Person: Barber, Benjamin
Loading...
Email Address
Birth Date
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Job Title
First Name
Benjamin
Last Name
Barber
Affiliation
IE University
School
IE Business School
Department
Strategy
Identifiers
Name
8 results
Search Results
Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
Publication The origin of wealth matters: Equity norms trump equality norms in the ultimatum game with earned endowments(Elsevier, 2019-02) Barber, Benjamin; English, William; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75We conduct an ultimatum game with three treatments: one in which endowments are earned through a real effort task (answering spelling questions under time pressure), one in which endowments are awarded through lotteries, and a standard ultimatum game with exogenously provided wealth. When subjects earn the money at stake, the modal response ceases to be an equal split, as proposals anchor around comparative earnings and these proposals are statistically different from those observed in the other treatments. Moreover, roughly half of lower earners propose keeping less than 50% of the pot for themselves. We argue that these results are best explained by Bicchieri’s account of norms and that equity, rather than equality, becomes the dominant norm in ultimatum bargaining when endowments are earned.Publication Indoctrination and coercion in agent motivation: Evidence from Nazi Germany(Sage Journals, 2018-02-09) Miller, Charles; Barber, Benjamin; Bakar, Shuvo; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75How do principals combine indoctrination and coercion to motivate their agents? Based on previous literature, we argue that indoctrination on the one hand and coercion on the other are substitutes in agent motivation—more of one requires less of the other. But measuring this substitution effect is hard since individuals often self-select into ideological organizations and have incentives to claim insincerely to be ideologically motivated. Using a novel dataset of wartime behavior contained in a large sample of World War II German service records, we present a solution to these problems. We find convincing evidence to support our theory—the German army was able to induce similar effort levels from soldiers who had and had not been in the Hitler Youth, though Hitler Youth alumni required fewer punishments.Publication Ideas and Combat Motivation: Propaganda and German Soldiers' Performance in World War II(Cambridge University Press, 2019-06-09) Barber, Benjamin; Miller, Charles; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75What explains combat motivation in warfare? Scholars argue that monitoring, material rewards, and punishment alone are insufficient explanations. Further, competing ideological accounts of motivation are also problematic because ideas are difficult to operationalize and measure. To solve this puzzle, the authors combine extensive information from World War II about German soldiers’ combat performance with data about conditionally exogenous potential exposure to Nazi radio propaganda. They find evidence that soldiers with higher potential exposure to propaganda were more likely to be decorated for valor even after controlling for individual socioeconomic factors, home district characteristics like urbanization, and proxies for combat exposure.Publication My kind of people: Political polarization, ideology and firm location(John Wiley and Sons Ltd, 2024) Barber, Benjamin; Blake, Daniel J.; Agencia Estatal de Investigación; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75Research Summary: With increased political polarization,Americans are displaying more animus across,and affinity within,ideological identity groups. We argue this dynamic incentivizes firms to minimize ideological misalignments across their workforce by locating new establishments in areas that are ideologically proximate to their current operations. We further argue that the desire to minimize ideological distance to new establishments is stronger in knowledge-intensive industries and young organizations. We find support for these arguments through the analysis of over 220,000 new establishment openings from 2009 to 2014. Critically,we find the effect of ideological distance on location is stronger when societal polarization is high. Our theory,and findings,contribute to several literatures and advance our understanding of the impact of polarization on strategy. Managerial Summary: Being a liberal or a conservative is central to many Americans' identity. As political polarization rises,individuals increasingly trust and favor others who share their ideological identity,while distrusting and avoiding those that do not. This study investigates how these societal trends affect where firms choose to locate new facilities. Because social ties and trust across workers support collaboration,resource-sharing and organizational performance,we argue that managers will seek ideological alignment within their firms by locating new establishments in areas that are ideologically proximate to existing operations. Analysis of over 220,000 new establishment openings from 2009 to 2014 supports this contention,and shows that the tendency to avoid ideologically distant locations is stronger when societal polarization is higher. © 2023 The Authors. Strategic Management Journal published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.Publication The Friday Effect: Firm Lobbying, the Timing of Drug Safety Alerts, and Drug Side-Effects(Informs, 2020-08-01) Santaló, Juan; Barber, Benjamin; Diestre, Luis; Santaló, Juan; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75Safety alerts are announcements made by health regulators warning patients and doctors about new drug-related sideeffects.However, not