Robert Hansen

Robert S. Hansen’s paper “Are Analysts’ Forecasts Informative to the General Public?” has been accepted for publication in Management Science. Hansen, Francis Martin Chair in Business and professor of finance, co-authored the paper with Vadim Balashov, adjunct lecturer and doctoral student at the Freeman School, and Oya Altınkılıç, assistant professor of finance at George Washington University.

Kris Hoang

Kris Hoang’s paper “How Do Regulatory Reforms to Enhance Auditor Independence Work in Practice?” has been accepted for publication in Contemporary Accounting Research. Hoang, an assistant professor of accounting, co-authored the paper with Krista Fiolleau, assistant professor of accounting at the University of Waterloo; Karim Jamal, professor of accounting at the University of Alberta; and Shyam Sunder, professor of economics at Yale University.

Jennifer Merluzzi

Jennifer Merluzzi is the co-author of “Embedded Brokerage,” which will appear as a chapter in the upcoming book Research in the Sociology of Organizations. The article, co-authored with Ronald S. Burt, Hobart W. Williams Professor of Sociology and Strategy at the University of Chicago, discusses the complementary relationship between status and access to structural holes in the context of network advantage. In addition, Merluzzi’s paper “Social Capital in Asia: Investigating Returns to Brokerage in Collectivistic National Cultures” has been accepted for publication in Social Science Research. Merluzzi is an assistant professor of management.

Geoffrey Parker

Geoffrey Parker’s paper “Integration and Cospecialization of Emerging Complementary Technologies by Startups” has been accepted for publication in Production and Operations Management. The paper, co-authored with Edward G. Anderson Jr., associate professor of Information, Risk, and Operations Management at the University of Texas at Austin, analyzes the market entry problem faced by startups that must integrate their service or product with one or more complementary technologies. The authors seek to extend the entrepreneurship literature by modeling startups’ entry decisions for markets in which complementary technologies exhibit strong learning effects. Parker is a professor of management science.

John R. Page

John R. Page’s paper “Bank Accounting Practices and Current Financial System Uncertainty” has been accepted for publication in The CPA Journal. The paper, co-authored with Paul Hooper, retired professor of accounting at the University of Delaware and former visiting professor at Tulane University, explores some of the factors contributing to uncertainty on bank financial statements, in particular issues regarding the calculation of capital adequacy ratios. Page is an associate professor of accounting.

Robert Prilmeier

Robert Prilmeier’s paper “This Time Is the Same: Using Bank Performance in 1998 to Explain Bank Performance during the Recent Financial Crisis” was published in the December 2012 issue of the Journal of Finance. The paper, co-authored with Rüdiger Fahlenbrach and René M. Stulz, shows that a bank’s stock return performance during the 1998 crisis strongly predicts its stock return performance and probability of failure during the recent financial crisis. These findings are consistent with persistence in a bank’s risk culture and/or aspects of its business model that make its performance sensitive to crises. Banks that relied more on short-term funding, had more leverage and grew more are more likely to be banks that performed poorly in both crises. Prilmeier is an assistant professor of finance.

Janet Schwartz

Janet Schwartz’s paper “Price Inferences for Sacred vs. Secular Goods: Changing the Price of Medicine Influences Perceived Health Risk” has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Consumer Research. Schwartz, an assistant professor of marketing, co-authored the paper with Adriana Samper, assistant professor of marketing at Arizona State University.

On May 6, 2010, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged nearly 600 points in five frantic minutes only to regain most of that loss minutes later. The origin of the so-called Flash Crash remains a mystery, but David Lesmond, associate professor of finance, has a strong suspicion of the underlying cause: high-frequency trading.

“These high-frequency traders are hitting the market with such rapidity that the markets have to react to them,” says Lesmond, who has been studying the phenomenon for the past three years. “Then other algorithms take over and they sell as well, so you see a contagion effect.”

High-frequency traders utilize powerful computers and complex algorithms to take advantage of slight price imbalances in the market. HFT firms typically place thousands of orders too small to appear in the consolidated feed of stock transactions, enabling the traders to fly under the radar of Wall Street and quietly gather information about the market. The vast majority of those orders—up to 98 percent—are never executed. Instead, they’re placed solely to probe the market and cancelled within the blink of an eye. If a market maker tries to fill an order, the high-frequency trader might conclude that a large buyer is present and quickly buy shares to sell back to the buyer at a slightly higher price. Speed is everything.

