Filter Results:
(1,415)
Show Results For
- All HBS Web (1,415)
- Faculty Publications (413)
Show Results For
- All HBS Web (1,415)
- Faculty Publications (413)
- June 2024
- Article
Economics of Enhanced Methane Oxidation Relative to Carbon Dioxide Removal
By: Conor Hickey and Myles Allen
Mitigating short-term global warming is imperative, and a key strategy involves reducing atmospheric methane (CH4) due to its high radiative forcing and short lifespan. This objective can be achieved through methods such as oxidising methane at its source or... View Details
Keywords: Greenhouse Gas Mitigation; Climate Change; Environmental Regulation; Pollutants; Research; Measurement and Metrics
Hickey, Conor, and Myles Allen. "Economics of Enhanced Methane Oxidation Relative to Carbon Dioxide Removal." Art. 4043. Environmental Research Letters 19, no. 6 (June 2024).
- 2022
- Working Paper
Turning Away From the State: Trade Shocks and Informal Insurance in Brazil
By: Paula Rettl
How does economic globalization affect vote choices? Conventional wisdom holds that voters who lose from economic integration support parties that propose to expand the welfare state. I argue that a key scope condition of this causal relationship is expectations about... View Details
Keywords: Economic Globalization; Globalized Economies; Government Administration; Economics; Globalization; Globalized Economies and Regions; Voting; Brazil; Latin America
Rettl, Paula. "Turning Away From the State: Trade Shocks and Informal Insurance in Brazil." Working Paper, August 2022.
- September 2011
- Article
Political Instability: Effects on Financial Development, Roots in the Severity of Economic Inequality
By: Mark J. Roe and Jordan I. Siegel
We here bring forward strong evidence that political instability impedes financial development, with its variation a primary determinant of differences in financial development around the world. As such, it needs to be added to the short list of major determinants of... View Details
Keywords: Financial Development; Political Instability; Government and Politics; Finance; Growth and Development; Economics; Equality and Inequality
Roe, Mark J., and Jordan I. Siegel. "Political Instability: Effects on Financial Development, Roots in the Severity of Economic Inequality." Journal of Comparative Economics 39, no. 3 (September 2011): 279–309. (We here bring forward strong evidence that political instability impedes financial development, with its variation a primary determinant of differences in financial development around the world. As such, it needs to be added to the short list of major determinants of financial development. First, structural conditions first postulated by
Engerman and Sokoloff (2002) as generating long-term inequality are shown here empirically to be exogenous determinants of political instability. Second, that exogenously-determined political instability in turn holds back financial development, even when we control for factors prominent in the last decade's cross-country studies of
financial development. The findings indicate that inequality-perpetuating conditions that result in political instability are fundamental roadblocks for international organizations like the World Bank that seek to promote financial development. The evidence here includes country fixed effect regressions and an instrumental model inspired by Engerman and Sokoloff's (2002) work, which to our knowledge has not yet been used in finance and which is consistent with current tests as valid instruments. Four conventional measures of national political instability — Alesina and Perotti's (1996) well-known index of instability, a subsequent index derived from Banks' (2005) work,
and two indices of managerial perceptions of nation-by-nation political instability — persistently predict a wide range of national financial development outcomes for recent decades. Political instability's significance is time consistent in cross-sectional regressions back to the 1960's, the period when the key data becomes available, robust
in both country fixed-effects and instrumental variable regressions, and consistent across multiple measures of instability and of financial development. Overall, the results indicate the existence of an important channel running from structural inequality to political instability, principally in nondemocratic settings, and then to financial
backwardness. The robust significance of that channel extends existing work demonstrating the importance of political economy explanations for financial development and financial backwardness. It should help to better understand which policies will work for financial development, because political instability has causes, cures, and effects quite distinct from those of many of the key institutions most studied in the past decade as explaining financial backwardness.)
