A new study by accounting professor Yaniv Konchitchki finds greater transparency in firms’ earnings has a positive effect on the bottom line. "Cost of Capital and Earnings Transparency" (published in the Journal of Accounting and Economics, April-May 2013) establishes that the transparency of a firm’s accounting earnings is a telling indicator of the company’s cost of capital and thus its valuation, according to Konchitchki. (06/12/2013)

Finance Professor Martin Lettau has received the 2013 AQR Insight Award for his research about how an extension of the widely taught capital asset pricing model can explain returns of equity, commodity, sovereign bonds, and currencies and offer a unified risk view of these investments. The winning paper, “Conditional Currency Risk Premia,” is co-authored with Haas alumnus Matteo Maggiori, Ph.D. 12, and Michael Weber, a current Haas PhD student. (05/24/2013)

Everyone knows money talks. Prof. Paul Gertler found this to be the case in Rwanda, where, in conjunction with the national government, he evaluated a new and novel pay-for- performance model for the health care industry designed to increase access to high quality maternal and child health services.He outlines his findings in his paper, “Using Performance Incentives to Improve Medical Care Productivity and Health Outcomes,” co-authored by Christel Vermeersch, a World Bank senior economist. (05/13/2013)

While teaching a course on financial information analysis, Asst. Prof. Panos Patatoukas observed that capital market participants and policy makers are increasingly turning to accounting earnings data from corporate financial reports for hints regarding the prospects of the aggregate stock market. This observation indicated that, at the aggregate level, accounting earnings data could be relevant for gauging the value of the entire stock market. (04/01/2013)

Independence. Creativity. Money. Those are the benefits associated with successful entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. But is being an entrepreneur really more lucrative than working for a salary? And who is best cut out to succeed? A new study by Professor Ross Levine of the Haas Economic Analysis and Policy Group answers both of these questions.  (02/19/2013)

In an era when a stock can take a beating if earnings fall a penny short of analysts' predictions, what factors influence whether forecasters seek precision to the penny or round off -- and how should their choice affect investors? Accounting Professor Patricia Dechow found that rounded forecasts are not only significantly more inaccurate than those that strive for penny-precision but also significantly more upwardly biased. The sharpest differences in both respects occur in companies with annual earnings per share of less than $10. (01/22/2013)

Berkeley-Haas Finance Professor Ulrike Malmendier has been awarded the 2013 Fischer Black Prize from the American Finance Association, which honors the top finance scholar under the age of 40 years old. The prize was established in 2002 in honor of Fischer Black, who was a co-inventor, along with Myron Scholes, of the Nobel-prize winning Black-Scholes-Merton Options-Pricing Model. (01/16/2013)

Prof. David Teece, the Thomas W. Tusher Professor in Global Business and faculty director of the Institute for Business Innovation, received the Royal Honour of Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.  Associate Prof. Nicolae Gârleanu , the Paul H. Stephens Chair in Applied Investment Analysis, is the winner of the Smith Breeden Prize from the Journal of Finance. Assistant Prof. Adair Morse, a visiting professor in the Haas Finance Group, is the recipient of the Journal of Finance’s Brattle Prize.   (01/16/2013)

Wide-scale tax evasion in Greece accounts for 28 billion Euros in unreported taxable income –just among the self-employed, according to a new study, “Tax Evasion Across Industries: Soft Credit Evidence from Greece,”  by  Adair Morse,  a visiting assistant professor of finance at Berkeley-Haas.   (12/05/2012)

As a corporate responsibility consultant, Kellie McElhaney publicly criticized Apple’s recent appointment of another man to an already all-male executive team. McElhaney’s new research goes one step further, indicating that the number of women on a corporate board correlates with a firm’s sustainability performance.  (11/14/2012)

The last few months leading up to an election can be a critical, political game changer. One right or one wrong move can quickly change a candidate’s standing at the polls. New research by Noam Yuchtman suggests that judges who are elected, rather than appointed, respond to this political pressure by handing down more severe criminal sentences – as much as 10 percent longer –in the last three months before an election compared with the beginning of their terms. (10/17/2012)

When Madeleine Albright became the first female U.S. Secretary of State, she led high-level negotiations between mostly male foreign government leaders. In 2009, comedian Bill Maher asked Albright if she ever flirted on the job and she replied, “I did, I did.” Flirtatiousness, female friendliness, or the more diplomatic description “feminine charm” is an effective way for women to gain negotiating mileage, according to a new study by Haas School Professor Laura Kray. (10/08/2012)

Prof. Jennifer Chatman writes about her recent research on organization culture. She found that strong cultures are not necessarily a disadvantage in dynamic environments and furthermore, that firms with strong cultures actually perform better financially, growing more over time, in economically turbulent periods but only if they intensely hold a cultural norm of adaptability. Her study also found that firms with strong cultures that are adaptive also have better reputations. (09/20/2012)

A familiar face returned to the Berkeley-Haas campus this fall. Haas School economics professor Carl Shapiro, the Transamerica Chair in Business Strategy, served in two high-ranking positions in the Obama Administration.  From March 2009 through February 2011, Shapiro served as chief economist in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). He then moved to the White House, where he advised President Obama as a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA).  (09/06/2012)

Researchers have long known that people are very frequently overconfident, although overconfidence can have detrimental effects on performance and decision-making. So why is overconfidence still so pervasive? The lure of social status promotes overconfidence, says Haas School Associate Professor Cameron Anderson, who co-authored a new study, “A Status-Enhancement Account of Overconfidence,” forthcoming in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. (08/13/2012)