“It’s gotten to the point that the high-frequency traders worry about the length of cord that connects the computers,” Lesmond says. “You’re thinking milliseconds at this point.”

David Lesmond

While supporters argue that high-frequency traders reduce transaction costs and provide liquidity to the market, Lesmond has a different perspective.

“It’s price manipulation,” Lesmond says. “That’s the principal worry that everybody has about these high-frequency traders. Because if the price doesn’t reflect information, you have no transparency in the market, and if you don’t have transparency in the market, who gets the short end of the stick? The investors.”

According to some estimates, high-frequency trading comprises about 70 percent of all equities trading volume, but Lesmond says it’s difficult to quantify the true volume because those trades don’t appear on the consolidated feed. As part of his current research, Lesmond hopes to generate a more accurate estimate of HFT volume and also get a clearer picture of its effects on the market, including whether or not the prices highfrequency traders buy and sell at reflect information.

“My feeling is that the prices do not reflect information in the market, and that’s just catastrophic,” Lesmond says. “If prices can be dictated by these off-exchange things, then we have no hope. That’s by definition what market manipulation is.”

Steps may already be underway to address the problem. U.S. equities markets and regulators recently agreed to add trades of less than 100 shares, referred to as odd lot trades, to a feed of real-time market data in an effort to boost transparency.

But according to Lesmond, the real source of the problem remains the low cost of trading. In the wake of the stock market’s conversion to decimalization in 2001, bid/ask spreads dropped to a penny or less, essentially eliminating all cost barriers from trading. High-frequency trading, Lesmond says, was an unintended consequence of the conversion.

Regulators are now considering a fee to be placed on each order to force the high-frequency traders to incur some cost for their activities, a reform that Lesmond says could greatly reduce their negative impacts on the market.

“I think regulators mostly want to inhibit high-frequency traders from submitting false trades—the trades that are submitted and then immediately retracted,” says Lesmond. “By instituting a tax on trades, however small, they hope to lessen the frequency of trade and that in turn may help stabilize the market, not to mention government coffers.”

Representatives from Burkenroad Reports for Latin America’s nine partner universities meet at the Freeman School each year.

By Eduardo Pablo, professor of practice and coordinator of Burkenroad Reports for Latin America

It probably wouldn’t surprise many investors to learn that the average annualized total return of the MSCI Emerging Markets China Index for the 10-year period ending Dec. 31, 2012, was a robust 19.26 percent. What might surprise a few people is to learn what the total return of the MSCI Emerging Markets Latin America Index was over that same period: It was 22.72 percent.

For most U.S. investors, Latin America tends to fly under the radar, but here at the A. B. Freeman School of Business, we’ve been paying close attention to Latin American equity markets for more than a decade. In September 2001, the Freeman School launched Burkenroad Reports for Latin America, an equities analysis program focused exclusively on companies in Latin America. The program was established with partial funding from the Inter-American Development Bank, which hoped to improve the efficiency of capital markets in Latin America. From the perspective of the Freeman School, the goal was the same as its namesake program in New Orleans: To provide investors with objective information on public companies while providing students with real-world financial analysis skills.

Eduardo Pablo

Burkenroad Reports for Latin America initially featured just a handful of student analysts covering a small number of companies in Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela. Today, the program has grown into a partnership between the Freeman School and nine of Latin America’s top business schools. Each year, more than 100 student analysts research, write and publish reports on more than 25 companies in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Peru and Venezuela.

Equities research in Latin America can be a challenge. In most of the countries, the top management of publicly listed companies are usually the owners of the firm, and they’re generally averse to meeting with analysts to talk about the company and its prospects. They hold their privacy dear, and they do not want to be recognized publicly as the owner of a successful firm. When the company submits ownership-related information to the regulatory bodies, the owner is typically listed as Corporation XYZ. This isn’t just for the sake of privacy. In Colombia and Venezuela, managers who reveal personal information face a very real risk of being kidnapped, and in Venezuela, managers believe that by lowering the amount of public information about themselves and their companies, they can reduce the likelihood of their companies being expropriated. Throughout Latin America, the information that public companies must disclose to market participants is significantly less than in the United States, and to make matters worse, some countries require public companies to report financial information just once a year. This is counterintuitive in a region that suffers from such a high level of volatility.

