Benjamin Kessler

How fast is too fast to reply to a prospective employer? Wrong question, argues George Mason University management professor Einav Hart. Across several settings and contexts, Hart and her co-authors found that once a hiring manager is interested enough to reach out, even the slightest delay in responding could harm your chances.

The best way to resolve a consumer’s doubts about electric cars is to let them drive one for a day or two. But Ioannis Bellos and Hang Ren, professors in the information systems and operations management area at George Mason University, argue that extended test drives can sometimes do more harm than good, for both profits and the planet.

The widely used machine-learning technique known as LASSO relegates smaller market events to an ignored “inactive zone”. How can that be a good thing for ambitious asset traders? Bo Hu, assistant professor of finance, explores the logic (and illogic) behind LASSO’s popularity and power.

How do “blind box” products like the Labubu make money? Zhechao Yang, assistant professor of information systems and operations management, has co-authored a paper that breaks down the “win-win-win” at the center of this trendy selling strategy.

Management professor Kevin Rockmann’s research concerns the often-ignored, multifaceted value of workplace relationships. In a recent executive education course at Costello College of Business, Rockmann put his findings into action, with strongly positive results for a leading company.

In-process work by Jingyuan Yang, a professor of information systems and operations management at George Mason University, suggests that downward redistribution of high-value opportunities can increase performance outcomes as well as fairness.

Bridging the information gap between HQ and the local level is one of the main challenges for consolidated companies. In a forthcoming paper in Management Science, Barbara Su, assistant professor of accounting at Costello, explores how multi-bank holding companies rely on internal accounting information as a complement to financial performance, to help them make intramural investment decisions.

Technological advancements and the dynamics of the platform economy make rooting out fraud more complicated than it may seem.

Balancing and combining different kinds of intelligence may be even more important than how much you know, or how you think. In a recently published piece, Matthew A. Cronin, professor of management at Costello College of Business at George Mason University, deconstruct intelligence into three modalities, which they label the Scientist, the Artist and the Judge (or “SAJ,” pronounced “sage”).

How employees respond to being under surveillance depends on a number of factors, including how good they are at their jobs.