Publications
Publications
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(3,880)
- Faculty Publications (470)
- December 2020
- Article
The Employment Effects of Faster Payment: Evidence from the Federal Quickpay Reform
By: Jean-Noel Barrot and Ramana Nanda
We study the impact of Quickpay, a federal reform that indefinitely accelerated payments to small business contractors of the U.S. government. We find a strong direct effect of the reform on employment growth at the firm level. Importantly, however, we also... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Revenue Collapses and the Consumption of Small Business Owners in the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic
By: Olivia S. Kim, Jonathan A. Parker and Antoinette Schoar
Using detailed transaction-level data from financial accounts, this paper shows that the revenues of small businesses and the consumption spending of their owners both decline by roughly 40% following the declaration of the national emergency in March 2020. However,... View Details
- October 2020 (Revised November 2023)
- Case
COVID-19 Testing at Everlywell
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Olivia Hull
In March 2020, as COVID-19 spreads rapidly across the U.S., Everlywell founder Julia Cheek considers how to respond as a small start-up specializing in at-home lab testing. After making dramatic budget cuts, she decides to pivot the organization to address the... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Strategy; Venture Capital; Health Care and Treatment; Health Disorders; Leading Change; Technology Adoption; Digital Platforms; Competitive Strategy; Science; Adaptation; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Crisis Management; Social Entrepreneurship; Ethics; Government Legislation; Health; Health Testing and Trials; Health Pandemics; Consumer Products Industry; Health Industry; Technology Industry; Texas; United States
- Fall 2020
- Article
Christo and Jeanne‐Claude: The Negotiation of Art and Vice Versa
Over the past two decades the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School (PON) has named thirteen people as Great Negotiators. The project, directed by my colleague Jim Sebenius, has given us the opportunity to commend our honorees’ outstanding work and to learn from... View Details
- October 2020
- Case
HOPE and Transformational Lending: Netflix Invests in Black Led Banks
By: John D. Macomber and Janice Broome Brooks
Following the killing of George Floyd on Memorial Day in 2020, the large US corporation Netflix elected to make a "transformational deposit" of $10 million into Hope Credit Union (HCU), a small Black led community development finance institution (CDFI) based in... View Details
- Fall 2020
- Article
Sizing Up Corporate Restructuring in the COVID Crisis
By: Robin Greenwood, Benjamin Iverson and David Thesmar
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the financial and legal system will need to deal with a surge of financial distress in the business sector. Some firms will be able to survive, while others will face bankruptcy and thus need to be liquidated or reorganized. Many... View Details
- September 2020
- Case
The Black New Venture Competition
Black entrepreneurs encounter many unique obstacles when raising capital to start and grow a business. During their second year at Harvard Business School (HBS), MBA students Kimberly Foster and Tyler Simpson decided to do something to make a difference for... View Details
Keywords: Startup; Start-up; Startup Financing; Startups; Start-ups; African-American Protagonist; African-american Entrepreneurs; African-american Investors; African-Americans; African-American Women; Black Leadership; Black Inventors; Black Entrepreneurs; Harvard Business School; Harvard; Business And Society; Early Stage Funding; Early Stage Finance; Technology Entrepreneurship; Discrimination; Technology Ventures; Entrepreneurial Finance; Entrepreneurial Financing; Business Plan; Business Startups; Business Ventures; Financing and Loans; Business Growth and Maturation; Diversity; Gender; Race; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Small Business; Leadership; Information Technology; Competition; Technology Industry
- 2020
- Working Paper
Bankruptcy and the COVID-19 Crisis
By: Jialan Wang, Jeyul Yang, Benjamin Iverson and Raymond Kluender
We examine the impact of the COVID-19 economic crisis on business and consumer bankruptcies in the United States using real-time data on the universe of filings. Historically, bankruptcies have closely tracked the business cycle and contemporaneous unemployment rates.... View Details
- September 2020 (Revised November 2020)
- Case
d.light
By: Michael Chu, Krishna G. Palepu and Dilyana Karadzhova Botha
Kenyan off-grid-solar pioneer d.light can power entire homes in rural Africa but must now decide how to fund the growth of its asset-heavy business model. Ned Tozun and Sam Goldman founded d.light in 2006 to transform lives through solar solutions enabling access to... View Details
- September 2020
- Case
West Side United: Hospitals Tackle the Racial Health and Wealth Gap
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Paul Stramaglia
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. David Ansell, Darlene Hightower, and Ayesho Jaco, leaders of West Side United (WSU), a coalition of Chicago hospitals, community residents, banks, and small businesses conceived in 2016, reviewed progress toward WSU’s goal of ending... View Details
Keywords: COVID; COVID-19; Hospital; Coalition; Health Pandemics; Race; Health; Wealth and Poverty; Equality and Inequality; Change; Leadership; Chicago
- August 2020 (Revised May 2021)
- Case
PayPal: The Next Chapter
By: Michael Porter, Mark Kramer and Annelena Lobb
Can a social purpose and stakeholder capitalism confer a powerful competitive advantage in the age of COVID-19? For PayPal, the answer is yes. After spinning off from eBay in a 2015 IPO, the company declared its purpose as "democratizing financial services" by ensuring... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
When Should Public Programs Be Privately Administered? Theory and Evidence from the Paycheck Protection Program
By: Alexander Bartik, Zoë B. Cullen, Edward L. Glaeser, Michael Luca, Christopher Stanton and Adi Sunderam
What happens when public resources are allocated by private companies whose objectives may be
imperfectly aligned with policy goals? We study this question in the context of the Paycheck
Protection Program (PPP), which relied on private banks to disburse aid to small... View Details
- August 2020 (Revised February 2021)
- Case
Luckin Coffee (A): Caffeine-fueled Growth?