Despite these difficulties, market participants in the region are beginning to recognize the value of Burkenroad Reports for Latin America. Just after going public in June 2008, the Mexican Stock Exchange contacted ITESM, Freeman’s partner institution in Monterrey, Mexico, to prepare an independent report on the exchange. In addition, students who have taken the Burkenroad Reports course have been hired— sometimes before graduation—as financial analysts at regional investment banks and universal banks. Some have even been hired by the companies they were covering. Today, more than 10 years since its inception, I have no doubt that the Burkenroad Latin America program has delivered on its objective to improve the informational efficiency of markets in the region while offering students highly sought after financial analysis skills.

This improved informational efficiency comes at a particularly good time for investors. Most countries in Latin America are better prepared to weather uncertain economic times than developed countries. For example, the average debt-to-GDP ratio across Latin America is around 50 percent compared to the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio of 73 percent. In 2011, Mexico was able to issue a sovereign bond in U.S. dollars with a 100-year maturity paying just 242 basis points above 30-year U.S. Treasury bonds. And most of the Latin American currencies are stronger than the U.S. dollar and will retain their long-term value even in worst-case scenarios. Given these factors, I expect to see a high percentage of “buy” recommendations in 2013 for Burkenroad Reports for Latin America. For investors who embrace the Burkenroad philosophy

When it comes to calculating their odds of catching the flu, consumers look to an unlikely gauge—the price of the flu shot—to measure their risk, according to a new study co-authored by an A. B. Freeman School of Business researcher.

The study found that consumers make judgments about their risk of catching an illness based on the cost of its medication. The higher the price, the less they think they’re at risk, says co-author Janet Schwartz, assistant professor of marketing.

Janet Schwartz

“Your chance of winning at blackjack has nothing to do with how big the payout is and most people know that,” Schwartz says. “But when it comes to understanding what prices reflect for medicine, people look at the price and they do think that it somehow tells them something about their own risk of getting a disease. In reality, those two factors are completely independent.”

Researchers conducted several surveys to gauge consumers’ reactions to different medications based on cost and perceived risk. For example, they presented different health messages about getting a flu shot, emphasizing individual risk in one scenario and the larger public health risks in another. They told some that the vaccine cost $25 and others $125. Even though all were told the cost would be covered by insurance, those in the high-price group felt that they were at a lower risk of getting the flu.

Researchers found that consumers instinctively believed that important medication like flu vaccine should be affordably priced to be widely accessible. When priced high and perceivably out of reach for some, consumers inferred that the medicine must not be all that necessary and the risk of getting the illness must be lower. The results of the study, which is co-authored by Adriana Samper of the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, will be published in the April issue of the Journal of Consumer Research.

Jasmijn Bol

Jasmijn Bol, PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP Faculty Fellow in Accounting and associate professor of accounting, presented her research at three recent conferences. In October, she presented the paper “Auditor Tacit Knowledge and Audit Firm Human Capital Development,” co-authored with Frank Moers of Maastricht University and Mark Peecher of the University of Illinois, at a workshop at the University of Texas at Austin. In November, she presented “Target Setting in Incentive Contracts: The Impact of Peer Performance, Environmental Volatility, and Discretionary Adjustments,” co-authored with Jeremy Lill, PhD candidate at the University of Illinois, at a workshop at Georgia State University. And in December, Bol presented her paper “The Different Roles of Subjective Performance and Promotion Assessments: Evidence from Professional Services,” co-authored with Justin Leiby of the University of Florida, at the 8th EIASM Conference on New Directions in Management Accounting, which took place in Brussels.

Sherif A. Ebrahim

Sherif Ebrahim, adjunct professor of strategy and entrepreneurship, was recently highlighted in testimony before Congress for his role in the U.S. Small Business Association’s Emerging Leaders Initiatives. The E200 Initiative is a professional education course for CE Os of companies poised for growth that involves the creation of a Strategic Growth Action Plan (SGAP) for the company. In her testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship, Fonda Lindfors New, CE O of QRI, a Baton Rouge-based environmental consulting firm, praised Ebrahim for his role in the program. “The instructor, Sherif Ebrahim, was an excellent teacher who pushed me to success,” New told the committee. As a result of her participation in the program, New said QRI’s revenue and access to capital increased by over 50 percent and its staffing increased by 22 percent.

