Publications

January 2023
Article

Racial Diversity and Racial Policy Preferences: The Great Migration and Civil Rights

By: Alvaro Calderon, Vasiliki Fouka and Marco Tabellini

Between 1940 and 1970, more than 4 million African Americans moved from the South to the North of the United States, during the Second Great Migration. This same period witnessed the struggle and eventual success of the civil rights movement in ending institutionalized... View Details

Keywords: Civil Rights; Great Migration; History; Race; Rights; Prejudice and Bias; Government Legislation

January 1999 (Revised December 2020)
Case

The U.S. Banking Panic of 1933 and Federal Deposit Insurance

By: Julio J. Rotemberg and Sabina M. Ciminero

After highlighting some key developments in the banking history of the United States, the case illustrates the Banking Panic of 1933 and the way in which Franklin D. Roosevelt dealt with it at the beginning of his presidency. Describes the main components of banking... View Details

Keywords: Government Legislation; Insurance; Crisis Management; Financial Crisis; Banks and Banking; History; Business and Government Relations; Banking Industry; United States

December 2007
Article

Private Power in Indonesia

By: Louis T. Wells

The Asian Currency Crisis led to the collapse of agreements Indonesia had negotiated for private electric power only a few years earlier. The ensuing struggle meant bad publicity and several hundred million dollars in costs for Indonesia. As Indonesia in 2007 was... View Details

Keywords: Energy Generation; Government Legislation; Knowledge Management; Knowledge Sharing; Risk Management; Agreements and Arrangements; Business and Government Relations; Indonesia

2023
Working Paper

Saving and Consumption Responses to Student Loan Forbearance

By: Justin Katz

How do households adjust savings and consumption in response to liquidity from debt relief? I study this question using policy variation induced by federal student loan forbearance in the 2020 CARES Act and an individual-level panel of daily financial transactions for... View Details

Keywords: Saving; Consumer Behavior; Borrowing and Debt; Interest Rates; Financial Liquidity; Personal Finance; Government Legislation

SSRN

February 2022 (Revised November 2022)
Case

Fondeadora

By: Álvaro Rodríguez Arregui and Mitchell Weiss

Norman Müller and René Serrano, cofounders of Fondeadora, a Mexican “neobank,” had lined up a $12.5 million in Series A funding round in 2020 only to run into a major obstacle: The lead investor was Gradient Ventures, a venture firm launched by Alphabet, Inc., and... View Details

Keywords: Fundraising; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Financial Institutions; Business Startups; Government Legislation; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Financial Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Mexico City; Latin America

2022
Working Paper

Optimal Illiquidity

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, Christopher Clayton, Christopher Harris, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian

We calculate the socially optimal level of illiquidity in an economy populated by households with taste shocks and naive present bias. The government chooses mandatory contributions to accounts, each witha different pre-retirement withdrawal penalty. Collected... View Details

Keywords: Illiquidity; Commitment; Flexibility; Savings; Social Security; Retirement; Government Legislation; Taxation; Saving

Read Now

September 2023 (Revised December 2023)
Case

Twiddy & Company: Trust in a Chaotic Environment

By: Sandra J. Sucher, Shalene Gupta and Tom Quinn

Twiddy & Company, known for Southern hospitality rooted in personal interactions, needed to adjust to contactless remote customer service as fear of the contagious virus prevented person-to-person contact. Local elected officials, in a bid to stop tourists from... View Details

Keywords: Trust; Health Pandemics; Organizational Culture; Disruption; Government Legislation; Transportation; Tourism Industry; North Carolina; United States

October 2019
Article

Partial Deregulation and Competition: Effects on Risky Mortgage Origination

By: Marco Di Maggio, Amir Kermani and Sanket Korgaonkar

We exploit the OCC's preemption of national banks from state laws against predatory lending as a quasi-experiment to study the effect of deregulation and its interaction with competition on the supply of complex mortgages. Following the preemption ruling, national... View Details

Keywords: Great Recession; Subprime; Complex Mortgages; Credit Supply; Household Debt; Preemption Rule; Competition; Mortgages; Government Legislation; Credit; Financial Crisis

July 2017
Teaching Plan

'Clarín Lies!': Bias, Post-Truth, and Populism in Argentina's Media War

By: Rafael Di Tella and Sarah McAra

Teaching Note for HBS No. 718-008. View Details

Keywords: Media Regulation; Media; Government and Politics; Policy; Newspapers; Government Legislation; Business and Government Relations; Risk and Uncertainty; Monopoly; Journalism and News Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Argentina

05 Jun 2013
Op-Ed

Corporate Leaders Need to Step Up on Climate Change

climate legislation such as a carbon fee-and-dividend program. Strong policy in G8 nations is all the more important because it removes excuses for inaction by China, India, and other countries with rapidly growing carbon footprints.... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Toffel & Auden Schendler

08 May 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, May 8, 2018

forthcoming Management Science Evidence of Upcoding in Pay-for-Performance Programs By: Bastani, Hamsa, Joel Goh, and Mohsen Bayati Abstract—Recent Medicare legislation seeks to improve patient care quality by financially penalizing... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

December 2007
Case

Envisioning "Free Banking" in Antebellum New York (A)

By: David A. Moss and Cole Bolton

Banks throughout New York State suspended specie payments (i.e., payments in gold and silver) in May 1837 following the collapse of several state banks and the onset of a nationwide financial panic. Amid the chaos, the upstart Whigs were able to depose the longstanding... View Details

Keywords: History; Government Legislation; Capital; Financial Crisis; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry; New York (state, US)

December 2006 (Revised December 2008)
Case

Wireless Generation

Reflecting on an innovative joint venture that his company executed with a public school district in 2004, the CEO of Wireless Generation, a five-year-old, privately held educational technology company, is contemplating the company's product development strategy in... View Details

Keywords: Joint Ventures; Education; Government Legislation; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Development; Business and Government Relations; Education Industry

2024
Working Paper

Black Empowerment and White Mobilization: The Effects of the Voting Rights Act

By: Andrea Bernini, Giovanni Facchini, Marco Tabellini and Cecilia Testa

How did southern whites respond to the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA)? Leveraging newly digitized data on county-level voter registration by race between 1956 and 1980, and exploiting pre-determined variation in exposure to the federal intervention, we document that... View Details

Keywords: Government Legislation; Race; Behavior; Voting; Prejudice and Bias

Read Now

July 2017 (Revised November 2017)
Case

'Clarín Lies!': Bias, Post-Truth, and Populism in Argentina's Media War

By: Rafael Di Tella, Jose Liberti and Sarah McAra

In 2012, Argentine media conglomerate Grupo Clarín and President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner were embroiled in what some called “the mother of all battles.” Grupo Clarín was one of the preeminent media companies in Argentina, with leading newspapers, cable... View Details

Keywords: Media Regulation; Media; Government and Politics; Policy; Newspapers; Government Legislation; Business and Government Relations; Risk and Uncertainty; Monopoly; Journalism and News Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Argentina