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman
This case describes the founding of Chinese coffee chain Luckin Coffee in 2017 and its path to surpassing Starbucks as the largest coffee chain in China (by number of stores) in 2019. Unlike Starbucks stores, which were designed to be welcoming “third places” for... View Details
Keywords: Business Model; Business Earnings; Cost; Cost Management; Financial Statements; Financial Condition; Financial Management; Stocks; Profit; Revenue; Price; Food; Business History; Employment; Brands and Branding; Product Positioning; Marketing Strategy; Business Strategy; Expansion; Competitive Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; Technology Industry; Asia; China
- Article
The Impact of COVID-19 on Small Business Outcomes and Expectations
By: Alexander Bartik, Marianne Bertrand, Zoë B. Cullen, Edward L. Glaeser, Michael Luca and Christopher Stanton
To explore the impact of COVID on small businesses, we conducted a survey of more than 5,800 small businesses between March 28 and April 4, 2020. Several themes emerged. First, mass layoffs and closures had already occurred—just a few weeks into the crisis. Second, the... View Details
- July 2020
- Case
Michael Solomonov: Jerusalem in a Bowl
By: Boris Groysberg, Evan M.S. Hecht and Katherine Connolly Baden
Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook had begun to wonder whether it might be time to rethink their opportunistic approach to the expansion of their small restaurant empire in Philadelphia, CooknSolo. The pandemic, however, caused an... View Details
Keywords: Restaurant Industry; Entrepreneur; COVID-19; Crisis; Crisis Response Plans; Entrepreneurship; Food; Health Pandemics; Crisis Management; Innovation and Invention; Leadership; Creativity; Strategy; Ownership; Problems and Challenges; Risk and Uncertainty; Situation or Environment; Food and Beverage Industry; United States
- July 2020 (Revised September 2021)
- Case
Mr. Five Percent: Calouste Gulbenkian and the Origins of Global Oil
By: Geoffrey Jones and Yazeed Al-Rashed
This case describes the business career of Calouste Gulbenkian, a skilled intermediary who was able to secure 5 percent of a vast oil concession covering much of the Middle East that was signed in 1928. Gulbenkian was an ethnic Armenian born in the Ottoman Empire,... View Details
Keywords: Oil; Globalization; Energy Sources; History; Biography; Energy Industry; Turkey; Central Asia; Middle East
- July 3, 2020
- Article
Delivery Apps Need to Start Treating Suppliers As Partners
By: Scott Duke Kominers and Ian Macomber
Home delivery has shifted from a luxury service aimed at young urban professionals to a core part of many businesses, which is used by almost everyone. That upheaval has strained capacity of many delivery services and changed how they relate to the suppliers that they... View Details
- August 14, 2020
- Comment
How Has COVID-19 Affected Health Insurance Offered by Small Businesses in the U.S.? Early Evidence from a Survey
By: Leemore S. Dafny, Yin Wei Soon, Zoë Cullen and Christopher T. Stanton
As the COVID-19 pandemic stretches toward its third quarter, loss of health insurance coverage has not figured prominently in the public debate. Data in this report demonstrate why that is, but also suggest that the apparent stability is fragile, with potentially... View Details
- 2020
- Book
Capitalism at Risk: How Business Can Lead
Who should take the lead in fixing market capitalism? Business—not government alone. The spread of capitalism worldwide has made people wealthier than ever before. But capitalism's future is far from assured. Pandemics, income inequality, resource depletion, mass... View Details
- June 2020
- Case
gWorks
By: Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff
In January of 2019, Joe Heieck (HBS '14), CEO of gWorks, was deciding whether to proceed with his acquisition of Data Tech, that was a business roughly the same size of gWorks. gWorks, which provided geospatial software to small city and rural county governments, was... View Details