Ashley Keller Nelson

Ashley Keller Nelson, professor of practice in management communications and social media, served as a guest instructor and judge in the Young Presidents Organization – World Presidents Organization’s first Virtual Public Speaking Seminar. Nelson was one of 10 communications specialists who provided coaching to YPO-WPO members on their scripts, delivery and final video submissions. Later, she served as a judge in the competition, helping to select three finalists who will present their speeches in person at the YPO-WPO’s annual meeting in Istanbul.

By Ralph Maurer, professor of practice and executive director of the Tulane Family Business Center

As executive director of the Tulane Family Business Center, one of my primary research interests is family business, and in the last several years, I’ve spent a significant amount of time thinking about how medium and large family-owned firms on the Gulf Coast responded to Hurricane Katrina in comparison to their publicly held or private non-family held peers. Working with family-owned firms in New Orleans over the past few years, I started hearing stories about the days, months and years after Katrina and how these firms maintained continuity and restructured in response to the disaster. These stories differed significantly from those I heard from non-family firms, and they led me to conduct a formal academic study comparing the two groups. To my surprise, I found that existing academic research on exogenous shocks—large external events that disrupt business—had very little say on this topic, particularly with regard to long-term business recovery, and thus presented an ideal research opportunity.

Ralph Maurer

While my research is still in its early stages, I’ve observed two strong trends in the data, both of which stem from the unique qualities of family-owned firms. The first is that family-owned firms are historically very closely tied to a particular city or region, making it difficult for those organizations to relocate assets. Secondly, they are very closely tied to their employees, both family and non-family. These unique connections can bring benefits in normal circumstances, such as fostering strong customer relationships and employee loyalty, but they can also constrain the ability of family-owned firms to respond nimbly to a disaster. For example, because of their long histories in a region and emotional ties to their employees, owners of family firms tend to find it especially difficult to move their headquarters and relocate personnel. Public companies, on the other hand, are adept at relocating plants and people when situations require it.

So how do family businesses survive disasters like Katrina in the long term? I think the key is to engage in a creative act called bricolage, a concept borrowed from the literature on innovation. Bricolage entails the creative recombination of resources and business units and uses bricolage art—a mixed-media piece similar to a collage—as a metaphor. Essentially, a firm must work with the constraints and resources it has but creatively manipulate the architecture of the organization. This means maintaining strong ties to the region and existing employees while simultaneously shifting the customer, product and/or fixed asset mix or the way business units connect with each other. For example, an industrial chemicals company I’ve worked with retrained its very capable inside sales personnel to handle outside sales in more remote locations after local industrial demand stagnated in the wake of Katrina. This creative use of resources, one that leveraged existing strengths in a new, previously untried way, is I think an essential step to surviving a disaster.

This creative recombination can also have benefits beyond mere survival. Events like Katrina, as horrible as they are, can actually be an opportunity for family businesses to emerge stronger. Sometimes they need a jolt to the system to make all the wonderful resources and relationships they have work more efficiently, and based on what I’ve observed in my work with the Family Business Center, the most successful family-firms on the Gulf Coast were able to do just that.

Ralph Maurer is a professor of practice and executive director of the Tulane Family Business Center, which was established in 1992 to assist family-owned enterprises with the unique issues and challenges they face in growing and prospering from one generation to the next. Operated under the auspices of the Freeman School’s Levy-Rosenblum Institute, the Tulane Family Business Center sponsors seminars, lectures and programs featuring nationally recognized experts on family business issues as well as providing consulting services and networking opportunities for family business members.

Han Jiang, PhD candidate, recently had the paper “Social Network Research in Organizational Contexts: A Systematic Review of Methodological Issues and Choices,” co-authored with M.A. Carpenter and M. Li, accepted for publication in Journal of Management.

Daniel Mochon

Daniel Mochon, assistant professor of marketing, recently had four papers published or accepted for publication. “Why are lotteries valued less? Multiple tests of a direct risk aversion mechanism,” co-authored with G. E. Newman, was published in Judgment and Decision Making, 7(1), 19-24; “The IKEA effect: When labor leads to love,” co-authored with M. Norton and D. Ariely, was published in Journal of Consumer Psychology; and “A scale distortion theory of anchoring,” co-authored with S. Frederick, was published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141(1), 124-133. In addition, Mochon’s paper “Bolstering and Restoring Feelings of Competence via the IKEA Effect,” co-authored with M. Norton and D. Ariely, was accepted for publication in the International Journal of Research in Marketing.