How people make choices depends on many factors, but a study by Dana R. Carney, assistant professor of management, finds people consistently prefer the options that come first: first in line, first college to offer acceptance, first salad on the menu – first is considered best. The paper, “First is Best,” is published in PLoS ONE.  (07/02/2012)

Prof. David Levine writes about his new study, “Randomized Government Safety Inspections Reduce Worker Injuries with No Detectable Job Loss”: OSHA has a long history of being attacked from all sides. While some criticize it for being too lenient, others routinely refer to it as a job-killer whose regulations stifle job creation, increase labor costs, and erode America’s competitiveness. But don’t be fooled. OSHA workplace inspections protect the health and safety of America’s workers. We now have the data to prove it. (06/06/2012)

Air pollution, climate change, food additives, pesticides, cosmetic safety, and electronic product hazards all pose global consumer and environmental risks, but the regulatory controls to manage them vary by country and by region. In recent decades, Europe has taken the lead over the US in comprehensively managing such risks, according to a new book by Berkeley-Haas Professor David Vogel. (05/18/2012)

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is typically used by medical professionals to visualize the internal structures of the human body. By using MRI to study the brain, Ming Hsu, assistant professor of marketing, found a method to characterize how the different regions of the brain function in concert to enable people to anticipate and respond to competitors' behavior.  (04/23/2012)

Walmart may serve millions of customers, but suppliers who are lucky enough to have Walmart as their customer have one more reason to smile—in the spirit of the chain store’s famous “happy face” logo. According to supply chain research by Panos Patatoukas, assistant professor of accounting, suppliers with few but major customers enjoy higher performance—demonstrated by bottom line profitability rates and stock market valuations—than firms with a less concentrated customer base. (03/27/2012)

A real estate investor owns a big office-building complex and decides he needs $10 million to invest in energy-efficient improvements. He goes to the bank, where the loan officer says, “Sorry, we don’t do that kind of thing.” When it comes to underwriting commercial real-estate loans, energy efficiency hasn’t been a part of the conversation – but it should be, according to Energy Efficiency and Commercial-Mortgage Valuation, by Nancy Wallace, Dwight Jaffee, and Richard Stanton. Watch the video. (03/15/2012)

A new book edited by three Berkeley-Haas housing experts evaluates the genesis of the housing market bubble, the global viral contagion of the crisis, and the policy initiatives undertaken in some of the major economies of the world to counteract its disastrous effects. “Unlike most other books on the global crisis, Global Housing Markets: Crises, Policies, and Institutions focuses on the housing sector in the context of the financial and institutional structures that shaped the experience of individual economies,” says Cynthia Kroll, executive director for staff research and a senior regional economist at the Fisher Center. (02/13/2012)

A new book co-edited by Professor David Vogel brings together a collection of essays on the interaction of policymaking in Europe and the U.S. Transatlantic Regulatory Cooperation: The Shifting Roles of the EU, the US and California explores a wide range of policy areas, including motor vehicle standards, water regulation, chemical regulation, climate change, and biotechnology, showing in each case how these three political jurisdictions have affected one another’s regulatory policies and priorities. (11/02/2011)

Watching a horror movie can scare you into selling your stocks earlier than you would have otherwise. That’s the frightening evidence shown in a series of studies by Associate Professor Eduardo Andrade and Chan Jean Lee, a PhD candidate, both in the Haas Marketing Group. Their study explains that the scared investor’s early decision to sell stocks happens through “social projection.” Watch the video. (10/20/2011)

Business schools are churning out a new breed of MBA graduates who want to use their leadership skills toward effecting social good. The University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business is the first business school studying “multi-sector leadership,” according to Nora Silver, adjunct professor and director of the Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership at Berkeley-Haas. (09/28/2011)

More than 10 years after electricity deregulation, the nuclear power industry has decreased greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 40 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and saved $2.5 billion a year as a result of operating more efficiently over the past decade, according to a new study by Lucas Davis and Catherine Wolfram. (09/08/2011)

The new regulatory banking standards called “Basel III” slightly decrease but do not eliminate systemic risk in the banking system, according to research by Prof. Dwight Jaffee and Asst. Prof. Johan Walden. Furthermore, the study suggests successful mortgage markets in Western Europe provide useful models for mortgage reform in the US. Because these healthier markets do not contain public lenders such as the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Professor Jaffee proposes the elimination of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as a critical step toward healing the domestic economy. Watch the video. (07/07/2011)

Innovation drives markets. But when innovation is left unharnessed and spreads too fast, regulation can’t keep up and innovation implodes. Jo-Ellen Pozner studies organizational legitimacy and corporate governance and analyzed how the diffusion of innovative practices contributed to the 2008 financial crisis causing “terminal isomorphism” and the mortgage market meltdown. Watch the video. (06/28/2011)

How likely are you to repurchase a stock you sold? New findings from Professor Terrance Odean about investor behavior conclude that trading patterns involving previously owned stock are driven by a desire to avoid or at least limit anticipated regret. In other words, investors are likely to repurchase a stock if the sale boosts feelings of satisfaction. See the video. (06/01/2011)

Foreclosures depress communities and economies. But how does one measure the direct impact of foreclosures on the overall economy? The problem is complicated by the fact that other economic shocks – such as job losses – could be jointly driving up foreclosures and driving down economic growth. Haas economist Atif Mian finds answers by exploiting legal differences across states in how mortgage defaults are handled. See the video. (05/05/2011)