Don Shohfi Memorial Outstanding Doctoral Student Paper Award

The Don Shohfi Memorial Outstanding Doctoral Student Paper Award is given annually to the best doctoral student paper presented at the RPI Lally Research Symposium in May. Don Shohfi lost a long battle with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 2010. Don was a graduate of New York University and worked for Citigroup for over 30 years, developing the bank's first electronic payroll system. He was an avid investor and a genuine friend, uncle, brother, father, and husband with a truly rare sense of humor.

2021 - Yuanyuan Liu (Information Systems and Marketing)

Abstract: The success rate for online medical crowdfunding (MCF) is low despite its prevalence and significance, and certain groups manifest low use efficacy of such emerging platforms. While many factors could account for this, we focus on two subtle campaign design features visual cue (direct gaze) and textual cues (narrativity), and explore if and how they influence campaign success. We focus on these subtle features because they are in the direct control of the fundraisers, are hence easy to manipulate, and are independent of medical issues, and go beyond the socioeconomic frictions that typically inhibit medical crowdfunding success. We synthesize Objective Self-Awareness (OSA) theory and Transportation theory to explore how visual and textual cues in medical crowdfunding campaigns independently and interactively influence outcomes. We test our research model using a unique dataset with 59k MCF campaigns from the GoFundMe platform in the U.S. during 2017-2019. Leveraging computer vision techniques we extract interpretable gaze cues from campaign images and using text mining we extract information from campaign texts, to measure narrativity in terms of its underlying dimensions (temporality, spatiality, and cognitive tension)and classify medical conditions (22 categories based on ICD-11 released by WHO). We find that the presence of direct gaze (i.e., inducing selfimage concern) and high degree of narrativity (i.e., the use of narrative persuasion) increase MCF outcomes. Furthermore, the presence of direct gaze attenuates the differential benefits of narrativity, specifically, in term of temporality, but not significantly in terms of spatiality and cognitive tension. Our findings have managerial implications for the better design of a MCF campaign to solicit more help and shed light on the potential negative synergies (crowding-out effects) when combining visual (or nonverbal social) and textual design features.

2020 - Joonhyuk Bok (Operations Management)

Abstract: Family engagement (FE) is an ongoing partnership between health professionals and families working at various levels of the healthcare system to enhance the quality, safety, and delivery of healthcare. Increasingly, FE is considered to be an essential component of patient-centered care. In this paper, we study the impact of healthcare metrics such as length of stay (LOS) and patient cost (PC) as well as severity of illness (SOI) on patient satisfaction (PS) with FE as a moderator. We run ordinary least square regression with propensity score matching using 5,915 observations of patients in Korean acute care hospitals from 2011 through 2015. We find that FE relieves the negative relationships between PS and LOS as well as PS and SOI. However, contrary to our expectations, we discover that PC has a positive impact on PS, with FE further strengthening this relationship. In a post-hoc analysis, we learn that perception of recovery (REC) acts as a mediator between PC and PS with the presence of FE. As an additional post-hoc analysis, we investigate whether the benefits of FE are contingent on the type of family member involved in the care delivery process and discover that the effect of FE through family caregivers living together (FCLT) is stronger than through family caregiver living separately (FCLS). Overall, our study shows the importance of FE in influencing the relationship between difficult-to-change aspects of healthcare delivery - that is, LOS, PC, and SOI - and PS. We reveal that FE is a critical element of patient-centered care for enhancing PS.

2019 - Haimeng Teng (Accounting)

Abstract: We find that foreign institutional investors (FIIs) are negatively associated with their investee firms' tax avoidance. We provide evidence that the effect is driven by the costs associated with institutional distance between FIIs' home countries and host countries. Specifically, we find that the negative effect is driven by the influence of FIIs from countries with high-quality formal institutions (i.e., high-shareholder-protection, high-government effectiveness, and high regulatory quality) / high-quality informal institutions (i.e., high-tax morality, low-corruption, and high-religiosity) on investee firms located in countries with low-quality formal institutions/low-quality informal institutions. Finally, we show that the effect is also concentrated on FIIs with stronger monitoring incentives.

2018 - Chaoqun Deng (Operations Management and Information Systems)

Abstract: There is limited systematic research on managerial response strategies to online customer compliments and positive e-WOM. In this paper, we synthesize altruism theory, social exchange theory and psychological reactance theory to develop our theoretical model that explores the mechanism through which online customer compliments influence customer attitudes and the mechanisms through which managerial responses can alter these influences. We test our model using data from TripAdvisor.com - a leading travel review platform. Using advanced text analytics we extract and code the variables in our model from positive reviews and the managerial responses to these reviews in Tripadvisor.com.

2017 - James Donato (Finance)

Abstract: We find that the inception of CDS trading on reference firms' debt is associated with a decreased number and lower probability of amendments, restatements, and rollovers to existing lenders of bank loans. Reference firms are also less likely to terminate loans prematurely or refinance with different lenders after the inception of CDS trading and tend to experience shorter loan renegotiations. Evidence is consistent with the "empty creditor" problem arising from CDS trading and the resulting decrease in the negotiation power of borrowers. Our research contributes to understanding how financial innovations alter bank lending relationships.