Publications

October 22, 2012
Article

Interest Rate Pass-Through: Mortgage Rates, Household Consumption, and Voluntary Deleveraging

By: Marco Di Maggio, Amir Kermani, Benjamin Keys, Tomasz Piskorski, Rodney Ramcharan, Amit Seru and Vincent Yao

Exploiting variation in the timing of resets of adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs), we find that a sizable decline in mortgage payments (up to 50%) induces a significant increase in car purchases (up to 35%). This effect is attenuated by voluntary deleveraging. Borrowers... View Details

Keywords: Monetary Policy; Household Finance; Refinancing; Contract Rigidities; Debt Rigidity; MPC; Deleveraging; Personal Finance; Household; Policy; Borrowing and Debt; Macroeconomics

28 Mar 2024
News

Rooms with a View

Alexander Mirza (MBA 1997) has spent two decades in the hospitality industry, opening and growing major hotel brands, including Hilton, Starwood, and Caesars, with locations around the world. And with each new project, Mirza faced the same primary challenge. “It didn’t... View Details

Keywords: April White; photos by Christina Gandolfo; Hospitality

August 2019
Case

Twiggle: E-Commerce with Semantic Search

By: Shane Greenstein and Danielle Golan

Four years after being founded, in 2014, by former Google executives Amir Konigsberg (CEO) and Adi Avidor (CTO), Twiggle had developed a search enhancement that plugged into an online merchant’s existing framework. The company utilized advanced structuring and... View Details

Keywords: Search Technology; Customer Acquisition; Internet and the Web; Technological Innovation; Commercialization; Growth and Development Strategy; E-commerce; Technology Industry; Israel

Educators

03 Oct 2007
Research & Ideas

Dealing with the ‘Irrational’ Negotiator

What do you do when the people with whom you are negotiating act in ways that can best be called counterproductive? Before throwing up your hands, take a deep breath and ask yourself 3 questions. Do these people lack good information? Are... View Details

Keywords: by Deepak Malhotra & Max H. Bazerman

April 2020
Article

Designs for Estimating the Treatment Effect in Networks with Interference

By: Ravi Jagadeesan, Natesh S. Pillai and Alexander Volfovsky

In this paper, we introduce new, easily implementable designs for drawing causal inference from randomized experiments on networks with interference. Inspired by the idea of matching in observational studies, we introduce the notion of considering a treatment... View Details

Keywords: Experimental Design; Network Inference; Neyman Estimator; Symmetric Interference Model; Homophily

2015
Other Teaching and Training Material

Entrepreneurship Reading: Partnering with Venture Capitalists

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Michael J. Roberts

This reading takes a deep look at the venture capital (VC) industry in the United States. VCs have a unique perspective on opportunity evaluation, deal structure, new venture support, and exit strategy. Their work at all stages of the entrepreneurial life cycle offers... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship

April 2019
Article

Internalizing Global Value Chains: A Firm-Level Analysis

By: Laura Alfaro, Pol Antràs, Davin Chor and Paola Conconi

In recent decades, advances in information and communication technology and falling trade barriers have led firms to retain within their boundaries and in their domestic economies only a subset of their production stages. A key decision facing firms worldwide is the... View Details

Keywords: Global Value Chains; Sequential Production; Incomplete Contracts; Demand and Consumers; Customer Value and Value Chain; Globalization

2017
Working Paper

Internalizing Global Value Chains: A Firm-Level Analysis

By: Laura Alfaro, Pol Antràs, Davin Chor and Paola Conconi

In recent decades, advances in information and communication technology and falling trade barriers have led firms to retain within their boundaries and in their domestic economies only a subset of their production stages. A key decision facing firms worldwide is the... View Details

Keywords: Global Value Chains; Sequential Production; Incomplete Contracts; Demand and Consumers; Customer Value and Value Chain; Globalization

01 Mar 2008
News

Negotiating with Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, sold $315.6 billion worth of goods in 2006. With its single-minded focus on “EDLP” (everyday low prices) and the power to make or break suppliers, a partnership with... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; General Merchandise Stores; Retail Trade