- October 2019
- Article
Does Political Uncertainty Increase External Financing Costs? Measuring the Electoral Premium in Syndicated Lending
By: Olivia S. Kim
This article investigates the impact of political uncertainty on contractual lending terms using a large sample of syndicated loans and a within-firm estimation approach to achieve identification. Firms pay 7 basis points (bps) more on loans originated when their... View Details
Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Political Elections; Financing and Loans; Developing Countries and Economies
Kim, Olivia S. "Does Political Uncertainty Increase External Financing Costs? Measuring the Electoral Premium in Syndicated Lending." Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 54, no. 5 (October 2019): 2141–2178.
- 2022
- Working Paper
Credit and the Family: The Economic Consequences of Closing the Credit Gap of U.S. Couples
By: Olivia S. Kim
Closing disparities in credit access between spouses can help reduce consumption inequality in the household. The 2013 reversal of the Truth-in-Lending Act increased the borrowing capacity of secondary earners in equitable-distribution states but not in... View Details
Keywords: Household; Credit; Equality and Inequality; Income; Policy; Family and Family Relationships
Kim, Olivia S. "Credit and the Family: The Economic Consequences of Closing the Credit Gap of U.S. Couples." Working Paper, December 2022.
- December 2012
- Article
The Microwork Solution: A New Approach to Outsourcing Can Support Economic Development—and Add to Your Bottom Line
By: Francesca Gino and Bradely R. Staats
What's the best way to lift people out of poverty? The social entrepreneurs in the new "impact sourcing" industry believe the answer is providing work, not aid. Their organizations hire people at the bottom of the pyramid to perform digital tasks such as transcribing... View Details
Keywords: Outsourcing; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Nonprofit Organizations; Partners and Partnerships; Development Economics; Social Entrepreneurship; Welfare; Cooperation; San Francisco
Gino, Francesca, and Bradely R. Staats. "The Microwork Solution: A New Approach to Outsourcing Can Support Economic Development—and Add to Your Bottom Line." Harvard Business Review 90, no. 12 (December 2012): 92–96.
- 2023
- Working Paper
'De Gustibus' and Disputes about Reference Dependence
By: Thomas Graeber, Pol Campos-Mercade, Lorenz Goette, Alexandre Kellogg and Charles Sprenger
Existing tests of reference-dependent preferences assume universal loss aversion. This paper examines the implications of heterogeneity in gain-loss attitudes for such tests. In experiments on labor supply and exchange behavior we measure gain-loss attitudes and then... View Details
Graeber, Thomas, Pol Campos-Mercade, Lorenz Goette, Alexandre Kellogg, and Charles Sprenger. "'De Gustibus' and Disputes about Reference Dependence." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 24-046, January 2024.
- July 2008
- Supplement
The Politics and Economics of Accounting for Goodwill at Cisco Systems (B)
By: Karthik Ramanna
Studies the role of Cisco in setting current US accounting standards for acquisitions and goodwill. Students are asked to analyze an acquisition in the context of an ongoing political debate on mergers accounting. View Details
Keywords: Goodwill Accounting; Standards; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business and Government Relations; United States
Ramanna, Karthik. "The Politics and Economics of Accounting for Goodwill at Cisco Systems (B)." Harvard Business School Supplement 109-003, July 2008.
- July 2008
- Case
The Politics and Economics of Accounting for Goodwill at Cisco Systems (A)
By: Karthik Ramanna
Studies the role of Cisco in setting current U.S. accounting standards for acquisitions and goodwill. Students are asked to analyze an acquisition in the context of an ongoing political debate on mergers accounting. View Details
Keywords: Goodwill Accounting; Mergers and Acquisitions; Standards; Business and Government Relations; United States
Ramanna, Karthik. "The Politics and Economics of Accounting for Goodwill at Cisco Systems (A)." Harvard Business School Case 109-002, July 2008.
