Essays in Behavioral Analytics Using Data Science and Machine Learning

Abstract

The dissertation includes five papers on the subject of behavioral analytics. The first two experimental studies examine the impact of debiasing tools on escalation of commitment. The third study uses econometric tools to examine the interplay between director incentives, director decisions and firm outcomes. The fourth study examines the effect of corporate cultural distance on mergers and acquisitions using transformer-based natural language processing. The fifth study examines whether machine learning can improve the accuracy of revenue forecasts.