Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,106)
- Faculty Publications (161)
- 10 May 2015
- Conference Presentation
Building a Competitive Jerusalem
By: Michael E. Porter and Christian H.M. Ketels
Jerusalem 2020 is a five-year growth plan for Jerusalem's economic development based on Professor Michael E. Porter's theory of competitive advantage. The plan was presented to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with the goal of significant investment by the... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
The Cooperative Solution of Stochastic Games
By: Elon Kohlberg and Abraham Neyman
Building on the work of Nash, Harsanyi, and Shapley, we define a cooperative solution for strategic games that takes account of both the competitive and the cooperative aspects of such games. We prove existence in the general (NTU) case and uniqueness in the TU... View Details
- March 2015
- Article
Business Model Evaluation: Quantifying Walmart's Sources of Advantage
By: Humberto Brea-Solís, Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Emili Grifell-Tatjé
We develop an analytical framework on the basis of the economics of business performance to provide quantitative insight into the link between a firm's business model choices and its profit consequences. The method is applied to Walmart by building a qualitative... View Details
- February 2015 (Revised September 2016)
- Teaching Note
Making stickK Stick: The Business of Behavioral Economics
By: Leslie K. John and Michael Norton
Email mking@hbs.edu for a courtesy copy.
This Teaching Note explains the theory of the case and teaching plan for the case: Making sticK Stick: The Business of Behavioral Economics (514019). The case focuses on a... View Details
This Teaching Note explains the theory of the case and teaching plan for the case: Making sticK Stick: The Business of Behavioral Economics (514019). The case focuses on a... View Details
Keywords: Behavioral Economics; Behavior Change; B2B Vs. B2C; Human Resource Management; Marketing Of Innovations; Health ＆ Wellness; Weight Loss; Charitable Giving; Marketing; Consumer Behavior; Entrepreneurship; Internet and the Web; Health; Business Model; Sales; Human Resources; Health Industry; United States
- 2014
- Working Paper
The Rise and Fall of Demand for Securitizations
By: Sergey Chernenko, Samuel G. Hanson and Adi Sunderam
Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and private-label mortgage-backed securities (MBS) backed by nonprime loans played a central role in the recent financial crisis. Little is known, however, about the underlying forces that drove investor demand for these... View Details
- October 2014
- Article
Sovereigns, Upstream Capital Flows and Global Imbalances
By: Laura Alfaro, Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan and Vadym Volosovych
We construct measures of net private and public capital flows for a large cross-section of developing countries considering both creditor and debtor side of the international debt transactions. Using these measures, we demonstrate that sovereign-to-sovereign... View Details
- Article
Seeking the Roots of Entrepreneurship: Insights from Behavioral Economics
By: Thomas Astebro, Holger Herz, Ramana Nanda and Roberto A. Weber
There is a growing body of evidence that many entrepreneurs seem to enter and persist in entrepreneurship despite earning low risk-adjusted returns. This has lead to attempts to provide explanations—using both standard economic theory and behavioral economics—for why... View Details
- March 2014
- Course Overview Note
Creating and Sustaining Competitive Advantage
This note gives an overview (for instructors) of the MBA elective course "Creating and Sustaining Competitive Advantage" (CSCA). The course gives students a deep dive on competitive advantage, on its relation to overall strategic performance (defined as performance... View Details
- March 2014
- Article
Cyclicality of Credit Supply: Firm Level Evidence
By: Bo Becker and Victoria Ivashina
Theory predicts that there is a close link between bank credit supply and the evolution of the business cycle. Yet fluctuations in bank-loan supply have been hard to quantify in the time series. While loan issuance falls in recessions, it is not clear if this is due to... View Details
- January 2014
- Article
China's 'New Regionalism': Subnational Analysis in Chinese Political Economy
By: Meg Rithmire
The study of Chinese political economy has undergone a sea change since the late 1990s; instead of debating the origins and direction of national reform, scholars have turned to examining the origins of local economic variation. This essay reviews recent work in... View Details
- 2013
- Book
The Political Economy of Empire in the Early Modern World
By: Sophus A. Reinert and Pernille Røge
This volume recasts our understanding of the practical and theoretical foundations and dynamic experiences of early modern imperialism. The imperial encounter with political economy was neither uniform across political, economic, cultural, and religious constellations... View Details
- July 2013
- Technical Note
Competition Simulator Exercise: Questions
In the Competition Simulator Exercise, students explore through trial and error some important economic foundations of competitive strategy and managerial economics. In particular, the simulator lets students explore horizontal differentiation with and without price... View Details
- June 2013 (Revised November 2022)
- Exercise
Competition Simulator Exercise
In the Competition Simulator Exercise, students explore through trial and error some important economic foundations of competitive strategy and managerial economics. In particular, the nine simulator exercises let students explore horizontal differentiation with and... View Details
Keywords: Competition; Economics; Game Theory; Competitive Strategy; Learning; Mathematical Methods; Analysis
- June 2013 (Revised March 2014)
- Technical Note
Strategic Complements and Substitutes
The framework of strategic complements and substitutes can help companies anticipate competitors' responses. It is particularly helpful in deciding on price- or capacity-commitments (or pre-emption), but it can provide more general guidance for analyzing the potential... View Details
- April 2013 (Revised August 2015)
- Background Note
Comparative Advantage
The theory of comparative advantage is a factor in international trade. In this note, we introduce the basic economics of comparative advantage and study its key implications. View Details
- 2013
- Chapter
Behavioral Corporate Finance: A Current Survey
By: Malcolm Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler
We survey the theory and evidence of behavioral corporate finance, which generally takes one of two approaches. The market timing and catering approach views managerial financing and investment decisions as rational managerial responses to securities mispricing. The... View Details
- 2013
- Chapter
Capturing History: The Case of the Federal Radio Commission in 1927
By: David Moss and Jonathan Lackow
In the study of regulation (and political economy more generally), there is a danger that historical inferences from theory may infect historical tests of theory. It is imperative, therefore, that historical tests always involve a vigorous search not only for... View Details
- Article
On Derivatives Markets and Social Welfare: A Theory of Empty Voting and Hidden Ownership
By: Jordan M. Barry, John William Hatfield and Scott Duke Kominers
In the past twenty-five years, derivatives markets have grown exponentially. Large, modern derivatives markets increasingly enable investors to hold economic interests in corporations without owning voting rights, and vice versa. This leads to both empty... View Details
- 2012
- Article
A Field Study on the Acceptance and Use of a New Accounting System
By: V.G. Narayanan, Ranjani Krishnan and Jamshed J. Mistry
This study examines the attitudes, use, and acceptance of a new accounting system in a pharmaceutical corporation that switched from an Activity Based Costing System to the Theory of Constraints System (TOC). Using structuration theory as a framework, we posit that... View Details
- November 2012
- Article
The Organization of Firms Across Countries
By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
We argue that social capital as proxied by trust increases aggregate productivity by affecting the organization of firms. To do this we collect new data on the decentralization of investment, hiring, production, and sales decisions from Corporate Headquarters to local... View Details
Keywords: Decentralization; Social Capital; Theory Of The Firm; Firm Objectives, Organization, And Behavior; Business Economics; Management Of Technological Innovation And R＆D; Technological Change: Choices And Consequences; Diffusion Processes; Organizational Structure; Performance Productivity; Trust; Technology Adoption; Multinational Firms and Management