all safety alerts are equally effective. We provide evidence that the day of the week on which thesafety alerts are announced explains differences in safety alert impact. Specifically, we show that safety alerts announcedon Fridays are less broadly diffused – they are shared 34% less on social media, mentioned in 23-66% fewer news articles,and 12-51% less likely to receive any news coverage at all. As a consequence of this, we propose Friday alerts are lesseffective in reducing drug-related side-effects. We find that moving a Friday alert to any other weekday would reduceall drug-related side-effects by 9-12%, serious drug-related complications by 6-15%, and drug-related deaths by 22-36%.This problem is particularly important since Friday was the most frequent weekday for safety alert announcements from1999 to 2016. We show this greater prevalence of Friday alerts might not be random: firms who lobbied the FDA in thepast are 49-56% more likely to have safety alerts announced on Fridays.Publication Pushing for speed or scope? Pharmaceutical lobbying and Food and Drug Administration drug review(Wiley, 2019-04-02) Barber, Benjamin; Diestre, Luis; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75We argue firms implementing political activities face a fundamental trade-off between the content and the speed of public officials’ decisions. We show evidence of this trade-off looking at FDA drug approvals: lobbying for broader drugs leads to longer revisions, whereas lobbying to speed up the review process leads to narrower drugs. How do firms respond to this trade-off? We argue firms’ lobbying strategies depend upon the level of IP protection behind their drugs. We predict that firms with high levels of IP protection will lobby for drug scope, whereas firms with low levels of IP protection will lobby for revision speed. We find support for our theory in a sample of 540 new drug applications to the FDA from 1998 to 2015.Publication Can firms avoid tough patent examiners through examiner-shopping? Strategic timing of citations in USPTO patent applications(John Wiley and Sons Ltd, 2022) Barber, Benjamin; Diestre, Luis; National University of Singapore; University of Groningen; London Business School; Agencia Estatal de Investigación; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75Research summary: We claim that,because patent citations influence examiner selection,firms disclose citations strategically to influence which examiner is assigned to their application (“examiner-shopping”). Specifically,firms are more likely to cite patents reviewed by “lenient” examiners in their original information disclosure statement (IDS) (sent before the examiner has been selected),and delay citations to patents reviewed by “tough” examiners to subsequent IDS (sent once the examiner has been selected). We propose this strategy will be implemented by those firms who benefit the most (firms that face patent thickets and are developing high strategic-stakes technologies) but only when the costs are low (when firms face a low probability of patent litigation). We find support to our theory in a sample of 9,763 United States patent and trademark office (USPTO) patent applications during 2000 to 2006. Managerial summary: We find that firms facing patent thickets and developing high strategic stakes technologies try to get more “lenient” examiners to increase the probability of patent approval. The cost of this strategy is that “lenient” examiners usually grant weaker patents that are more likely to be litigated and invalidated. Firms overcome this by using “examiner-shopping” mainly in fields where litigation is relatively infrequent. This behavior has relevant implications: fields where property rights are rarely challenged tend to become “denser” and populated by weaker patents. Our study's discussion of the limitations within the United States patent and trademark office (USPTO) that seem to provide the opportunity to implement “examiner-shopping” strategies provides a path to address this from a policy standpoint. © 2022 The Authors. Strategic Management Journal published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.Publication Revisiting the Democracy-Private Investment Nexus: Does Inequality Matter?(Elsevier, 2018-12-01) Aköz, Kemal Kivanç; Jensen, Jeffrey; Zenker, Christina; Barber, Benjamin; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75Contrary to the predictions of a large theoretical literature, recent cross-country evidence suggests autocracies can generate statistically indistinguishable levels of private investment compared to democracies. We argue that the previous exclusion of inequality explains part of this puzzle. We model current investment as a function of investors' beliefs about future tax rates, which are conditioned by the constraints on the Executive in setting tax rates and expropriating tax revenues. In democracies, where tax rates re ect the preferences of the median voter, investment declines with rising inequality. In autocracies, investor beliefs about future tax rates re ect the relative power of Elites compared to the Executive. As inequality rises, the increased resources available to Elites constrains the Executive's ability to expropriate more tax revenues. The heterogeneous determinants of investor beliefs can explain the observed pattern of investment across regime types. We test our predictions at the macro-level with cross-country macroeconomic data. We then test the behavioral underpinnings of our model with a novel laboratory experiment showing how inequality a ects individual-level investment behavior dependent upon regime type. Results from both types of analyses show that when inequality is taken into account autocracies can generate similar levels of investment to democracies.