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We study a Bertrand oligopoly with asymmetric costs in which each seller has some “captive” buyers. In the limit as captive buyers vanish, the lowest-cost firm sells to all buyers at a price equal to the second-lowest marginal cost. However, the closest competing price arises from non-degenerate mixed strategies, firms play exclusively undominated strategies, and with positive probability all but one firm sets the monopoly price.

With permission of Elsevier

How can the selection of innovation projects be designed to reduce false positives and false negatives? Prior research has provided theoretical insights into organizing to reduce errors, yet we know little about how organizations adapt selection over time and the effects of this on selection outcomes. Drawing from qualitative data from 126 interviews conducted over several years, we explore how an accelerator evolved through three selection regimes for high-stakes funding decisions, focusing on the organizational changes and their underlying reasons. We then analyze quantitative data from all 3,580 submissions they received, assessing false positives and false negatives across these regimes. Our findings reveal a persistent occurrence of both types of errors, with relatively small differences across the regimes despite deliberate efforts to enhance the process. In the final regime, which increased submission quality by emphasizing applicant track record and adding additional layers of screening, evaluators surprisingly became more prone to making selection errors. This finding stands net of accounting for (1) differences in the pool of submissions, (2) differences in treatment effects through training and resources provided, (3) learning, and (4) market evolution. By combining qualitative and quantitative data, we explain this through two mechanisms: (1) mean reversion in combination with increased emphasis on applicant track record and (2) within-type adverse selection enabled by a more stringent selection process. The study reveals that evolving an organization’s selection regime may require adjustments across multiple aspects, resulting in unintended consequences.

© 2025, INFORMS

With permission of Elsevier

We hypothesize that “low-contrast categories” (those lacking sharp differentiation from adjacent categories) catalyze the creation of groundbreaking inventions by influencing two key stages in the life of an invention: (1) idea-creation and (2) idea-positioning. During “idea-creation,” low-contrast categories increase the likelihood that descendant inventions will combine the focal invention with more (a) boundary-spanning, (b) novel, (c) original, and (d) atypical knowledge inputs. During “idea-positioning,” they allow greater leeway in articulating how descendant inventions depart from the focal invention’s lineage and chart new technological directions. We find robust support for our hypothesis using data from the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s classification system spanning nearly four decades. Further analyses demonstrate that the catalyzing effect of low-contrast categories has important material consequences: inventions classified in low-contrast categories spur descendant inventions that generate substantially higher economic value and exert more enduring technological impact than those in high-contrast categories. By introducing the concept of catalyzing categories, this study offers a novel theoretical perspective on the genesis of groundbreaking inventions and the role of categorical structures in the inventive process.

With permission of the Academy of Management

We examine the survival prospects, employment profiles, and patient outcomes at private equity (PE)-acquired hospitals. Target hospitals maintain their survival rates while significantly reducing employment and wage expenditures. The number of core medical workers drops temporarily, but returns to its pre-acquisition level in the long run. However, administrative job and wage cuts persist over the long term, particularly at previously nonprofit hospitals. Using proprietary insurance claims data, we find no significant changes in patient demographics or inpatient prices at PE-acquired hospitals. While patient satisfaction declines, there is no evidence of increased patient mortality or readmission rates at PE-acquired hospitals.

with the permission of Elsevier

Is it advantageous to make the first offer and to do so ambitiously? Although initial studies suggested clear advantages across cultures and contexts, recent findings have challenged the robustness of this first-mover advantage. A preregistered meta-analysis of 374 effects from 90 studies (Study 1; N = 16,334) revealed three beneficial effects of making the first offer: (a) a general first-mover advantage (g = 0.42, m = 80), (b) a positive correlation between first-offer magnitude and agreement value (r = 0.62, g = 1.56, m = 53), and (c) an advantage of ambitious (vs. moderate) first offers on agreement value (g = 1.14, m = 187). The meta-analysis also identified two detrimental outcomes of ambitious first offers: (d) fewer deals (i.e., more impasses; g = −0.42, m = 13) and (e) worse subjective value experienced by recipients (g = −0.40, m = 41). Two preregistered experiments (Study 2a-2b; N = 2,121) replicated both the beneficial and detrimental meta-analytic effects and simultaneously tested multiple psychological mechanisms driving these effects. Across the experiments, selective accessibility drove the effect of first-offer magnitude on counteroffers, while anger drove the effects on impasses and subjective value. Across both the meta-analysis and the experiments, negotiation complexity moderated both the beneficial and detrimental effects of first offers; as the number and type of issues (i.e., complexity) increased, the effects of first offers became smaller, and the mechanisms changed. Overall, the current meta-analysis and experiments collectively illuminate the direction, size, psychological pathways, and boundaries of first-offer effects in negotiations.

With permission of Elsevier

This paper studies an information design problem of a retailer in a two-tier supply chain that procures a single type of product from a supplier. The supplier needs to decide on a production quantity by balancing the shortage cost and the excess inventory holding cost with respect to the retailer’s demand. The retailer’s demand is random but the retailer receives an informative signal about the demand before the supplier sets the production quantity, and places orders after learning the demand realization. The retailer wants to reduce the shortage cost, and to this end she can disclose information about her signal to persuade the supplier to increase production levels. For this setup, we characterize the optimal information disclosure policy of the retailer, and shed light on settings where the retailer strictly benefits from carefully designed information disclosure policies relative to a full- or a no-disclosure policy.

© 2024, INFORMS

Copyright (c) 2025 Matthew S. Bothner, Richard Haynes, Ingo Marquart, Nghi Truong, Hai Anh Vu

© 2025 The Author(s). Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The British Psychological Society.