Publications

July–August 2018
Article

Learning by Contributing: Gaining Competitive Advantage Through Contribution to Crowdsourced Public Goods

By: Frank Nagle

As the economy becomes more information based, firms are increasingly using crowdsourced public goods as inputs for innovation and production. Counterintuitively, some firms pay their employees to contribute to the creation of these goods, which can be used freely by... View Details

Keywords: Open Source Distribution; Applications and Software; Competitive Strategy; Learning; Competitive Advantage

2019
Working Paper

Compensation Consultants and the Level, Composition, and Complexity of CEO Pay

By: Kevin J. Murphy and Tatiana Sandino

We provide fresh evidence regarding the relation between compensation consultants and CEO pay. First, firms that employ consultants have higher-paid CEOs—this result is robust to firm fixed effects and matching on economic and governance variables. Second, while this... View Details

Keywords: Consultants; Benchmarking; Incentive Pay; Executive Compensation; Complexity; Motivation and Incentives; Governance

Reducing tax evasion is a key priority for many governments, particularly in developing countries. A growing literature has argued that the ability to verify taxpayer self-reports against reports from third parties is critical for modern tax enforcement and the growth... View Details

2023
Working Paper

Spatial Mobility, Economic Opportunity, and Crime

By: Gaurav Khanna, Carlos Medina, Anant Nyshadham, Daniel Ramos-Menchelli, Jorge Tamayo and Audrey Tiew

Neighborhoods are strong determinants of both economic opportunity and criminal activity. Does improving connectedness between segregated and unequal parts of a city predominantly import opportunity or export crime? We use a spatial general equilibrium framework to... View Details

Keywords: Urban Development; Transportation Networks; Crime and Corruption; Transportation Industry; Medellín; Colombia; South America

Article

Firms, Crowds, and Innovation

By: Teppo Felin, Karim R. Lakhani and Michael L. Tushman

The purpose of this article is to suggest a (preliminary) taxonomy and research agenda for the topic of “firms, crowds, and innovation” and to provide an introduction to the associated special issue. We specifically discuss how various crowd-related phenomena and... View Details

Keywords: Crowdsourcing; Innovation; Open Innovation; Organization Theory; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Organizations; Theory; Strategy

2008
Working Paper

A Replication Study of Alan Blinder's 'How Many U.S. Jobs Might Be Offshorable?'

By: Troy Smith and Jan W. Rivkin

In a 2007 working paper, Alan Blinder assessed the "offshorability" of hundreds of U.S. occupations and estimated that between 22% and 29% of all U.S. jobs were potentially offshorable. This note reports the results of an exercise in which members of Harvard Business... View Details

Keywords: Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Wages; Research; United States

06 Mar 2014
HBS Seminar

Dina Pomeranz, Harvard Business School

02 Sep 2020
News

The Secret to Reallocating Resources in a Recession

Program

Women on Boards

position Understand the politics and pitfalls of corporate networks Raise your profile among directors, founders, and funders Match your skills and talents to the board's specific needs Expand your personal and professional network Extend... View Details

16 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

Delivering the Digital Goods: iTunes vs. Peer-to-Peer

deliver new experiences to consumers that cannot be easily matched by decentralized, self-sustained peer-to-peer networks. ITunes provides a better customer experience than file sharing networks for similar content, and this allows record... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Music

Article

Getting the Most Out of Giving: Concretely Framing a Prosocial Goal Maximizes Happiness

By: Melanie Rudd, Jennifer Aaker and Michael I. Norton

Across six field and laboratory experiments, participants assigned a more concretely-framed prosocial goal (e.g., making someone smile or increasing recycling) felt happier and reported creating greater personal happiness after performing a goal-directed act of... View Details

Keywords: Prosocial Behavior; Goal Framing; Affective Forecasting; Goals and Objectives; Happiness; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

2014
Working Paper

Price Coherence and Adverse Intermediation

By: Benjamin Edelman and Julian Wright

Suppose an intermediary provides a benefit to buyers when they purchase from sellers using the intermediary's technology. We develop a model to show that the intermediary will want to restrict sellers from charging buyers more for transactions it intermediates. We show... View Details

Keywords: Intermediaries; Platforms; Two-Sided Markets; Price Coherence; Price; Two-Sided Platforms; Distribution Channels

Teaching

Overview

By: John D. Macomber

Teaching and research interests center around the matching of private and instituional capital into large public infrastructure and resilience projects that shape the future of cities and urban environments around the world. The world's population is increaslingly... View Details

2015
Working Paper

The Probability of Rare Disasters: Estimation and Implications

By: Emil Siriwardane

I analyze a rare disasters economy that yields a measure of the risk neutral probability of a macroeconomic disaster, p*t. A large panel of options data provides strong evidence that p*t is the single factor driving option-implied jump risk measures in the cross... View Details

Keywords: Financial Markets; Forecasting and Prediction; Financial Crisis; Macroeconomics

August 2020 (Revised June 2021)
Case

Just Arrived: Integrating Refugees in Sweden

By: Brian Trelstad, Emilie Billaud and Mette Fuglsang Hjortshoej

Just Arrived is an online platform that matches newly-arrived immigrants in Sweden with employment opportunities. As one of several for-profit and non-profit start-ups in Europe that is looking to address the refugee crisis, the case enables a comparative analysis of... View Details

Keywords: Immigration; Refugees; Employment; Integration; Business Model; Social Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Employment Industry; Sweden; Italy; Germany

Educators

Purchase

2015
Chapter

Government and the Minimalist Platform: Business at the Kumbh Mela

By: John D. Macomber and Tarun Khanna

India's Kumbh Mela, a religious festival occurring once every 12 years at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, attracts over 80 million pilgrims to a temporary "pop-up megacity" over the course of two months. A team of faculty and students from five Harvard... View Details

Purchase

2011
Working Paper

Matthew: Effect or Fable?

In a market context, a status effect occurs when actors are accorded differential recognition for their efforts depending on their location in a status ordering, holding constant the quality of these efforts. In practice, because it is very difficult to measure... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Status and Position; Measurement and Metrics; Quality