Janet Schwartz

Janet Schwartz, assistant professor of marketing, recently published two papers. With M.F. Luce and D. Ariely, she contributed “Are Consumers Too Trusting? The Effects of Relationships with Expert Advisers,” to Journal of Marketing Research, 2011, 48: S163-S174. And with J. Riis, B. Elbel and D. Ariely, she contributed “Inviting Consumers To Downsize Fast-Food Portions Significantly Reduces Calorie Consumption” to Health Affairs, 31(2).

Mita Sujan

Mita Sujan, Malcolm S. Woldenberg Chair of Marketing, contributed “Skill-Based Versus Effort-Based Task Difficulty: A Task-Analysis Approach to the Role of Specific Emotions in Motivating Difficult Actions,” coauthored with Kirsten Passyn, to the July 2012 issue of Journal of Consumer Psychology. In the article, the authors make a distinction between effort-based and skilled-based tasks and examine the correspondence between emotions and tasks. They reverse attribution theory results wherein specific emotions follow from different types of tasks, and propose emotions as antecedents; specifically that anticipated pride from success motivates engagement in skill-intensive tasks whereas anticipated regret from failure produces engagement in effort-intensive tasks, and that emotions in general motivate engagement in difficult tasks over easy tasks.

Carmen Weigelt

Carmen Weigelt, assistant professor of management, recently had her paper “Implications of Internal Organization Structure for Firm Boundaries,” coauthored with Doug Miller, accepted for publication in Strategic Management Journal.

Rodolfo “Rudi” Aguilar

Rodolfo “Rudi ” Aguilar, professor of practice, was inducted into the Louisiana State University Civil and Environmental Engineering Hall of Distinction in April 2012. Aguilar earned his MBA from Tulane and has taught real estate-related courses at the Freeman School since 1989.

Adrienne Colella

Adrienne Colella, professor of organizational behavior and the McFarland Distinguished Chair in Business, delivered the presidential address, “Making a Difference: The Impact of I/0 Psychology,” at the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology’s 27th Annual Conference in San Diego in April 2012. Colella delivered her address to an audience of more than 4,000 I/O psychologists from 44 countries.

Sherif A. Ebrahim

Sherif A. Ebrahim, adjunct professor of management, strategy and entrepreneurship, was honored at the White House in March as an entrepreneurial mentor and “Champion of Change.” Ebrahim was one of 11 individuals from across the nation recognized for outstanding leadership in entrepreneurial mentoring, counseling and training.

Eric Hamerman, assistant professor of marketing, received the Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award for undergraduate courses in May at the Freeman School’s Graduate Diploma Ceremony. Established in 2012, this award recognizes professors in undergraduate and graduate business programs for excellence and advancement of the highest standards for teaching.

Kelly Grant and Ashley Nelson, professors of practice, presented “Sharpening Students’ Presentation Skills through Experiential Learning: Junior Achievement Day at Benjamin Franklin Charter School, New Orleans, Louisiana,” at the Association for Business Communication–Southwestern United States Conference in New Orleans in February 2012.

Geoffrey G. Parker, professor of management science, received the Erich Sternberg Award in May at the Freeman School’s Graduate Diploma Ceremony. Established in 1987 by the Erich Sternberg family, this award is given to a member of the Freeman School faculty in recognition of current contributions to that faculty member’s academic field of interest.

William A. Reese Jr.

William A. Reese Jr., professor of practice in finance, received the Howard W. Wissner Award for graduate teaching in May at the Freeman School’s Graduate Diploma Ceremony. Presented each year to outstanding faculty members to recognize excellence in teaching, this award was established in honor of Howard W. Wissner, an exceptional professor who won the admiration and respect of all those with whom he came into contact with.

Russell P. Robins

Russell P. Robins, professor of finance, received the Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award for the graduate level in May at the Freeman School’s Graduate Diploma Ceremony. Established in 2012, this award recognizes professors in undergraduate and graduate business programs for excellence and advancement of the highest standards for teaching.

Jaideep Shenoy, assistant professor of finance, received the Outstanding Young Researcher Award in May at the Freeman School’s Graduate Diploma Ceremony. This award was established to recognize outstanding research by junior faculty members.

Ekundayo Shittu

Ekundayo Shittu, assistant professor of economic sciences, received the Howard W. Wissner Award for undergraduate teaching in May at the Freeman School’s Graduate Diploma Ceremony. Presented each year to outstanding faculty members to recognize excellence in teaching, this award was established in honor of Howard W. Wissner, an exceptional professor who won the admiration and respect of all those with whom he came into contact with.

