE

"Sulfur Dioxide Allowances: The Price of Pollution," Journal of Financial Education, Vol. 31, Winter 2005, pages 118-125

This case discusses a method for enforcing the Clean Air Act's acid rain provisions. Utilities may purchase sulfur dioxide allowances, which give them permission to emit a certain amount of the pollutant, or they may install pollution control equipment or use low sulfur fuel. Which alternative is more cost-effective for a utility at a given point in time? This case gives students the opportunity to apply option pricing principles to a company’s decision to purchase clean air equipment versus buying the right to pollute.

YI XU

"Public Incentives for Green Innovation"

The author presents a model of firms developing and selling green, nonpolluting technologies. The firms pursuing green technologies choose their innovation investments and prices as they compete for market share among each other as well as with an incumbent producer using a traditional technology which causes pollution. More innovation efforts lead to more attractive green technologies that are appreciated by a set of utility maximizing consumers, who can purchase any of the green technologies, the incumbent technology, or nothing at all.

DOBIN YIM & SIVA VISWANATHAN

"Networks of Green People: Dynamic Network Closure and Prosocial Behaviors in Online Communities," Presented at CIST 2010: Conference on Information Systems and Technology, INFORMS Annual Meeting Austin, Texas November 6-7, 2010.

There is a growing interest in designing incentives to foster “green” or prosocial behavior in environment sustainability. We show that online social network is conducive to energy saving behavior through social influence. Using data collected from online community Carbonrally.com, we show that slower growing groups perform better in energy reduction. In addition, we also show that the strength of ties and group characteristics that individuals belong to are important predictors of prosocial outcome. We present results and implication of our study.