Jason Greenberg

Cornell University | CU

Research Summary We investigate the extent to which the increasing availability of ratings information has affected heterogeneity in firm performance and, if so, what market segments are responsible for these changes. A unique dataset was constructed with restricted-access government data to examine these questions in the context of the New York Ci...

There is often considerable anxiety and conflicting advice concerning the benefits of presenting/being evaluated first. We thus investigate how expert evaluators vary in their evaluations of entrepreneurial proposals based upon the order in which they are evaluated. Our research setting is a premiere innovation fund competition in Beijing, China, w...

At the root of the conceptual difficulties in determining the competitive structures that underpin markets is the fact that firms and their product offerings can be described along a large number of attributes, and so be viewed as more or less similar depending on the attributes used for comparison. Our chapter exposes the multi-level cognitive emb...

There is often considerable anxiety and conflicting advice concerning the benefits of presenting/being evaluated first. We thus investigate how expert evaluators vary in their evaluations of entrepreneurial proposals based upon the order in which they are evaluated. Our research setting is a premiere innovation fund competition in Beijing, China w...

In many facets of life, individuals make evaluations that they may update after consulting with others in their networks. But not all individuals have the same positional opportunities for social interaction in a given network or the ability and desire to make use of those opportunities that are available to them. The configuration of a person’s ne...

Is it better to be evaluated first?

There is significant and growing interest in entrepreneurship. Notwithstanding this interest, sizable barriers limit understanding of the phenomenon and, by implication, understanding of who is most likely to succeed in it. One fundamental challenge researchers face is the confounded language employed: “Self-employment,” “business ownership,” and v...

The strength of weak ties is amongst the most important theories in the social sciences. One paradoxical element of the theory has been widely understood and valued-that weak ties connect disparate regions of social structure. Less appreciated, however, is the arguably more paradoxical implication that someone only weakly connected to another would...

We suggest that a systematic socio-cognitive approach to “competitive sensemaking” has been absent from theory and research on competitive strategy. We define competitive sensemaking as the social and cognitive processes that underlie how firms detect, define, and conceptualize their competitive relationships with other firms. Competitive sensemaki...

The advent of crowdfunding brought great optimism about the technological disruption’s capacity to facilitate similarly profound and beneficial economic and social change. Proponents of this optimistic viewpoint argued that crowdfunding could help reduce inequality because it reduces: (a) disparities associated with the search for, and process of g...

The Internet and associated tech have made information readily accessible to inform an ever increasing range of our choices. This paper considers whether the increasing accessibility of ratings information, coupled with consumers' preferences for better (best) options, has resulted in increasing inequality between firms. That is, has the profusion...

In many facets of life, individuals make evaluations that they may update after consulting with others in their peer network. But not all individuals have the same opportunities for social interaction in a given network, or the ability and desire to make use of those opportunities that are available to them. Moreover, the configuration of a person'...

Can chatbots causally change human evaluations? I developed an experiment to find out.

There is significant and growing interest in entrepreneurship. Notwithstanding this interest, sizable barriers limit our understanding of the phenomenon and, by implication, our understanding of who is most likely to succeed in it. One fundamental challenge we face is the confounded language we employ: “Self-employment,” “business ownership,” and v...

In this paper, we examine when members of underrepresented groups choose to support each other, using the context of the funding of female founders via donation-based crowdfunding. Building on theories of choice homophily, we develop the concept of activist choice homophily, in which the basis of attraction between two individuals is not merely sim...

Whether and how social ties create value has inspired substantial research in organizational theory, sociology, and economics. Scholars generally believe that social ties impact labor market outcomes. Two explanatory mechanisms have been identified, emphasizing access to better job offers in pecuniary terms and the efficacy of non-redundant informa...

S ocial scientists have long considered what mechanisms underlie repeated exchange. Three mechanisms have garnered the majority of this attention: formal contracts, relational contracts, and relationally embedded social ties. Although each mechanism has its virtues, all three exhibit a common limitation: an inability to fully explain the continuati...

Social scientists have long considered what mechanisms underlie repeated exchange. Three mechanisms have garnered the majority of this attention: formal contracts, relational contracts, and relationally embedded social ties. Although each mechanism has its virtues, all three exhibit a common limitation: an inability to fully explain the continuatio...

There is an ever expanding body of work that considers how, when, and to what extent different forms and types of brokerage matter. However, surprisingly little is known why brokerage roles remain unfilled or how one becomes a broker in the first place. In a 2004 AJS paper Burt highlights half of the “who becomes a broker” equation, arguing that in...

In nearly every social and economic setting individuals evaluate one another. Evaluations are a necessary component for status attribution, rewards and penalties, and impact the social, economic, and psychological welfare of individuals. By implication, evaluation has considerable impact on organizational processes and outcomes. In this paper, we f...

Whether and how social capital derived through social ties creates value has animated substantial research in management, sociology, economics, and political science. Scholars are now generally inclined to believe that social ties have an impact on labor market outcomes — that is, it is “who you know” that counts. Two mechanisms were initially iden...

In nearly every social and economic setting evaluations of contribution are required for status attribution and tangible rewards and penalties. In some settings evaluations are made exclusively by status or role superiors. In many others evaluations are made by peers as well as superiors, with the evaluation of one often influencing that of the oth...

Female founders seek and receive less startup capital than male entrepreneurs. One reason for this disparity is a lack of female representation among funders of startups, and a potential solution is to increase the proportion of women in decision-making roles. Both the problem and the solution implicitly rely on homophily – that women will support...

Abstract: Purpose – Research has shown that employers often disfavor racial minorities - particularly African Americans - even when whites and minorities present comparable resumes when applying for jobs. Extant studies have been hard pressed to distinguish between taste-based discrimination where employers' racial animus is the key motivation for...

Social capital is currently one of social structure‘s most prominent and debated manifestations. However, we have a limited understanding of how social ties as the basis of social capital form in the first place. From one perspective social capital is viewed as: "investment in social relations with expected returns in the marketplace" (Lin 2001, p....

The link between overconfidence and entrepreneurial entry is of increasing scholarly interest. However, research has yet to offer an empirical test linking overconfidence in earnings ability to entry into entrepreneurship that includes all of the following features that would help substantiate the case: (1) is based on representative data that incl...

PurposeResearch has consistently shown that the children of business owners are more likely to become business owners themselves. However, what mechanism(s) underlies this intergenerational correlation is still not clear. In this research I assess the importance of several mechanisms proposed to drive the children of business owners to expect to be...

Some have argued that entrepreneurs are more optimistic than non-entrepreneurs. A related theoretical perspective argues that entrepreneurs are more likely to suffer from various overconfidence biases. Prior research has often treated the two interchangeably. In this research I argue that optimism and overconfidence are correlated but conceptually...