Publications

March 2016
Case

Residency Select or J3Personica?

By: William Kerr and Kathryn S. Roloff

Residency Select, LLC provides psychometric assessments for matching medical students to residency programs. After a series of successful pilots, founder Alan Friedman is considering whether to continue developing his offerings in this area, or whether to expand into... View Details

Keywords: Marketplace Matching; Expansion; Higher Education; Entrepreneurship; Health Care and Treatment; Growth and Development Strategy; Service Industry

March 2016
Article

Highway to Success: The Impact of the Golden Quadrilateral Project for the Location and Performance of Indian Manufacturing

By: Ejaz Ghani, Arti Grover Goswami and William R. Kerr

We investigate the impact of the Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) highway project on the Indian organized manufacturing sector using enterprise data. The GQ project upgraded the quality and width of 5,846 km of roads in India. We use a difference-in-difference estimation... View Details

Keywords: Highways; Roads; India; Development; Manufacturing; Density; Rent; Infrastructure; Manufacturing Industry; India

February 2016 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Alvogen

By: Daniel Isenberg and William Kerr

Alvogen is a young Icelandic generic pharmaceutical company, whose CEO believes that his global strategy will give them an edge in this competitive industry.
Robert Wessman, Alvogen’s CEO, was also previously the CEO of Actavis, another Icelandic generics... View Details

Keywords: Pharmaceutical Companies; Generic Drugs; Entrepreneurship; Globalization; Risk and Uncertainty; Pharmaceutical Industry; Iceland

Article

Transition to Clean Technology

By: Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit, Douglas Hanley and William R. Kerr

We develop a microeconomic model of endogenous growth where clean and dirty technologies compete in production and innovation, in the sense that research can be directed to either clean or dirty technologies. If dirty technologies are more advanced to start with, the... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Entrepreneurship; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology Industry

January 2016 (Revised March 2016)
Case

HNA Group: Global Excellence with Chinese Characteristics

By: William C. Kirby, F. Warren McFarlan and Joycelyn W. Eby

By 2015, the HNA Group had grown from its roots as Hainan Airlines, a small airline founded in 1993 into a global conglomerate that ranked #464 in the Global 500. Much of this success it had achieved by cross-industry expansion within China, but since 2008, it had... View Details

Keywords: China; Aviation And Aerospace; Airline Industry; Airlines; Globalization; Corporate Culture; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Global Strategy; Globalized Markets and Industries; Growth and Development; Air Transportation; Air Transportation Industry; China

2016
Chapter

Networks and the Macroeconomy: An Empirical Exploration

By: Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit and William R. Kerr

The propagation of macroeconomic shocks through input-output and geographic networks can be a powerful driver of macroeconomic fluctuations. We first exposit that in the presence of Cobb-Douglas production functions and consumer preferences, there is a specific pattern... View Details

Keywords: Economic Fluctuations; Geographic Collocation; Input-output Linkages; Propagation; Shocks; Networks; Fluctuation; System Shocks; Macroeconomics

Article

Financing Innovation

By: William R. Kerr and Ramana Nanda

We review the recent literature on the financing of innovation, inclusive of large companies and new startups. This research strand has been very active over the past five years, generating important new findings, questioning some long-held beliefs, and creating its... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Borrowing and Debt; Innovation and Invention

October 2015 (Revised August 2019)
Background Note

Higher Education in China: Internationalization in Turbulent Times

By: William C. Kirby, Joycelyn W. Eby and Yuanzhuo Wang

The rapid growth in quantity and quality of universities in China since 1978 is the most recent evolution in a long history of higher education. From as early as the Tang Dynasty, academies existed to prepare scholars for the civil service examination, but by the... View Details

Keywords: Non-profit Management; University Administration; University Faculty; University Curriculum; Education Reform; Nonprofit Organizations; Management; Higher Education; History; Governance; Education Industry; China

October 2015
Article

Agglomerative Forces and Cluster Shapes

By: William R. Kerr and Scott Duke Kominers

We model spatial clusters of similar firms. Our model highlights how agglomerative forces lead to localized, individual connections among firms, while interaction costs generate a defined distance over which attraction forces operate. Overlapping firm interactions... View Details

