Publications

July 2009 (Revised January 2012)
Case

Risk Management at Wellfleet Bank: All That Glitters Is Not Gold

By: Anette Mikes

This case motivates a debate on the role of staff functions, such as risk management: what does it mean for them to be independent, and at the same time, to partner the business lines? The case describes the risk assessment process in the corporate banking arm of... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Judgments; Credit; Banks and Banking; Governance Controls; Risk Management; Mathematical Methods

19 Mar 2015
News

Walter Salmon Remembered

1967) You might say Walt saved my career. Much in ego-building demand, I accelerated out of the Harvard Economics PhD program, where I had loaded my brain with monetary policy, Keynes versus Friedman, mathematical macro-modeling and lots... View Details

Keywords: Business Schools & Computer & Management Training; Educational Services

September 2010 (Revised January 2012)
Case

Emergia: Driving Profitability on Help Desk Contracts

Emergia wants to keep its customer happy with its contact center service, but the margins on the help desk contract are dangerously low. Can Miguel Neira, the COO, increase margins while preserving the customer relationship? View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Customer Satisfaction; Profit; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Service Operations; Performance Capacity; Performance Evaluation; Mathematical Methods; Service Industry

2008
Chapter

Corporate Honesty and Business Education: A Behavioral Model

By: Rakesh Khurana and Herbert Gintis

Since the mid-1970s neoclassical economic theory has dominated business school thinking and teaching in dealing with the nature of human motivation. However valuable in understanding competitive product and financial markets, neoclassical economic theory employs an... View Details

Keywords: Business Education; Ethics; Managerial Roles; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Culture; Business and Shareholder Relations; Mathematical Methods; Behavior

08 Jul 2008
First Look

First Look: July 8, 2008

http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=607014 Asset Allocation I Harvard Business School Note 208-086 The goal of these simulations is to understand the mathematics of mean-variance optimization and the equilibrium... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

31 Jan 2017
Research & Ideas

Why These Business School Professors Oppose Trump's Executive Order on Immigration

engineering, technology and mathematics (STEM), and they have equivalent contributions in outcomes like granted patents and entrepreneurial firm starts. These contributions are increasing, up from 10%-15% just a couple of decades ago. And... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

05 Dec 2017
Research & Ideas

What We've Learned from 101 Entrepreneurs in Emerging Markets

not just relying on the printed word—why can we not do research by referring to video, sound, and the like? There is so much mathematics devoted today to extraction of quantitative data from all sorts of data sources that a move in this... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

18 Oct 2006
Research & Ideas

New at the Helm: A Talk with HBS Dean Light

application aside and asked whether I'd like to get a doctorate instead," recalls Light. After discussions during a visit to the campus, Light agreed to enter a new doctoral program in decision and control theory, a joint program between HBS and Harvard's... View Details

Keywords: by Roger Thompson; Education

Web

Institute Associates - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

organizations. Professor Teisberg earned a M.S. and a Ph.D. in engineering-economic systems from the Stanford University School of Engineering. She also holds a M. Eng. in systems science from the University of Virginia and an A.B. degree, summa cum laude, in political... View Details

31 May 2011
First Look

First Look: May 31

mathematical models has turned the negotiated order of organizational activities, which necessarily include particularistic elements, into abstract generalizations that favor quantifiable variables. This paper offers another logic, a... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

01 Jun 2007
News

Up from the Ashes

Schumpeter (pronounced “SHOOMpayter”) to the study of economic behavior was to humanize it. In part because of his own turbulent life, he came to understand that mathematical certitude could not always prevail where “indeterminate human... View Details

Keywords: Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services

March 2019 (Revised May 2019)
Case

Fetchr: A New Way of Last Mile Delivery

By: V.G. Narayanan and Eren Kuzucu

By mid-2016, five years of aggressive growth had transformed Fetchr from a small logistics startup to a 1,000-employee, full-fledged last-mile delivery company operating across four countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Already beneficiaries of the... View Details

September 2010
Supplement

Compass Maritime Services, LLC: Valuing Ships (CW)

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Albert W. Sheen

Tom Roberts, a founding partner of Compass Maritime Services, a New Jersey-based shipping research and consulting firm, has been asked by a new potential customer in May 2008 for advice on purchasing a capesize bulk carrier. After identifying a suitable ship with his... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Decisions; Microeconomics; Finance; Price; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Market Transactions; Partners and Partnerships; Mathematical Methods; Valuation; Consulting Industry; New Jersey

29 Nov 2004
Research & Ideas

Caves, Clusters, and Weak Ties: The Six Degrees World of Inventors

letter actually getting to his friend—there were six referrals. This idea has passed into popular culture and urban folklore as the six degrees of separation. That's where it lay until a decade ago when a few researchers out of the Santa Fe Institute formalized the... View Details

Keywords: by Sara Grant; Publishing

06 Jun 2005
Research & Ideas

Microsoft vs. Open Source: Who Will Win?

attention trying to figure out ways to fight this battle. Q: Could you summarize your results? A: First of all, let us make a caveat regarding our approach. Our methodology is formal economic modelling. What this means is that we construct a stylized View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Technology

02 Feb 2010
First Look

First Look: Feb. 2

increasing or decreasing, depending on the magnitude of a manager's career incentives. Altruistic Utility Functions for Joint Decisions Authors:David E. Bell and Ralph L. Keeney Publication:In The Mathematics of Preference, Choice and... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

08 Sep 2009
Research & Ideas

The Height Tax, and Other New Ways to Think about Taxation

poor if not balanced with other changes to the system. Will the trend toward these taxes continue, or will dissatisfaction with income inequality force a reversal? On the research side, let me note three developments: First, powerful View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

2012
Working Paper

Issuer Quality and Corporate Bond Returns

By: Robin Greenwood and Samuel G. Hanson

We show that the credit quality of corporate debt issuers deteriorates during credit booms, and that this deterioration forecasts low excess returns to corporate bondholders. The key insight is that changes in the pricing of credit risk disproportionately affect the... View Details

Keywords: Price; Credit; Risk and Uncertainty; Investment Return; Forecasting and Prediction; Bonds; Market Design; Cost of Capital; Mathematical Methods; System Shocks

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July 2006
Article

Dynamic Mixed Duopoly: A Model Motivated by Linux vs. Windows

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Pankaj Ghemawat

This paper analyzes a dynamic mixed duopoly in which a profit-maximizing competitor interacts with a competitor that prices at zero (or marginal cost), with the cumulation of output affecting their relative positions over time. The modeling effort is motivated by... View Details