Category: Recent Seminars

Date: 13 February 2026, Wednesday Time: 13.30 – 14.30 Place: MA-330 "Human Capital Breadth and the Financing of Innovative Startups” by Teodor Duevski HEC Paris Abstract  I examine how the breadth of venture capital (VC) partners’ human capital influences investment selection, startup performance, and innovation. Partners with broader human capital are more likely to lead investments in novel startups with previously unexplored business models and significantly increase their likelihood of major success; however, they underperform when leading non-novel deals. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in partner time constraints as a shock to the within-VC firm likelihood of leading a deal, I provide causal evidence for these effects. A theoretical model endogenizes startup creation, partner assignment, and investment to rationalize the empirical findings and provide additional testable predictions. The results highlight the…

Date: 11 February 2026, Wednesday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 "Inflation Expectations and Firms' Decisions in High Inflation” by Okan Akarsu Sabancı University Abstract  We conducted a survey of Turkish firms, using randomized treatments to provide varied information about inflation in a high-inflation environment. By matching the survey data with administrative firm-level data on employment, sales, credit, and foreign exchange transactions, we explore the impact of exogenous variations in inflation expectations on firms' behavior, borrowing decisions, and expectations. Our findings are summarized in seven facts: (i) information treatments are effective at generating exogenous variation in inflation expectations, even when inflation is high; (ii) the pass-through to firms' own price, wage, and cost expectations is strong, reaching up to 60%; (iii) firms adopt a supply-side interpretation of inflation—lower inflation expectations…

Date: 4 February 2026, Wednesday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 "The Pricing and Economic Impact of Legal Risk" by Dean Ryu Saïd Business School – Oxford Abstract  Legal risk is an inherent feature of markets, rooted in the institutions that enable economic activity, yet it remains difficult to measure across firms. This paper constructs a text-based measure of firm-level legal risk (LRISK) using earnings call transcripts. LRISK predicts class action lawsuits and spikes during periods of heightened legal incidents. A one standard deviation increase predicts a 3–7% decline in future investment and lowers firms’ reliance on debt, consistent with precautionary motives. Legal risk is positively priced, particularly after 2010, and varies across legal origins, reflecting institutional differences. Bio Dean Ryu is a Finance Ph.D. Candidate at Said Business School,…

Date: 30 January 2026, Friday Time: 13.30 – 14.30 Place: MA-330 "Breaching the Chinese Wall: Cross-Market Information Flow Following Financial Institution Mergers" by Ehsan Mahdikhani Stockholm School of Economics Abstract  How does access to private loan information affect institutional investors' equity returns? Exploiting mergers between asset managers and lenders as a plausibly exogenous shock to loan-side information access, we find that after gaining access institutional investors earn higher abnormal equity returns: within institutions, managers earn 3.1 pp higher annualized returns on stocks for which they have loan-side access than on their other holdings without such access, and across institutions trading the same stock, informed managers outperform equity-only peers by 1.7 pp annualized, consistent with debt positions conferring information unavailable to pure shareholders. Mechanism tests show larger gains when financial-reporting covenants…

Date: 28 January 2026, Wednesday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 "Why Do I Do What I Do? How Searching for Meaning at Work Can Facilitate the Spread of Unethical Conduct Through Organizations" by Marius Van Dijke RSM Abstract  Existing work has explained the trickling down of unethical leader behavior through organizations in terms of social learning or social exchange processes. We identify a key limitation of these explanations and propose a novel process to explain the trickling down of unethical leader behavior. We build on Baumeister’s (1991) account of meaning, which depicts it as a system of mental connections between objects and events. We propose that strongly (vs. weakly) searching for meaning at work strengthens trickle-down effects of unethical leadership from higher-level managers, via lower-level managers to employees. We…

Date: 19 January 2026, Monday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 " Digital Solutions to the Obesity Crisis: Evaluating the Impact of Online Grocery Delivery Services " by Alireza Golmohammadi Belk College of Business Abstract  Despite extensive efforts in developed nations to combat obesity, rates continue to rise, particularly in the U.S., with low-income populations being disproportionately affected. This study examines the potential of third-party online grocery delivery services (OGDS) to mitigate obesity. Utilizing a staggered difference-in-differences approach, we analyze the impact of OGDS’s entry on obesity rates. Our findings reveal that OGDS entry is associated with a significant reduction in obesity rates, averaging -.64%, which translates to an annual medical cost saving of $2.91 billion. However, the positive impact of OGDS entry is less pronounced in low-income areas, indicating…

Date: 07 January 2026, Wednesday Time:10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 “Inclusive Exclusion: When Market Expansion Reinforces Exclusion” by Utku Ay University of Arizona Abstract  Firms often seek growth through inclusion, extending their brands to new consumer groups. Yet these initiatives frequently reproduce exclusionary structures rather than dismantle them. This study introduces inclusive exclusion, an empirically derived and theoretically grounded construct that explains how inclusionary marketing strategies can perform inclusion while sustaining exclusionary order. Drawing on an ethnographic investigation of football in Turkey, we identify three mechanisms of market participation that structure consumer inclusion and exclusion: consumer role assignment, consumption pathways, and infrastructural support. Inclusion emerges under conditions of role alignment, coherent pathways, and strong infrastructural support, which foster legitimate market participation. Conversely, when firms invite new consumers, but these mechanisms…

Date: 24 December 2025, Wednesday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 “Victimhood as a Currency: Observing Abusive Consumption Mobilizes Support for Misused Objects and Brands" by Evrim de Groot Glion Institute Abstract  Consumers typically buy bulk for their cost-saving benefits. Drawing on costly signaling theory, we argue that such commitments, however, serve as subtle unintentional signals of status. Although consumers buy bulk for cost saving purposes, observers consistently perceive bulk purchasers (long-term subscribers, clubhouse shoppers, loyalty card holders) as higher in status not only because they appear to possess greater financial resources, but also because they are seen as respected customers. Consequently, such customers are afforded a way of costly signaling where the risk of being labeled a show-off is minimized due to the low-cost disguise. Hence, bulk purchases essentially come…

Date: 23 December 2025, Tuesday Time: 13.30 – 14.30 Place: MA-330 "Time-Left Versus Future-Age: How Framing Life and Healthy Life Expectancy Shapes Perceived Time and Health Decisions" by David Faro London Business School Abstract  Statistics and predictions about life expectancy and healthy life expectancy feature on across a wide range of consumer-facing platforms, from retirement planning tools to health-tracking apps, wellness products, and insurance calculators. These are typically presented in future-age frame (e.g., ‘As a 50-year-old, you are expected to live until the age of 84’) or in time-left frame (e.g., ‘As a 50-year-old, you are expected to live for another 34 years’). Across seven online studies (N = 4103) and one field experiment (N = 14,422), we show that the time-left frame makes total life expectancy and healthy life…

Date: 17 December 2025, Wednesday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 "Modeling and Analysis of On-demand Service Systems " by Ke Sun McGill University Abstract  On-demand services, ranging from ride-hailing to mobile ordering, rely on real-time matching between customers and service providers. These systems increasingly allow customers to engage remotely before arriving at the service facility, creating new operational challenges around congestion, information, and incentives.In this talk, we focus on the order-ahead setting in quick-service restaurants, where remote customers place orders before traveling and their orders begin advancing in the preparation queue. Although order-ahead is widely believed to reduce delay and increase throughput, we show that adopting the order-ahead technology can sometimes make the system unintentionally yield lower throughput than an onsite-only system, even when the provider optimally chooses whether to share queue-length…