- 2021
- Other Unpublished Work
Computer-Implemented Methods and Systems for Measuring, Estimating, and Managing Economic Outcomes and Technical Debt in Software Systems and Projects: US Patent 11,126,427 B2
By: Daniel J. Sturtevant, Carliss Baldwin, Alan MacCormack, Sunny Ahn and Sean Gilliland
An interrelated set of tools and methods is disclosed for: (1) measuring the relationship between software source code attributes (such as code quality, design quality, test quality, and complexity metrics) and software economics outcome metrics (such as... View Details
Sturtevant, Daniel J., Carliss Baldwin, Alan MacCormack, Sunny Ahn, and Sean Gilliland. "Computer-Implemented Methods and Systems for Measuring, Estimating, and Managing Economic Outcomes and Technical Debt in Software Systems and Projects: US Patent 11,126,427 B2." Cambridge, MA, September 2021.
- Article
Consumers' Misunderstanding of Health Insurance
By: George Loewenstein, Joelle Y. Friedman, Barbara McGill, Sarah Ahmad, Suzanne Linck, Stacey Sinkula, John Beshears, James J. Choi, Jonathan Kolstad, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian, John A. List and Kevin G. Volpp
We report results from two surveys of representative samples of Americans with private health insurance. The first examines how well Americans understand, and believe they understand, traditional health insurance coverage. The second examines whether those insured... View Details
Keywords: Behavioral Economics; Simplification; Insurance; Consumer Behavior; Health Care and Treatment; Cognition and Thinking; Insurance Industry; Health Industry; United States
Loewenstein, George, Joelle Y. Friedman, Barbara McGill, Sarah Ahmad, Suzanne Linck, Stacey Sinkula, John Beshears, James J. Choi, Jonathan Kolstad, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian, John A. List, and Kevin G. Volpp. "Consumers' Misunderstanding of Health Insurance." Journal of Health Economics 32, no. 5 (September 2013): 850–862.
- 2015
- Working Paper
Do People Shape Cities, or Do Cities Shape People? The Co-evolution of Physical, Social, and Economic Change in Five Major U.S. Cities
By: Nikhil Naik, Scott Duke Kominers, Ramesh Raskar, Edward L. Glaeser and Cesar Hidalgo
Urban change involves transformations in the physical appearance and the social composition of neighborhoods. Yet, the relationship between the physical and social components of urban change is not well understood due to the lack of comprehensive measures of... View Details
Naik, Nikhil, Scott Duke Kominers, Ramesh Raskar, Edward L. Glaeser, and Cesar Hidalgo. "Do People Shape Cities, or Do Cities Shape People? The Co-evolution of Physical, Social, and Economic Change in Five Major U.S. Cities." Working Paper.
- 2021
- Working Paper
The Contribution of High-Skilled Immigrants to Innovation in the United States
By: Shai Bernstein, Rebecca Diamond, Abhisit Jiranaphawiboon, Timothy McQuade and Beatriz Pousada
We characterize the contribution of immigrants to US innovation, both through their direct productivity as well as through their indirect spillover effects on their native collaborators. To do so, we link patent records to a database containing the first five digits of... View Details
Keywords: Innovation; Economic Growth; Immigrants; Innovation and Invention; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Patents; Innovation Strategy
Bernstein, Shai, Rebecca Diamond, Abhisit Jiranaphawiboon, Timothy McQuade, and Beatriz Pousada. "The Contribution of High-Skilled Immigrants to Innovation in the United States." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 22-065, December 2021. (NBER Working Paper Series, No. 30797, December 2022.)
- 2019
- Chapter
Location Fundamentals, Agglomeration Economies, and the Geography of Multinational Firms
By: Laura Alfaro and Maggie Xiaoyang Chen
Multinationals exhibit distinct agglomeration patterns, which have transformed the global landscape of industrial production (Alfaro and Chen, 2014). Using a unique worldwide plant-level dataset that reports detailed location, ownership, and operation information for... View Details
Keywords: Multinational Firm; Economic Geography; Agglomeration; Location Fundamentals; Agglomeration Economies; Multinational Firms and Management; Geographic Location; Industry Clusters; Economics
Alfaro, Laura, and Maggie Xiaoyang Chen. "Location Fundamentals, Agglomeration Economies, and the Geography of Multinational Firms." Chap. 10 in The Oxford Handbook of Structural Transformation, edited by Célestin Monga and Justin Yifu Lin. Oxford University Press, 2019.
