RESEARCH ROUNDUP

Faculty Research

A selection of Mendoza research published in top academic journals.

IMITATING ANGELS

Our findings contribute to research on social proof, decision making under uncertainty, and investment experience.

Dean Shepherd, Ray and Milann Siegfried Professor of Entrepreneurship, explored the dynamics of imitation behavior in angel investments, showing that inexperienced investors depend on easily accessible external social proof, whereas experienced investors rely on more difficult-to-obtain and more valuable internal social proof.

QUALITY CHECK

Peter Easton, Notre Dame Alumni Professor of Accountancy, and Stephannie Larocque, Notre Dame associate professor of accountancy, described variation in the reporting quality of private equity funds across external monitors and third-party service providers. In contrast to public markets, they found only limited evidence that reporting quality varies with investor types.

BIAS AND PRICES

Returns implied by analyst price targets are biased but contain useful pricing information. A study by Johnathan Loudis, assistant professor of finance, provided novel evidence on how market participants incorporate biased but informative signals into prices.

UNCERTAINTY AND COMPLEXITY

Sarv Devaraj, Fred V. Duda Professor of Business, studied the effect of two sources of uncertainty in health care operations — the variation in patient mix and patient volume — and found both sources have a significant impact on patient care.

HUMANIZED CHATBOTS

Consumers typically prefer dealing with chatbots when making embarrassing purchases. Jianna Jin, assistant professor of marketing, found that preference weakens when chatbots are humanized with names and pictures.

Ph.D. Research

A selection of papers authored by Mendoza’s doctoral students.

HARM TO ONLOOKERS

New research by Jefferson McClain, a Ph.D. in Management student, and Jason Colquitt, the program’s director, showed that observing mistreatment in the workplace has consequences for onlookers that are almost as strong as experiencing it.

DESTRUCTIVE VENTURES

Ph.D. in Management student Sarah Sarjoo and Dean Shepherd, the Ray and Milann Siegfried Professor of Entrepreneurship, offered a multilevel perspective and comprehensive review of literature about destructive entrepreneurship that creates private gains for the entrepreneur but leads to negative social returns or overall societal harm.

MACHINE BIAS

Ph.D. in Analytics students Marialena Bevilacqua, Kezia Oketch, Will Stamey and Xinyuan Zhang, and director Ahmed Abbasi, found AI systems consistently favor machine-generated content over human-created content, even when human experts rate both types as equal in quality.

PHYSICIAN ASSISTANT

Ph.D. in Analytics student Ryan Cook and faculty director Ahmed Abbasi studied how AI can assist psychiatrists with their mental health diagnosis and reporting when conducting remote assessments for depression, PTSD and other disorders.