Web

HBS Alumna Fighting Cancer with a Novel Cell Therapy - MBA

Blog Blog MBA Voices Filter Results Arrow Down Arrow Up Read posts from Author Alumni Author Career and Professional Development Staff Author HBS Community Author HBS Faculty Author MBA Admissions Author MBA Students Topics Topics 1st Year (RC) 2+2 Program 2nd Year... View Details

2019
Working Paper

Second Chance: Life with Less Student Debt

By: Marco Di Maggio, Ankit Kalda and Vincent Yao

Rising student debt is considered one of the creeping threats of our time. This paper examines the effect of student debt relief on individual credit and labor market outcomes. We exploit the plausibly random debt discharge due to the inability of National Collegiate,... View Details

Keywords: Student Debt; Private Student Loans; Legal Settlement; Mobility; Debt Collection; Debt Relief; Borrowing and Debt; Personal Finance; Outcome or Result; United States

SSRN

Research Summary

Supply Chain Coordination for Products with Uncertain Demand

By: Ananth Raman

Ananth Raman has been investigating supply chain coordination for products with uncertain demand in industries as diverse as apparel, power tools, computers, and footwear. Most recently he has been exploring the role of intermediaries, particularly in supply chains... View Details

Article

Formal Measures in Informal Management: Can a Balanced Scorecard Change a Culture?

By: Robert Gibbons and Robert S. Kaplan

Agency theorists, historically, have analyzed what kinds of performance measures should be used in formal incentive contracts. For example, after Kaplan-Norton proposed a balanced scorecard of both financial and non-financial measures, some envisioned its role only in... View Details

Keywords: Relational Contracts; Performance Measurement; Informal Management; Balanced Scorecard; Economics; Mathematical Methods

July 28, 2020
Article

Economic Vulnerability of Households with Essential Workers

By: Grace McCormack, Christopher Avery, Ariella Kahn-Lang Spitzer and Amitabh Chandra

The label of “essential worker” reflects society’s needs but does not mean that society has compensated those workers for additional risks incurred on the job during the current pandemic. When an essential worker contracts severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus... View Details

Keywords: Essential Workers; Health Pandemics; Household; Financial Condition; United States

01 Dec 2005
News

One-on-One with Peter Cuneo

a freelance basis. Are the declining numbers of movie-goers a concern? No, action films loaded with special effects will continue to be popular because people want to see them on the big screen. No matter how home theater systems evolve,... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; comic books; Publishing Industries (except Internet); Information; Management of Companies and Enterprises; Management

Forthcoming
Article

Automatic Enrollment with a 12% Default Contribution Rate

By: John Beshears, Ruofei Guo, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian and James J. Choi

We study a retirement savings plan with a default contribution rate of 12% of income, which is much higher than previously studied defaults. Twenty-five percent of employees had not opted out of this default 12 months after hire; a literature review finds that the... View Details

Keywords: Retirement Savings; Defined Contribution Retirement Plan; Automatic Enrollment; Retirement; Saving; Income; Decision Choices and Conditions

Forthcoming
Article

Outcome-Driven Dynamic Refugee Assignment with Allocation Balancing

By: Kirk Bansak and Elisabeth Paulson

This study proposes two new dynamic assignment algorithms to match refugees and asylum seekers to geographic localities within a host country. The first, currently implemented in a multi-year pilot in Switzerland, seeks to maximize the average predicted employment... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Refugees; Geographic Location; Employment

November 2010
Case

Esquel Group: Building a Sustainable Partnership with Cotton Farmers in Xinjiang (A)

By: James K. Sebenius and Jason Cheng Qian

Esquel Group, leading manufacturer of quality shirts, sought to negotiate long-term partnerships with often-exploited farmers in Xinjiang (western China) to procure a superior cotton variety. Seeking to secure a large supply of specialty cotton in an ethical and... View Details

Keywords: Contracts; Agreements and Arrangements; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Leasing; Business and Community Relations; Business and Government Relations; Partners and Partnerships; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Hong Kong; Xinjiang Uygur Zizhiqu

Educators