Chapter 1. Geopolitical Disruption and Creativity: Evidence from War-struck Artists during World War II

Job market paper

Creativity, a core micro-foundation of innovation, accompanies challenges in its pursuit because novel ideas or products can create friction with pre-existing standards or traditions. In addressing this dilemma, research has primarily focused on the strategies that enhance the receptivity of creativity in a given normative context. However, norms are rarely permanent. In the face of geopolitical disruptions, such as wars, established structures and standards are fragmented, eroding the traditional normative boundaries that typically constrain creativity. This norm erosion creates a space where individuals are no longer bound by conventional limitations, which may offer a unique opportunity to explore new configurations for creativity. I test this conjecture by exploiting the timing of German invasions of European countries during World War II and examining whether these invasions affected the creativity of war-afflicted painters. To delve into the multidimensional nature of creativity in this artistic context, I employ image processing techniques on over 39,000 paintings, extracting core creative dimensions of paintings such as color spectrums, brushstroke patterns, and overall structural features. I find a dual-faced effect of war: afflicted artists experience temporary drops in creative output, but they also produce more novel artworks by combining different features that push the boundaries of the artistic paradigm. The novel paintings produced by the war-afflicted artists were subsequently more likely to be exhibited in the top galleries around the world. I discuss implications for creativity and innovation research.

Muddying the Waters: The Threat of Human Capital Loss and the Obfuscation of Employee Identity with Olenka Kacperczyk

Reject and resubmit at Strategic Management Journal

Retaining valuable human capital is central to a firm’s competitive advantage. While most studies have focused on strategies that constrain employees’ pursuit of outside options, surprisingly little research considered strategies that constrain competitors’ provision of outside options. In this study, we propose that when faced with the threat of human capital loss, firms will strategically reduce employees’ visibility in the external labor market to limit the outside options. We test our predictions in the mutual fund industry from 1991-2007, exploiting exogenous state-level variation in the enforcement of non-compete agreements which indicates barriers to interfirm mobility. We find support for our predictions using difference-in-differences estimators that leverage non-compete abandonments and adoptions.

Dual Impact Patience: Understanding Investor Short-Termism for Financial and Social Objectives with Donal Crilly & Cedric Gutierrez

Under review at Administrative Science Quarterly

Firms increasingly integrate social and environmental objectives with financial goals, yet achieving financial profitability and social outcomes takes time. This creates challenges for organizations facing investor pressure for short-term returns. Existing research primarily frames investor impatience as uniform and focused on financial outcomes. We introduce the concept of dual impact patience, suggesting that investor short-termism is multidimensional, varying between financial and social domains and shaped by their interaction. Across three studies—a within-subject experiment, crowdfunding data analysis, and a policy-capturing study—we find that investors exhibit greater patience for social returns, while remaining more sensitive to financial return timelines. The interplay between objectives is critical: near-term financial returns can mitigate concerns about distant social goals. By revealing the domain-specific nature of short-termism, we advance understanding of investor short-termism, offering insights for managers in aligning capital allocation with societal impact. 

The Impact of Paid-Leave Policy on Innovation by Women and Men with Keyvan Vakili & Sarah Kaplan

Working Paper (Presented at: TADC 2022)

In this study, we track the population of U.S. inventors and examine whether the enactment of paid-family-leave policy in California, which intends to alleviate caregiving burdens, alters the rate, quality, and novelty of innovation differently for women and men. Surprisingly, we find that the policy has an unintended consequence of significantly hindering the novelty of knowledge production of both women and men inventors, across a range of measures. The series of analyses indicates that one potential mechanism for this effect is driven by the pre-emptive moves into large listed firms even before the policy becomes effective, which alters the course of knowledge production. We show that some policies do not function in an exogenous manner and that individuals anticipate and adjust their career strategies in anticipation of changing labor market conditions.

Resume Inflation in the Labor Market with Santiago Campero Molina & Olenka Kacperczyk

Work in Progress (Presented at: People and Organizations 2023)

Prior studies document gender differences in job application behavior. For instance, women apply for jobs when they are qualified, while men apply regardless of their qualifications. However, when comparing job candidates, women do not appear more qualified than men, neither in experience nor credentials. This introduces a puzzle: If the average quality of women applicants is higher due to the gender difference in the application behavior, why don’t women candidates appear as more qualified than men? We attempt to resolve this puzzle by providing evidence from a hiring simulation that men are more likely to deceptively inflate their credentials above their true credentials.  The gender difference is most salient amongst young and inexperienced employees.

Afterlife Beliefs and Social Orientation with Donal Crilly & Anna Szerb

Work in Progress

Many challenges that organizations face require initiatives that reach into the distant future and extend beyond conventional strategic planning horizons. The fact that leaders and their stakeholders potentially care about the well-being of society very far into the future, perhaps even after their demise, is a puzzle for research on intertemporality. This study provides a framework for understanding how the interplay of personal and collective afterlife beliefs influence the selection of issues that activists put on their corporate agenda and the strategies they employ to advocate for these issues.

• Supported by the Wheeler Institute: wheelerinstituteresearch.org/project/between-hells-flames-and-heavens-lights/