Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(249)
- Faculty Publications (64)
- April 2020
- Article
Long-term Firm Growth: An Empirical Analysis of U.S. Manufacturers 1959–2015
By: Giovanni Dosi, Marco Grazzi, Daniele Moschella, Gary P. Pisano and Federico Tamagni
Firm growth is an essential feature of market economies, shaping together macroeconomic performance and the evolution of industry structures. As a potential indicator of organizational “fitness” within a competitive environment, firm growth is also a central concern to... View Details
Keywords: Firm Growth; Organizations; Growth and Development; Theory; Analysis; Production; Data and Data Sets
- 2018
- Working Paper
The Limitations of Dynamic Capabilities
By: David J. Collis and Bharat Anand
The concept of dynamic capabilities draws its theoretical basis from two classic traditions within the strategy field—the resource-based view of the firm (RBV) (Wernerfelt, 1984) and market positioning (Porter, 1996). A dynamic capability qualifies as a source of... View Details
- 2019
- Chapter
Spatial Agglomeration and Superstar Firms: Firm-level Patterns from Europe and U.S.
By: Laura Alfaro, Maggie X. Chen and Harald Fadinger
We characterize the agglomeration patterns of industries and plants in Europe, distinguishing Eurozone countries and the United States. Using a micro-level index, we quantify the degree of geographic concentration in industrial activities and explore how firm... View Details
- March–April 2019
- Article
A Recombination-Based Internationalization Model: Evidence from Narayana Health's Journey from India to the Cayman Islands
By: Budhaditya Gupta and Tarun Khanna
Internationalizing firms often find developing host-country resources challenging as they simultaneously attempt to replicate the resources that worked well in their home country and adapt them to fit the context of the host country. On the basis of a longitudinal... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Overcoming the Cold Start Problem of CRM Using a Probabilistic Machine Learning Approach
By: Eva Ascarza
The success of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programs ultimately depends on the firm's ability to understand consumers' preferences and precisely capture how these preferences may differ across customers. Only by understanding customer heterogeneity, firms can... View Details
- February 2019
- Article
The Market for Financial Adviser Misconduct
By: Mark Egan, Gregor Matvos and Amit Seru
We construct a novel database containing the universe of financial advisers in the United States from 2005 to 2015, representing approximately 10% of employment of the finance and insurance sector. We provide the first large-scale study that documents the economy-wide... View Details
- 2018
- Working Paper
Corporate Sustainability: A Strategy?
By: George Serafeim
We explore the conditions under which firms maintain their competitive advantage through sustainability-based differentiation when faced with imitation pressures by industry peers. We document growing intraindustry convergence on sustainability actions over time for... View Details
Keywords: Sustainability; Corporate Performance; Industry Analysis; CSR; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Environment; Social Responsibility; Strategy And Execution; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Strategy; Performance; Corporate Strategy
- Article
Applying Random Coefficient Models to Strategy Research: Identifying and Exploring Firm Heterogeneous Effects
By: Juan Alcácer, Wilbur Chung, Ashton Hawk and Gonçalo Pacheco-de-Almeida
Strategy aims at understanding the differential effects of firms’ actions on performance. However, standard regression models estimate only the average effects of these actions across firms. Our paper discusses how random coefficient models (RCMs) may generate new... View Details
- 2018
- Working Paper
Taxation and Innovation in the 20th Century
By: Ufuk Akcigit, John Grigsby, Tom Nicholas and Stefanie Stantcheva
This paper studies the effect of corporate and personal taxes on innovation in the United States over the 20th century. We use three new datasets: a panel of the universe of inventors who patent since 1920; a dataset of the employment, location, and patents of firms... View Details
- August 2018
- Article
Growth Through Heterogeneous Innovations
By: Ufuk Akcigit and William R. Kerr
We build a tractable growth model where multi-product incumbents invest in internal innovations to improve their existing products, while new entrants and incumbents invest in external innovations to acquire new product lines. External and internal innovations generate... View Details
- July 2018
- Article
Personality Traits of Entrepreneurs: A Review of Recent Literature
By: Sari Pekkala Kerr, William R. Kerr and Tina Xu
We review the extensive literature since 2000 on the personality traits of entrepreneurs. We first consider baseline personality traits like the Big-5 model, self-efficacy and innovativeness, locus of control, and the need for achievement. We then consider risk... View Details
- May 2018
- Article
Managing the Family Firm: Evidence from CEOs at Work
By: Oriana Bandiera, Renata Lemos, Andrea Prat and Raffaella Sadun
We present evidence on the labor supply of CEOs and on whether family and professional CEOs differ on this dimension. We do so through a new survey instrument that allows us to codify CEOs’ diaries in a detailed and comparable fashion and to build a bottom-up measure... View Details
- February 2018
- Article
Retention Futility: Targeting High-Risk Customers Might Be Ineffective.
By: Eva Ascarza
Companies in a variety of sectors are increasingly managing customer churn proactively, generally by detecting customers at the highest risk of churning and targeting retention efforts towards them. While there is a vast literature on developing churn prediction models... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Investment Timing with Costly Search for Financing
By: Samuel Antill
I develop a dynamic model of investment timing in which firms must first choose when to search for external financing. Search is costly and the arrival of investors is uncertain, leading to delay in financing and investment. Depending on parameters, my model can... View Details
- September 2017
- Article
The Real Effects of Capital Controls: Firm-Level Evidence from a Policy Experiment
By: Laura Alfaro, Anusha Chari and Fabio Kanczuk
Emerging-market governments adopted capital control taxes to manage the massive surge in foreign capital inflows in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Theory suggests that the imposition of capital controls can drive up the cost of capital and curb... View Details
- November–December 2016
- Article
The Impact of Patent Wars on Firm Strategy: Evidence from the Global Smartphone Industry
By: Yongwook Paik and Feng Zhu
Strategy scholars have documented in various empirical settings that firms seek and leverage stronger institutions to mitigate hazards and gain competitive advantage. In this paper, we argue that such “institution-seeking” behavior may not be confined to the pursuit of... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
The Impact of Patent Wars on Firm Strategy: Evidence from the Global Smartphone Market
By: Feng Zhu
Strategy scholars have documented in various empirical settings that firms seek and leverage stronger institutions to mitigate hazards and gain competitive advantage. In this paper, we argue that such “institution-seeking” behavior may not be confined to the pursuit of... View Details
- 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
- February 2015
- Article
Location Choices under Strategic Interactions
By: Juan Alcacer, Cristian Dezso and Minyuan Zhao
The literature on location choices has mostly emphasized the impact of location and firm characteristics. However, most industries with a significant presence of multi-location firms are oligopolistic in nature, which suggests that strategic interaction among firms... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
Match Your Own Price? Self-Matching as a Retailer's Multichannel Pricing Strategy
By: Pavel Kireyev, Vineet Kumar and Elie Ofek
Multichannel retailing has created several new strategic choices for firms. With respect to pricing, an important decision is whether to offer a "self-matching policy." Self-matching allows a multichannel retailer to offer the lowest of its online and in-store prices... View Details