Great achievements in knowledge are produced by older innovators today than they were a century ago. Using data on Nobel Prize winners and great inventors, I find that the mean age at which noted innovations are produced has increased by 6 years over the 20th Century. I estimate shifts in life-cycle productivity and show that innovators have become especially unproductive at younger ages. Meanwhile, the later start to the career is not compensated for by increasing productivity beyond early middle age. I further show that the early life-cycle dynamics are closely related to variation in the age at Ph.D. and discuss a theory where accumulations of knowledge across generations lead innovators to seek more education over time. More generally, the results show that individual innnovators are productive over a narrowing span of their life-cycle, a trend that reduces, other things equal, the aggregate output of innovators. This drop in productivity is particularly acute if innovators’ raw ability is greatest when young.

Research suggests that power triggers assertive action. However, people from different cultures might expect different types of action from powerful individuals such as leaders. In comparing cultural differences in leadership imagery, we find that Americans represent leaders standing ahead of groups, whereas Asians also represent leaders behind groups. We propose that front versus back positions embody two faces of leader action: individual assertion versus group-focused action. Studies 1a and 1b respectively employed etic and emic methods to demonstrate that Singaporeans were more likely than Americans to represent leaders behind groups. In Study 2, Singaporeans evaluated back leaders more favorably than Americans did, and group focus mediated cultural differences. Simulating the conditions under which cultural differences arise, Study 3 demonstrates that a primarily Western managerial sample primed with threat (versus opportunity) preferred back leaders. By describing cultural variations in imagery, we reveal more nuanced implicit theories of leader action.

How much do cultural biases affect economic exchange? We try to answer this question by using the relative trust European citizens have for citizens of other countries. First, we document that this trust is affected not only by objective characteristics of the country being trusted, but also by cultural aspects such as religion, a history of conflicts, and genetic similarities. We then find that lower relative levels of trust toward citizens of a country lead to less trade with that country, less portfolio investment, and less direct investment in that country, even after controlling for the objective characteristics of that country. This effect is stronger for good that are more trust intensive and doubles or triples when trust is instrumented with its cultural determinants. We conclude that perceptions rooted in culture are important (and generally omitted) determinants of economic exchange.

Higgins and Scholer (Higgins, E. T., and Scholer, A. A. (2009). Engaging the consumer: The science and art of the value creation process. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 19(2), 100-114) propose that while opposing forces do not create value, value is created when people engage in the act of countering these forces. To the extent that feeling wrong from regulatory nonfit may be perceived as an opposing force, their hypothesis can be extended to understanding regulatory nonfit effects. More specifically, while regulatory nonfit does not create value, the experience of regulatory nonfit may signal that something “feels wrong”. Consumers may be prompted to counter this feeling wrong experience when they are involved in the decision making process, and this intervention in turn leads to value creation.

The U.S. is currently engulfed in the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression. A key structural factor behind this crisis is the large demand for riskless assets from the rest of the world. In this paper we present a model to show how such demand not only triggered a sharp rise in U.S. asset prices, but also exposed the U.S. financial sector to a downturn by concentrating risk onto its balance sheet. In addition to highlighting the role of capital flows in facilitating the securitization boom, our analysis speaks to the broader issue of global imbalances. While in emerging markets the concern with capital flows is in their speculative nature, in the U.S. the risk in capital inflows derives from the opposite concern: capital flows into the U.S. are mostly non-speculative and in search of safety. As a result, the U.S. sells riskless assets to foreigners, and in so doing, it raises the effective leverage of its financial institutions. In other words, as global imbalances rise, the U.S. increasingly specializes in holding its "toxic waste."

This research investigates the impact of allying with socially dissimilar group members on members’ feelings and behavior, and the ultimate performance of the group. In the context of having a newcomer join a group, we conducted a 2 (social similarity of newcomer to oldtimers; in-group or out-group) x 3 (opinion agreement: newcomer has no opinion ally, 1 opinion ally, or 2 opinion allies) interacting group experiment with four-person groups. Groups with out-group newcomers perceived their group interactions as less effective, yet performed better than groups with in-group newcomers. Moreover, this result was not due to newcomers bringing new ideas to the group discussion. Instead, the behavior and feelings of oldtimers who agreed with newcomers (i.e., opinion allies to the newcomer) had a larger impact on the groups’ outcomes. The results add to the idea that surface-level (i.e., social) diversity may ultimately be beneficial for groups even when out-group members do not bring different deep-level task perspectives to the group.

Three studies contrasting Indian and American negotiators tested hypotheses derived from theory proposing why there are cultural differences in trust and how cultural differences in trust influence negotiation strategy. Study 1 (a survey) documented that Indian negotiators trust their counterparts less than American negotiators. Study 2 (a negotiation simulation) linked American and Indian negotiators’ self-reported trust and strategy to their insight and joint gains. Study 3 replicated and extended Study 2 using independently-coded negotiation strategy data, allowing for stronger causal inference. Overall, the strategy associated with Indian negotiators’ reluctance to extend interpersonal (as opposed to institutional) trust produced relatively poor outcomes. Our data support an expanded theoretical model of negotiation, linking culture to trust, strategies, and outcomes.

n two experiments, we examined how social and opinion diversity influenced the argument quality of written preparation for a face-to-face interaction. The results demonstrated that responses to opinion diversity depended on whether one’s coworker was socially similar (i.e., an in-group member) or dissimilar (i.e., an out-group member). In Experiment 1, individuals anticipating interaction with a disagreeing out-group coworker had higher quality arguments than those anticipating interaction with a disagreeing in-group coworker; however, the social identity of the coworker did not affect argument quality when both agreed. Moreover, the results suggested that the level of relationship focus (i.e., focus on the social relationship) exhibited during disagreement directly mediated the link between social diversity and argument quality. In the presence of opinion diversity, individuals were more relationship focused with in-group than with out-group coworkers. In turn, the more relationship focused, the lower the argument quality. In a second experiment, we directly manipulated relationship focus and found further support for the inverse relationship between argument quality and relationship focus. The implications of this work for understanding decision-making in socially diverse teams are explored.

We examine the problem that people who are demographically different from one another face a fundamental challenge in achieving interpersonal closeness in organizational settings. We contribute to the literature by incorporating a discussion of how the status differences that accompany demographic diversity can influence the disclosure of personal information and ultimately interpersonal closeness. Moreover, we highlight the difficult choice on the part of individuals to strategically conceal or reveal status-relevant personal information to others.