Sheri Tice, professor and A. B. Freeman Chair of Finance, co-authored the paper “Apples to Apples: The Economic Benefit of Corporate Diversification,” which was presented at the spring 2012 National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Corporate Finance Meeting, which took place at the University of Chicago in April. The paper was co-authored with John Hund and Donald Monk.

Carmen Weigelt, assistant professor of management, received the Irving H. Lavalle Research Award in May at the Freeman School’s Graduate Diploma Ceremony. Established in 1996, this award recognizes professors for excellence and advancement of the highest standards in research and for contributions to the faculty members’ academic fields of interest.

Michael T. Yest

Michael T. Yest, professor of practice in finance, received the James T. Murphy Teaching Excellence Award in May at the Freeman School’s Graduate Diploma Ceremony. Established in 1994 in recognition of Professor Murphy’s more than 30 years of service to Tulane’s business school, this award recognizes professors who exhibit the highest standards of instructional improvement and development and who help students beyond the formal role of teacher.

Studies have shown fast-food calorie postings do little to deter diners from overeating. A better approach may be for restaurants to simply ask consumers if they’d like smaller portions, according to new research by Janet Schwartz, assistant professor of marketing at the Freeman School.

A study by the Freeman Schoo’’s Janet Schwartz shows that “downsizing” is more effective than calorie labeling in helping consumers to make healthy choices.

The study, which appeared in the February issue of the journal Health Affairs, found that when servers asked customers whether they’d like to “downsize” starchy side dishes at a Chinese fast-food restaurant, as many as a third gladly cut back, saving an average 200 calories each meal.

“Our goal was to test whether the invitation to downsize a meal component would be embraced by consumers and, importantly, whether the approach would be more effective than a purely information-based approach, in this case calorie labeling,” says Schwartz, the lead study author.

Schwartz and fellow researchers conducted several field experiments at a single Chinese fast-food restaurant. In each case, servers asked customers selecting side dishes, “Would you like to save 200 calories or more by taking a smaller portion?”

In one scenario, customers were offered a 25-cent discount if they took the downsizing offer. In another, menu calorie labels were prominently displayed in front of consumers as they selected their meals and in another calorie labels were removed. In all, anywhere from 14 percent to 33 percent of customers opted to downsize portions. Surprisingly, the 25-cent discount had little impact on downsizing choices and the calorie postings didn’t persuade much either. In fact, significantly more customers—21 percent versus 14 percent—accepted the downsizing offer when calorie information was absent.

Schwartz hopes the study helps restaurants understand that helping diners exercise portion control won’t alienate customers.

“I think the restaurant industry may find this counterintuitive, but it’s an interesting and easy strategy to implement that could help their customers make healthier choices,” Schwartz says.

On a recent Friday morning, about a dozen undergraduate students gathered in a computer lab in the business school where they were directed to a website and asked to make various choices—everything from what to order for dessert to whether to go to a restaurant advertising a special to which NFL replica jersey to buy.

It may sound like an online shopping session, but in fact the students were participating in behavioral experiments designed to help researchers at the Freeman School better understand the complexities of consumer decision-making processes.

The Freeman School’s Behavioral Lab hosts dozens of such experiments each semester. Located on the first floor of Goldring/Woldenberg Hall, the lab features 24 specially configured computer terminals that enable business school faculty to administer surveys, conduct experiments and collect the kind behavioral research data that eventually ends up in peer-reviewed journals. In a very real sense, the Behavioral Lab is where the science of consumer psychology begins.

Assistant professor of marketing Eric Hamerman oversees the Freeman School’s Behavioral Lab.

“This lab is very similar to what you have in psychology departments in the sense that there are professors who do behavioral experimentation,” says Eric Hamerman, assistant professor of marketing, who administers the lab for the Freeman School’s marketing faculty.

Recent topics investigated in the lab include social media and its effect on purchase behavior, the effect of mood on consumer variety-seeking, alliteration in advertising, multitasking and purchase behavior, and the impact of the moral behavior of celebrities on product endorsements.

More than 300 students in TIDES and core marketing courses participate in studies each semester in exchange for class credit. While students may not be right for every study, Hamerman says they’re generally ideal for consumer behavior research.

“Are Tulane students representative of everybody in the country? Probably not. But are they consumers? Absolutely. If you’re studying human behavior and making choices, they’re a fine population.”