Keywords: Agglomeration; Clusters; Industrial Organization; Silicon Valley; Technology Flows; Patents; Networks; Information Technology; Industry Clusters; Entrepreneurship; California

2015
Other Teaching and Training Material

Entrepreneurship Reading: Launching Global Ventures

Core Curriculum in Entrepreneurship is a series of Readings that cover fundamental course material in Entrepreneurship. Readings include Interactive Illustrations which help students master complex concepts quickly.
Global ventures are those that weave... View Details

2015
Chapter

International Migration and U.S. Innovation: Insights from the U.S. Experience

Article

Men as Cultural Ideals: Cultural Values Moderate Gender Stereotype Content.

By: Amy Cuddy, Elizabeth Baily Wolf, Peter Glick, Susan Crotty, Jihye Chong and Michael I. Norton

Four studies tested whether cultural values moderate the content of gender stereotypes, such that male stereotypes more closely align with core cultural values (specifically, individualism vs. collectivism) than do female stereotypes. In Studies 1 and 2, using... View Details

Keywords: Gender Stereotypes; Stereotype Content; Individualism; Collectivism; Prejudice and Bias; Values and Beliefs; Culture; Gender

2015
Working Paper

The Logic of Agglomeration

By: Gilles Duranton and William R. Kerr

This review discusses frontier topics in economic geography as they relate to firms and agglomeration economies. We focus on areas where empirical research is scarce but possible. We first outline a conceptual framework for city formation that allows us to contemplate... View Details

Keywords: Agglomeration; Clusters; Cities; Innovation; Industry Clusters; City; Innovation and Invention

SSRN

September 2015 (Revised September 2017)
Case

Pershing Square 2.0

By: Robin Greenwood, Samuel Hanson and David Biery

In June 2015 William A. Ackman, the CEO and founder of New York hedge fund Pershing Square Capital, reflects on the success of the fund he has spent over a decade building. Since its inception in 2004, Pershing Square's assets under management had grown from $500... View Details

Keywords: Activism; Value Investing; Portfolio Management; Management; Investment Portfolio; Investment Activism

2020
Working Paper

Social Networks, Ethnicity, and Entrepreneurship

By: William R. Kerr and Martin Mandorff

We study the relationship between ethnicity, occupational choice, and entrepreneurship. Immigrant groups in the United States cluster in specific business sectors. For example, Koreans are 34 times more concentrated in self-employment for dry cleaning than other... View Details

Keywords: Self-employed; Occupation; Entrepreneurship; Social Entrepreneurship; Industry Clusters; Ethnicity; Immigration; Networks; United States

2015
Chapter

Innovation and Business Growth

Innovation and the pursuit of new business opportunities are essential for growth at the firm level; moreover, they provide the foundation for an economy to achieve new levels of technological prowess, productivity, and ultimately prosperity. This chapter describes... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Economic Growth; Innovation and Invention

2015
Working Paper

Networks and the Macroeconomy: An Empirical Exploration

By: Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit and William Kerr

The propagation of macroeconomic shocks through input-output and geographic networks can be a powerful driver of macroeconomic fluctuations. We first exposit that in the presence of Cobb-Douglas production functions and consumer preferences there is a specific pattern... View Details

Keywords: Economic Fluctuations; Geographic Collocation; Input-output Linkages; Propagation; Shocks; Networks; Fluctuation; System Shocks; Macroeconomics

SSRN

July 2015
Article

Skilled Immigration and the Employment Structures of U.S. Firms

By: Sari Pekkala Kerr, William R. Kerr and William F. Lincoln

We study the impact of skilled immigrants on the employment structures of U.S. firms using matched employer-employee data. Unlike most previous work, we use the firm as the lens of analysis to account for a greater level of heterogeneity and the fact that many skilled... View Details

Keywords: Firms; Scientists; Engineers; Inventors; H-1B; Age; Employment; Immigration; United States

Article

How Local Context Shapes Digital Business Abroad

This article identifies how digital businesses need to be adapted to the local environment in which they are being applied. Core ideas include the development of strong barriers to entry, the types of network effects encountered, and the localization of business... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Information Technology; Geographic Location; Market Entry and Exit; Adaptation; Entrepreneurship; Network Effects