Research news from Johns Hopkins Carey Business School
Changing Business is the research newsletter of the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School faculty. Each quarterly issue explores impactful, cutting-edge research that shapes business, policy, and society. Carey is the business school of Johns Hopkins University, America’s first academic research institution. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Carey's faculty seeks to address the world's most pressing problems by applying a diversity of expertise in analytics, leadership, finance, marketing, and strategy to numerous topics including the business of health.
In this Issue: Summer 2026
Information Systems
Optimizing the interpersonal chemistry between people and AI
Carey Assistant Professor Harang Ju conducts a controlled randomized trial to determine the best personality pairings for people and AI agents. Read more about this first-of-its-kind study.
Marketing
When temporary closures become permanent losses
Assistant Professor Julia Levine’s research suggests that temporary disruptions, such as labor strikes, can have lasting effects on retailer profitability. Learn more about her latest study.
Finance
The adoption paradox behind cryptocurrency
Professor Nagpurnanand Prabhala’s new working paper aims to analyze ownership and adoption of today’s hot digital asset: cryptocurrency. Learn more about “the adopters’ dilemma.”
Latest research
Medical leadership competencies for physicians: a systematic scoping review
An analysis of generalized medical leadership competency models from the U.S. and the UK. Canada, and Switzerland by Professor Christopher Myers and colleagues reveals that collaboration/communication, self-awareness, core leadership skills, professionalism, and business acumen are the most consistently emphasized domains. The findings highlight a three-decade shift toward collective, team-based, patient-centered leadership in healthcare, alongside a growing need for competencies addressing emerging challenges such as cultural sensitivity, crisis management, and digital literacy.
Charging fast and slow: Quantifying the real-life value of EV charging for users, OEMS, and the grid
Using telemetry from 20,000 electric vehicles and 1.5 million charging events across the U.S., Assistant Professor Leann Thayaparan and colleagues analyze and identify several challenges to existing EV programs, focusing on two business models: smart electricity consumption (V1G) and demand response (DR). The findings help EV manufacturers decide which programs to offer, in which markets, and which customers to target or behaviors to incentivize.
Beyond one-shot: AI agents for learning in field
What if your A/B testing didn't just pick a winner, but actually got smarter with every single run? Groundbreaking new research by Ritu Agarwal, Gordon Gao, Junjie Luo demonstrates that tool-augmented agentic AI can transform isolated field experiments into an autonomous, compounding engine for customer engagement. Experiments with healthcare messaging found AI-generated messages significantly outperformed both the baseline and the best human-designed message. For business leaders, the study's innovative approach can shift digital optimization from fragmented A/B tests into an automated, auditable flywheel of continuous experimentation and revenue-driving customer engagement.
(Early) AI compute asset pricing
Compute (computing power) is a scarce, capital-intensive input at the center of the AI economy. Using term-rental data from Silicon Data, Professor Federico Bandi and Assistant Professor Yinan Su construct an early asset-pricing framework for AI compute futures to turn uncertainty in AI computing power into a tradable risk.
Will it click? Advertising strategy with generative AI
Increasingly, marketers are leveraging AI technologies to more effectively interact with consumers and to create personalized messages at scale. Associate Professor Itay Fainmesser and colleagues have developed an analytical framework to examine how two distinct AI-enabled capabilities—the ability to identify consumers’ message preferences, and the ability to accurately generate customized ad content—shape firms’ advertising strategies and competitive outcomes. The findings have important managerial implications for firms seeking to benefit from GenAI technologies.
Carey research in the news
Associated Press, As electric bills rise, some states are focusing on the growing profits of utilities—Paul Ferraro
Baltimore Sun, As BGE deal ends, Baltimore plans new division to handle conduit repairs—Cliff Rossi
Bloomberg Law, Trump Vaccine Order Poses Years-Long Hurdles for Manufacturers—Tinglong Dai
Financial Times, Volkswagen needs sense-makers at the top—Kathleen Sutcliffe
Forbes, Meet America’s best employers for women 2026—Colleen Stuart
Fortune, 'Sony essentially destroys its own defense’: How its disc-free PS5 plan triggered a $457M lawsuit and undercut its antitrust defense—Andrew Ching
MIT Sloan Management Review, The hidden cost of AI agents for companies is lost expertise—Harang Ju
Wall Street Journal, What is a wrap fee? Understanding how bundled advisory fees work—Jordan Rippy
Upcoming opportunities
Envisioning the Future of Global Supply Chains
September 17, 2026
Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center
555 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, D.C.
Part of Johns Hopkins' sesquicentennial, this one-day workshop brings together academics, policymakers, and journalists to examine where global supply chains are headed and to seed a research agenda and a follow-on conference.
2026 Annual Carey Finance Conference
October 29-30, 2026
Johns Hopkins Carey Business School
100 International Dr,
Baltimore, MD
Arvind Krishnamurthy, the John S. Osterweis Professor of Finance at Stanford Graduate School of Business, will deliver the keynote address.