Proposal Deadline: October 21 (Wed) Click here
for Application Information
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Each year the Babson Faculty Research Fund provides Course Releases, Summer Stipends, and funds for research-related expenses to faculty members on a competitive, peer-review basis.
The following awards were made for the 2009-2010 academic year. Click here for prior academic year awards. Fall 2009 Course Releases
Jennifer Bethel, Finance
"Runs on Money Market Funds, Market Fragility, and Private and Public Sector Guarantees"
During fall 2008, numerous money market funds experienced financial distress as the value of fund assets plummeted, and investors pulled their money. Bethel investigates investor response to private and public sector guarantees.
Ryan Davies, Finance
"Intraday portfolio return autocorrelation dynamics"
Using 24-hour intraday-to-intraday portfolio returns based on trade prices at different times of the day, this project studies portfolio return autocorrelation and cross-autocorrelations over the trading day. Results provide evidence of the amount of incorporation of information into stock prices.
Jon Dietrick, Arts and Humanities
"New Money" and the Circulating Black Body in August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone
This project investigates the role of money and economic relations in social constructions of race and gender in African American playwright August Wilson’s 1986 play Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.
Jeffrey Melnick, History and Society
"Musical Responses to Katrina"
In an academic essay, we will consider various kinds of musical responses to Katrina, including songs performed or composed that treat or invoke the crisis; musical fundraisers intended to aid relief; concern for New Orleans musicians in the period immediately following the hurricane’s strike; and corporate-backed attempts to cash in on or contain consumers' outrage and desire to do something. The goal is to explore key moments and cases that reveal the emergence of music as social practice after the storm, and suggest what scholars can learn from considering musical activity in the light of this national tragedy.
Erik Noyes, Entrepreneurship
"Music to Our Ears: New Industry Emergence and the Spawning of New Market Categories in the Popular Music Industry"
Testing resource dependency theory (RDT), the research applies network analysis to the social structure of the popular music industry to see if artists that spawn new market categories have identifiable and reoccurring patterns of influences.
Salvatore Parise, TOIM
"The Role of External Networks in the Innovation Process"
The focus of this research is on external networks, relationships among companies and non-company individuals, to support wide-ranging business objectives. The purpose is to understand how organizations create, develop, and manage these external networks to drive innovation and performance.
Katherine Platt, History and Society
"Diaspora Culture, Identity and Discourse: What Happens When Home Place Enters Cyber Space? A North African Case"
This study focuses on the proliferation of diaspora organizations devoted to the Kerkennah Islands of Tunisia. The Kerkennah Islands are regarded as the homeland by tens of thousands of migrants in mainland Tunisia, Europe, the Middle East and North America. A very large percentage of these self-identified "Kerkennis" have never actually lived on the islands, yet attachment to the homeland is finding expression in a broadening range of diaspora organizations.
In addition, the following faculty members have fall 2009 course releases as part of a major award from the BFRF.
Kandice Hauf, History and Society
"Disciples: Followers of Charismatic Leaders"
Hauf’s project is supported by a stipend and course release. Using materials from Chinese history, cross-cultural examples and theoretical materials from disciplines such as sociology and psychology to analyze such areas as hierarchy, patron-client relationships, and friendship, Hauf will establish the comparative and theoretical framework her book on the disciples of the major Confucian thinker of the Ming dynasty, Wang Yangming (1472-1529).
Mary O'Donoghue, Arts and Humanities
Upper Rooms: Two Fictions.
O'Donoghue was awarded a stipend and course release for her short story that examines how performers and practitioners in arts and sports experience the demands of their fields and how those same demands influence, and often contort, their personal relationships and engagements with the world.
Summer 2009 Summer Stipends
Sinan Erzurumlu, TOIM
"Process Development and Survival of Startup Firms"
This project will explore the dilemma or whether startups should invest in process development to enhance future profits or conserve cash to reduce the likelihood of bankruptcy.
Marjorie Feld, History and Society
"American Jews and Antiapartheid: Global Justice and the Activist Tradition in American Jewish Life"
Feld will focus on the experiences of American Jewish antiapartheid activists during the late twentieth century.
Bradley George, Entrepreneurship
"Measuring Strategic Decision Comprehensiveness: A Scale Development and Validation Study"
This research examines the consequences of strategic decision comprehensiveness by developing and validating a scale for measuring decision comprehensiveness in each phase of the decision process that can be used in future research to better understand the antecedents and consequences of comprehensiveness.
Shari Laprise, Math. & Science
"Analysis of putative chloroplast DNA barcodes for identification and distinction of native and invasive plant species"
This research will test the use of DNA barcodes to differentiate two groups of similar looking native and invasive plant species.
Kathleen McKone-Sweet, TOIM
"Supply Chain Innovations: Lessons from Social Entrepreneurs"
This research will study multiple cases of social entrepreneurs and how they modify supply chains to drive social change.
