Author: EconLearner

Imagine you are working on a project for a client. You want them to notice your effort, so send frequent updates as you complete each task.This is called “functional transparency” — the idea is that “if you can see how hard I’m working, then you’ll appreciate it more,” he says Rob Bray, associate professor of operations at Kellogg. Additionally, customers may appreciate feeling in the loop.But transparency can have a downside. After all, if you show customers every step, they may also notice long delays between progress reports. “You’ll also be airing dirty laundry,” Bray points out.So how can you…

This lack of testing is likely to have dire public health consequences. But it could also deepen the toll on businesses at a time when political officials and business leaders are working to limit the economic impact of the virus.Recent research from Andrew Dillonclinical associate professor of economic development at Kellogg’s Public-Private Interface Initiative (KPPI), suggests that screening workers for an infectious disease can have a surprising impact on their productivity.Dillon, along with the authors Ashesh Prasanna and Jed Friedman of the World Bank, Pieter Serneels at the University of East Anglia and Oladele Akogun at Modibbo Adama University of…

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Lotus made its name by producing lightweight sports cars. From the Elan in 1962 which used fiberglass to tip the scales at just 680kg, to the astonishingly successful Elise, the Lotus theme has traditionally been nimble handling rather than brute force. But now that Lotus is becoming an electric brand, that ethos is changing. Hot on the heels of the heavy SUV Eletre, the Emeya Hyper-GT has been launched in the UK. It may have an impeccable sporting pedigree, but as a large sedan is it still a Lotus? I asked Lotus Group VP of Design Ben Payne to explain…

They follow strict procedures and use objective evidence to identify health violations. Thus, their project appears to be as immune to human error as any regulatory project could hope to be. However, hundreds of thousands of potential violations go unreported each year, putting people at additional risk for foodborne illness. While no inspection process (or inspector) is perfect — are there some common factors that could compromise the quality of inspectors’ work?Maria Ibanez, assistant professor of business at Kellogg, hoped that behavioral science might shed some light on the question. Ibanez’s research focuses on how work scheduling affects decision-making, so…

This is why scholars have long emphasized the role of self-control in making healthy choices. When we don’t take good care of our health, they argue, a lack of willpower may be to blame. New research from Hetana Ahar, assistant professor of marketing at the Kellogg School, suggests there’s more to the story. “This may be true for certain types of preventive health behaviors. But for other types of behaviors, the barrier to acting in a healthy way is not only self-control, but that the health behavior itself is intimidating,” she says.In a recent study, she and her colleagues identify…

In the months leading up to the November elections, Hatim Rahman, assistant professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School, is keeping a close eye on Facebook and other social media platforms like Twitter, YouTube and WhatsApp to see how they handle misinformation this time around. And the trends he sees concern him.”Thanks to increasingly powerful algorithms, the speed and scale at which disinformation can spread is unprecedented,” says Rahman.Rahman highlights three reasons why misinformation on social media is such an intractable challenge – and what that might mean in the future. Covered sourcesA disadvantage of the major social…

It seems unlikely. Besides, viruses don’t spread over a mobile network. they need to interact personally with people.But it turns out that the patterns we call can be used to predict the patterns of where we travel, according to new research from Kellogg’s. Dashun Wang. This in turn can shed light on how an epidemic will spread.Both phone calls and physical travel are heavily influenced by geography. The further a shopping center or post office is from our home, after all, the less likely we are to visit it. Similarly, our friends who live in the neighborhood are much more…

“They live and die by these clicks,” he says Bobby Calder, emeritus professor of marketing at Kellogg. “They fire people if they don’t get clicks.”But in a study of US local news outlets, Calder and his colleagues argue that engagement can’t be measured simply by click volume. They define engagement as the meaningful experiences a user can get from a piece of content. For example, some people may appreciate a comforting routine of regularly reading the news, while others appreciate knowing what’s happening in their local community.In two studies, researchers found that people who read the news for these two…

In teaching hospitals, senior doctors don’t just treat patients – they are also expected to supervise and mentor junior doctors, called ‘residents’, as part of their core job duties.So how do these responsibilities affect the workload of senior doctors? Does the additional supervisory duty take away from time with patients?Or, conversely, do their patient responsibilities take away from the time they spend teaching residents? “There’s always been a big debate about whether residents are being exploited or are they really learning?” says Jan Van Mieghemthe Harold L. Stuart Professor of Managerial Economics at Kellogg.In a new study, Van Mieghem, along…