Skip to main content

Overview

My research develops and tests dynamic, mechanism-based explanations for how organizations and societies change over time—combining fieldwork, experiments, empirical analysis, and simulation modeling.

1) Capability dynamics and managerial learning (strategy & organizations)

  • Why firms in the same market sustain persistent differences in capabilities and performance
  • How feedback delays and bounded rationality can drive convergence to inefficient strategies and “short-termism”, and how those tradeoffs are affected by competition
  • Empirical grounding in settings such as product development, project work, maintenance, manufacturing, and services

2) Public policy and health 

  • Capturing coupled dynamics of urban systems-- e.g. across housing, labor markets, migration, transportation, and trade-- to enhance policy analysis
  • Infectious-disease dynamics and behavioral responses (e.g., risk perception, adherence fatigue, mobility change) in COVID-19 and beyond
  • Chronic conditions and biopsychosocial dynamics (e.g., obesity/weight dynamics, depression feedbacks)
  • Organizational levers for health and well-being, including workplace interventions and implementation/maintenance of health programs

3) Methods for dynamic modeling

  • New tools for estimating complex dynamic models (including alternative likelihoods, Kalman filtering, and scalable likelihood-free/Bayesian approaches)
  • Methods to synthesize prior evidence beyond traditional meta-analysis and to build aggregate models from micro-dynamics
  • Work on model architecture choices, reproducibility, and research reporting standards for simulation-based studies

Research

  • "Responsiveness to Risk Explains Large Variation in COVID-19 Mortality across Countries."

    Rahmandad, Hazhir and TY Lim, MIT Sloan Working Paper 6397-20. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, March 2022.

  • "The Effect of Unstable Schedules on Unit and Employee Productivity."

    Hashemian, Mahdi, Zeynep Ton, and Hazhir Rahmandad, MIT Sloan Working Paper 6056-19. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, September 2021.

  • "Complex Contagion and Repeated Interactions."

    Sassine, Jad, and Hazhir Rahmandad, MIT Sloan Working Paper 6505-21. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, January 2021.

  • "Improving Parameter Estimation of Epidemic Models: Likelihood Functions and Kalman Filtering."

    Li, H., Hazhir Rahmandad, and John D. Sterman, MIT Sloan Working Paper 6504-21. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, 2021.