Mary Pinard, Arts and Humanities
"Fragile Giants: The Loess Hills, Vanishing Prairie Landscape"
The focus of Pinard's research and poetry is the ecosystem of North American tallgrass prairie in the Loess Hills of western Iowa.
Brian Seitz, Arts and Humanities
"Philosophy and the Double"
This essay will introduce the problem of the double by addressing its role and play in philosophy, focusing on two exemplary figures, Plato and Kant, whose metaphysical bifurcations secure philosophical necessity but at the cost of this world.
In addition, the following faculty members have 2009 summer stipends as part of a major award from the BFRF. Kandice Hauf, History and Society
"Disciples: Followers of Charismatic Leaders"
Hauf will establish the comparative and theoretical framework for an inquiry into discipleship in the Chinese Confucian tradition.
Mary O'Donoghue, Arts and Humanities
"Upper Rooms: Two Fictions"
This story will examine how performers and practitioners in arts and sports experience the demands of their fields and how those same demands influence, and often contort, their personal relationships and engagements with the world.
Prior Year
The following awards were made for the 2008-2009 academic year.
Spring 2009 Course Releases
Elizabeth Goldberg, Arts and Humanities
Literary Theory and Human Rights in a Post-Marxist Era. This research provides a foundation for her next book, an investigation of the role of economic approaches to literature in the global, postmodern age through the lens of economic rights as human rights.
Michael Goldstein, Finance
“Yield Spreads and Post-Issuance Liquidity.” This study examines whether the initial yield at which the bond was first issued (and the spread over treasuries) is related to after-market liquidity measures.
measures such as the number of trades or volume
Steven Gordon, TOIM
“Use of Emerging Information Technologies to Increase Innovator Productivity.” This research asks how innovators can use emerging technologies to increase their creativity and innovation capability.
Gang Hu, Finance
“Trading by Crossing.” Employing proprietary data containing 73 million trades worth over $19 trillion, we study the use of internal crosses in trading by institutional investors (e.g., Fidelity Investments).
Bala Iyer, TOIM
“Role of Technology-Mediated Networks in Knowledge Management.” This study, a joint project with Salvatore Parise, will focus on the value resulting from social/collaboration tools.
Donna Kelley, Entrepreneurship
“Drivers of Ambitious Entrepreneurship in Korea: Individual Ability versus Perception of the Environment.” Drawing on the 2008 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) data in Korea, which comprises survey data from 2,000 individuals, this research aims to explain ambitious entrepreneurship in Korea
Mary O'Donoghue, Arts and Humanities
“Taglioni: A Fiction.” This short story locates itself in the legend of Marie Taglioni, an Italian ballet dancer who was said to keep a plastic ice-cube in her jewel box as a reminder of the time in 1835 when she was forced to dance in the snow for a Russian highwayman.
Ross Petty, Accounting and Law
“Regulating Behavioral Advertising Using the ‘CHI’ of Consumer Unfairness: Current Standards and Future Concerns.” This project examines overall unfairness concerns raised by behavioral advertising –the data-mining of online activity in order to target advertising.
Ross Petty, Accounting and Law
“Conglomerate Trademarks and Brands: A Policy Analysis.” This paper explores the public policy implications and proposes modifications in trademark law to ensure that consumers are not confused about the source of branded products or services.
Anne Roggeveen, Marketing
“Consumer Decision Making for Sequential Experiential Products: Does the Product Serial Position Matter?” This research examines how when evaluating a series of experiential products (e.g., beverages, music), consumers exhibit a recency outcome for desirable products, but a primacy outcome for undesirable products.
Anne Roggeveen, Marketing
“Advertising a Company's Emotions: Appraisal Theory and Message of Corporate Social Responsibility.” Drawing from appraisal theory research, this research examines how the emotion conveyed in an advertisement differentially impacts brand evaluations as a function of the match with other message cues present.
Fall 2008 Course Releases
The following faculty members will be using their BFRF Fall 2008 Course Releases to advance their research agendas.
Elizabeth Goldberg, Arts and Humanities
"Plotting the Human: Black (African) Man and White (European) Women in Caryl Phillip's Cambridge and A Distant Shore"
Danna Greenberg, Management
"Private to Public: Pregnant Women and the Negotiation of Identity in the Workplace"
Lori Houghtalen, Mathematics and Science
"Fairness Considerations in Allocation Mechanisms for Carrier Alliances"
Dennis Mathaisel, Mathematics and Science
"Implementing a Lean Enterprise Approach to Achieve Business Excellence"
Dessislava Pachamanova, Mathematics and Science
"Simulation and Optimization Modeling in Finance"
Denise Troxell, Mathematics and Science
"On the distribution of holes of optimal L(2,1)-labelings and the minimum range of L(2,1)-labelings without holes"
In addition, Yunwei Gai, Economics, has a major BFRF award that includes a 2008 Summer Stipend and a Fall 2008 Course Release for his project, "An Empirical Analysis of the CON Comparative Review."
