Each year, a select group of Olin’s top undergraduate students complete a two-course capstone Honors in Management Seminar. Working closely with senior faculty in economics, finance, marketing, and organizational behavior, 12 members of the 2015 class spent the fall term mastering a wide range of research methods and advanced econometric techniques while formulating proposals for in-depth investigation of a complex business problem. After gathering and analyzing data this spring, the students presented their research findings at WashU’s Undergraduate Research Symposium on April 17 and again at a thesis defense with an Olin faculty panel on April 28. The panel members gave the students high marks across the board for the depth of research, overall quality of the presentations, and their ability to field challenging questions about their work. The students remarked on a great sense of accomplishment from having worked together to learn about the research process and specific aspects of business.
These studies will appear in Washington University’s Honors Thesis Digest.
Abstracts with links to the complete research papers are provided here.
Personality and Cognitive Differences Affecting Three-Person Negotiations
Authors: Jonathan Finch, Alex Hinch, Batu Otkeren, Michelle Zhu
Advisor: William P. Bottom, Joyce and Howard Wood Distinguished Professor in Organizational Behavior
Abstract: Research has examined the influence that individual personality and cognitive characteristics have on dyadic negotiation, but not on coalition formation in more complex settings. We investigated the link between outcomes of three-person, asymmetric negotiations by undergraduate students with various Big 5 personality characteristics and need for cognition. We hypothesized that need for cognition and extraversion will have a positive impact on negotiation outcomes, while agreeableness will have a negative impact. Furthermore, we hypothesized that priming subjects on the merits of individualism prior to negotiations will lead to more competitive behavior, while priming teams toward collaboration will have the opposite effect. Participants with high need for cognition may be more inclined to analyze the situation and to develop and implement the strategic planning needed to claim greater value through coalition bargaining. Extraverted participants may be more likely to initiate and sustain the back and forth communication needed to form coalitions easily. Those with high agreeableness, on the other hand, may be more likely to accept offers proposed to them that may give them far lower value than they might be able to extract otherwise. Indeed, the very first coalition experiments on n-person games by Kalisch et al. (1952) made reference to the apparent impact of personality differences in outcomes but these were never directly tested empirically. In our study, participants completed a series of personality measures then were primed with either an article on cooperation or individualism before engaging in a three-person negotiation as either a high power monopolist or as one of two low power players. To examine negotiation outcomes, we analyzed both the payoffs to individuals in the negotiation as well as negotiation time. Analysis shows positive impact of need for cognition and extraversion, varying by negotiation position, and that need for cognition positively impacts length of negotiation. Additionally, our individualistic priming resulted in more competitive negotiations. Future research should seek to replicate the experiment with a larger sample size, stronger incentives, and a more diverse subject pool so as to increase the significance of our results.
Read full thesis here
An Exploration of Donor Giving Patterns and Optimal Solicitation Strategies
Authors: Ruicong Yan, Ryan Geczi, Alexander Zaiken, Matt Puzder
Advisor: Seethu Seetharaman, W. Patrick McGinnis Professor of Marketing
Abstract: Charitable donations stem from four major sources: individuals, corporations, bequests, and charitable foundations. Growth in monetary charitable gifts has exploded in recent decades, more than doubling the growth of the S&P 500 (List 2011). Typically focusing on individual giving, traditional predictive metrics used by fund-raising campaigns emphasize the importance of the overall contribution rate (as a percentage of solicitations) and cumulative individual contribution levels. Separation of “cold-list” and “warm-list” donors typically postulates a larger economic value of a warm-list donor due to both a greater likelihood to contribute and a larger donation amount. In allocating outreach budgets, fund-raising campaigns face a cost trade-off between rekindling a donor on the warm list and canvassing a potential new donor on the cold list. Our research explores the returns on marginal solicitations and the effect of a recent large donation on subsequent probability of donating. We examine a dataset featuring the donation habits of individuals and the demographics associated with the postal (zip) code that the donor lives in. Using LPM models of past donation patterns and demographic controls, we predict the likelihood of a future contribution. Results indicate that greater number of cumulative solicitations significantly improves odds of donating up to a certain threshold, after which the impact of marginal solicitations declines sharply. We also identify a “cooling” period between solicitations to maximize the aggregate contribution made across all solicitations for an individual. These effects are observed to be consistent across four solicitation types, holding constant regional differences between individuals. Implications of these results can be used by fund-raising campaigns to better plan outreach strategies to maximize cumulative returns and better allocate spending across warm- and cold-list donors. Based on differing costs of reaching new and recurring donors, these findings aid in outreach trade-offs given fixed budget constraints.
Read full thesis here
What If God Was One of Us? Assessing the Links between Religiosity and CEO Decision Making
Authors: Matthew Ayanian, Mathias Gesser, Michael Lory, Michael Postetter
Advisors: Mark Leary, Associate Professor of Finance and Robert Pollak, Hernreich Distinguished Professor of Economics
Abstract: Previous research in the field of financial economics has demonstrated a link between the personal characteristics of executives and corporate decision making. Some of this work has suggested a relationship between religious affiliation and attitudes towards risk, which may influence financial policy choices such as leverage and dividend yield. Our team explores how a chief executive’s religiosity affects decision making in a corporate environment. We expand on previous studies by including a range of firm-level indicators that reflect investment decisions, financial policies, and market performance. Our analysis relies on a sample of nonfinancial firms from the 2002 S&P 1500 Super Composite Index, whose performances we track until 2014. Since there are no official databases specifying CEO faith, we use county-level rates of religious adherence in each CEO’s place of education and location of corporate headquarters as a proxy for CEO religiosity. Although several of the religiosity variables assessed in this study proved to be statistically significant across our models, such as Judaism and Eastern Orthodoxy, the majority of our findings proved to be both economically and statistically insignificant. We did see, however, that our findings became more significant when we restricted our sample to only include the smallest third of S&P 1500 firms, indicating that CEO religious characteristics are increasingly influential within more intimate corporate environments.
Read full thesis here
