Happy End Problem - Publications - Faculty & Research

31 Jan 2012
First Look

First Look: Jan. 31

(January 2012) Abstract Back in the 1990s, business school professors at an Academy of Management conference debated the propriety of teaching distributive bargaining to their students. The particulars of that exchange are lost in the mists of time, but at the View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne & Carmen Nobel

21 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

Will American Brands Be a Casualty of War?

upper Amazon, they brought people a taste of America, along with the promise of freedom and prosperity. The end of the Cold War signaled victory for Brand America. As closed economies opened up to foreign trade and investment, Brand... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

25 Mar 2021
Research & Ideas

Steer Clear of the Blind Spots That Derail Experiments

made a series of changes and created a process for analyzing bias. Had the executives considered how to account for unintended consequences in their outcome metrics—and perhaps engaged a diverse user group to understand their experiences—they might have spotted this... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

13 Oct 2010
Research & Ideas

How Government can Discourage Private Sector Reliance on Short-Term Debt

any bearing on private sector financing choices. The authors first consider the government financing problem in isolation, arguing that the government may try to "borrow cheap" by issuing short-term Treasury bills, which embed a... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Financial Services

25 Apr 2014
Research & Ideas

To Pay or Not to Pay: Argentina and the International Debt Market

that triggered economic chaos in that nation. Along with Argentina's current struggles—the sharp devaluation of its currency, rampant inflation, and civil unrest—past financial problems remain unresolved and much on the minds of its... View Details

Keywords: by Laura Alfaro

06 Nov 2013
What Do You Think?

Is Top-Down Resource Allocation on the Rise?

reallocates resources to go after those 'cracks', they will be missed." At the end of the day, he wrote, "most investors are looking at total cash flow return on total investment. An agile corporate center can better focus on... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

04 Dec 2012
First Look

First Look: December 4

selection problem (consumption complementarities often lead to multiple equilibria, which result in different utility levels for the users); and (iii) a coordination problem (lacking perfect foresight, it is... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

03 Dec 2008
What Do You Think?

Can Housing and Credit be “Nudged” Back to Health?

creating "a modern version of alchemy," turning packages of poorly-rated mortgages into triple-A-rated collateral debt obligations, complete with supposed insurance against risk. The problem was that even financial experts... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

20 Feb 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, February 20, 2018

Crisis By: Becker, Bo, and Victoria Ivashina Abstract—By the end of 2013, the share of government debt held by the domestic banking sectors of Eurozone countries was more than twice its 2007 level. We show that this type of increasing... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

03 Apr 2019
Book

Fintech's Game-Changing Opportunities for Small Business

abruptly in the Great Recession and has not come back. There are a number of theories about too much regulation, for example, or too much student debt, but it is a problem because small businesses provide a path to the American dream.... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Banking; Financial Services

08 Nov 2010
Research & Ideas

How to Fix a Broken Marketplace

markets—and how market design made things better. Thickness:A classic example of a thickness problem is the process of helping nephrology patients in need of kidney transplants. In 2006, some 5,000 patients in the United States either... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

10 Jun 2002
Research & Ideas

How to Look at Globalization Now

Hutchison Whampoa group as an English-language broadcaster of mainly Western fare that targeted the top five percent of Asia's socioeconomic pyramid. But by the end of its first decade of operation, STAR had metamorphosed into a series of... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

19 Oct 2015
Research & Ideas

Business Research that Makes for Smarter Public Policy

of the Tobin Project, a nonprofit research institute focused on catalyzing scholarship on important governmental problems. “The question is how to do that. My teacher, the Nobel economist James Tobin, told me that it’s better to build our scholarship around pressing... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

12 Feb 2007
Lessons from the Classroom

‘UpTick’ Brings Wall Street Pressure to Students

there. —Erik Stafford "Competition is at the heart of many of the concepts in finance," says Coval. "The problem you face in the classroom is that the setting is very static. You have a case and a blackboard to show how the... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Financial Services; Education

20 Sep 2006
Research & Ideas

The Power of Ordinary Practices

management in seven companies identify teams working full-time on projects that demanded creativity. We ended up studying 238 professionals in 26 project teams in 7 companies in 3 different industries. They were highly educated—a vast... View Details

Keywords: Re: Teresa M. Amabile

13 May 2002
Op-Ed

A Cure for Enron-Style Audit Failures

general, existing law is adequate. The main problem lies in the failure by boards to follow procedures that would hold managements accountable for company performance. This could be improved by focusing on three areas. The first is... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Lorsch; Accounting

01 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

Five Questions for Stuart Gilson

restructuring before they are hit with a financial crisis. When is a preemptive restructuring appropriate? A: If a company waits too long to address problems with its business, the resulting restructuring may be very painful. This may... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

10 Mar 2009
First Look

First Look: March 10, 2009

and develop a construction budget and financing plan. Students are asked to evaluate the prospective financials for this development and assess the viability of the development plan and its prospective returns. The case then ends with a... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

20 Jan 2003
Research & Ideas

Fixing Corporate Governance: A Roundtable Discussion at Harvard Business School

problems—particularly by business itself — will help keep our system of capitalism democratic and in sync with the larger interests of the nation. Paul Healy: We may have been through these experiences before, but it's shocking where we have View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons

07 Aug 2012
First Look

First Look: August 7

which result in different utility levels for the users); and (iii) a coordination problem (lacking perfect foresight, it is unlikely that users will end up buying the same set of applications). The analysis... View Details