- 2013
- Working Paper
The Appeal of the Appropriate: Accounting, Risk Management, and the Competition for the Supply of Control Systems
By: Anette Mikes
How do certain risk measurements in organizations come to be seen as more reliable and acceptable than others? Taking a multiple-control perspective, I investigate the aftermath of a control debacle at a financial services company (MultiBank), focusing on its insurance... View Details
Keywords: Management Control Systems; Multiple Control Systems; Interactive Control Systems; Performance Measurement; Risk Measurement; Financialization Of Accounting; Institutional Logics; Banking; Risk Management; Fair Value Accounting; Insurance; Financial Services Industry
Mikes, Anette. "The Appeal of the Appropriate: Accounting, Risk Management, and the Competition for the Supply of Control Systems." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 12-115, June 2012. (Revised January 2013.)
- 2017
- Article
Computer Vision Uncovers Predictors of Physical Urban Change
By: Nikhil Naik, Scott Duke Kominers, Ramesh Raskar, Edward L. Glaeser and César A. Hidalgo
Which neighborhoods experience physical improvements? In this paper, we introduce a computer vision method to measure changes in the physical appearances of neighborhoods from time-series street-level imagery. We connect changes in the physical appearance of five U.S.... View Details
Keywords: Urban Economics; Gentrification; Urban Studies; Computer Vision; Nieghborhood Effects; Urban Development; Situation or Environment; Demographics; Economics; Change
Naik, Nikhil, Scott Duke Kominers, Ramesh Raskar, Edward L. Glaeser, and César A. Hidalgo. "Computer Vision Uncovers Predictors of Physical Urban Change." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, no. 29 (July 18, 2017).
- July 2018
- Article
Does Copyright Affect Reuse? Evidence from Google Books and Wikipedia
By: Abhishek Nagaraj
While digitization has greatly increased the reuse of knowledge, this study shows how these benefits might be mitigated by copyright restrictions. I use the digitization of in-copyright and out-of-copyright issues of Baseball Digest magazine by Google Books to... View Details
Nagaraj, Abhishek. "Does Copyright Affect Reuse? Evidence from Google Books and Wikipedia." Management Science 64, no. 7 (July 2018): 3091–3107.
- Research Summary
Overview
The Information Age has introduced well-received opportunities to track performance. Fitbits and Fuelbands allow individuals to track their own performance; companies like Uber and leading hospitals help you choose a driver or a doctor based on how others rated... View Details
- November 2016 (Revised December 2016)
- Module Note
Strategy Execution Module 12: Aligning Performance Goals and Incentives
By: Robert Simons
This module reading explains how managers use performance goals and incentives to ensure that employee actions align with the overall business strategy of the organization. The module begins by discussing how managers use goals to communicate business strategy, the... View Details
Keywords: Management Control Systems; Implementing Strategy; Execution; Performance Goals; Performance Measures; Incentives; Benchmarks; Motivation; Compensation; Bonuses; Strategy
Simons, Robert. "Strategy Execution Module 12: Aligning Performance Goals and Incentives." Harvard Business School Module Note 117-112, November 2016. (Revised December 2016.)
- Article
Tabulated Nonsense? Testing the Validity of the Ethnographic Atlas
By: Duman Bahrami-Rad, Anke Becker and Joseph Henrich
The Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock, 1967), an anthropological database, is widely used across the social sciences. The Atlas is a quantified and discretely categorized collection of information gleaned from ethnographies covering more than 1200... View Details
Bahrami-Rad, Duman, Anke Becker, and Joseph Henrich. "Tabulated Nonsense? Testing the Validity of the Ethnographic Atlas." Art. 109880. Economics Letters 204 (July 2021).