welcome

My research focuses on understanding how decisions get made in the real world and how these decision-making processes evolve in situ over time. My dissertation investigates how the use of analogical reasoning led to both the development and the collapse of the market for mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in the United States. In the paper, I use a combination of interviews and archival sources to construct a 40-year analytical history of the market from 1968 to 2008.

The resultant longitudinal case study serves as proof by example that innovations diffused with the help of analogical reasoning can have disastrous consequences—in this case, three million families facing foreclosure—both for the decision-makers and the society at large. My job market paper, "The 2008 Mortgage Crisis as a Failure of Analogical Reasoning," won the Best Paper Award at the London Transatlantic Doctoral Conference earlier this year.

In addition to my interest in how decision processes evolve over time, I am also interested in understanding how the decision-makers’ mental models help shape their behavior. In "Comment on ‘Toward a Behavioral Theory of Strategy,’" forthcoming in Organization Science, a paper I wrote with Adam Brandenburger, we argue that the decision-makers’ mental models place constraints on how decision-makers view the world and what courses of action they perceive as feasible.

My research and educational experience in psychology, sociology, and economics have prepared me to deliver a rigorous curriculum in a range of courses, including organizational behavior and theory, strategy, entrepreneurship, innovation and technology management, statistics, and empirical methods. A desire to improve decision-makers’ performance drives my research agenda and also sharpens my focus on developing critical thinking skills in my students.