Faculty & Research
Faculty & Research
Harvard Business School faculty members have made notable contributions to the history
of business. Faculty research is diverse, based in several of the School’s units,
and reflects disciplinary backgrounds in economics, history, sociology, strategy,
and political science.
11
Results
- 2024
- Working Paper
Health, Human Capital Development and the Longevity of Japanese Elites Since 710
By: Tom Nicholas and Hiroshi Shimizu
| We examine the lifespan of over 40,000 elites in Japan born between 710 and 1912, including samurai warriors, feudal lords, business, political, cultural, and religious leaders at the apex of the social hierarchy. Japanese elites experienced increases in lifespan about... |
- August 2022
- Case
Air Wars: Deregulating the U.S. Airline Industry
By: Tom Nicholas and James Weber
| In the early decades of the twentieth century, the U.S. government assisted in the development of an airline industry by subsidizing the delivery of mail and allowing mail carriers to also fly passengers. Because the government awarded mail routes to the lowest... |
- July 2022 (Revised February 2025)
- Case
A Soul and a Service: North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance
By: Tom Nicholas and John Masko
| The North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association (the Mutual) was founded in 1898 as a for-profit entity selling life insurance catering to the Black community. The Mutual was entering a field crowded with established White-owned competitors that largely refused to... |
- February 2021 (Revised June 2021)
- Case
Barbarians at the Gate or Turnaround Gurus? Private Equity and the Rise of the LBO
By: Tom Nicholas and John Masko
| During the 1980s, leveraged buyouts (LBOs) and the private equity (PE) firms responsible for carrying them out revolutionized both investment and management in the U.S. Between 1980 and 1989, buyout activity in the U.S. surged from $1 billion per year to $60 billion.... |
- October 2020 (Revised April 2022)
- Case
When Institutions Fail: HIV/AIDS in the 1980s
By: Tom Nicholas and Christian Godwin
| During the early 1980s, young gay men in urban centers such as San Francisco and New York City began contracting a mysterious illness that would come to be known as HIV/AIDS. A diagnosis meant almost certain death, with a less than 1% survival rate. Conflicting... |
- January 2020
- Case
The Origins of Bell Labs
By: Tom Nicholas and John Masko
| In 1947, scientists at Bell Labs invented the transistor—a tiny signal amplifier that would go on to become the fundamental building block of the digital age. But, confounding most traditional economic assumptions, it was not a vigorous startup that made this momentous... |
- 17 Aug 2019
- News
Two worthy books trace the history of tech through Silicon Valley, leaving Seattle’s story still to be told
Re: Tom Nicholas
| Tom Nicholas, a professor at Harvard Business School, begins the story in the 1800s when risky whaling expeditions to the North Pacific from New England seaports were financed by profit-sharing agreements between the sea captain, an “agent” and investors which had... |
- 2019
- Annual Review of Economics
History, Micro Data, and Endogenous Growth
By: Ufuk Akcigit and Tom Nicholas
| The study of economic growth is concerned with long-run changes, and therefore, historical data should be especially influential in informing the development of new theories. In this review, we draw on the recent literature to highlight areas in which study of history... |
- 2019
- Book
VC: An American History
By: Tom Nicholas
| An exploration of venture financing in America, from its origins in the whaling industry to the rise of Silicon Valley, that shows how venture capital (VC) created an epicenter for the development of high-tech innovation. The VC industry arose from the United States’... |
- January 2019 (Revised February 2020)
- Case
Jay Gould, 'The Most Hated Man in America'
By: Tom Nicholas, John Masko and Matthew G. Preble
| Railroad magnate Jay Gould, a controversial figure in the history of U.S. capitalism, was a disruptive influence on an industry that had previously relied on formal and informal agreements to move traffic long distances across lines operated by different companies.... |
- 2018
- Working Paper
Taxation and Innovation in the 20th Century
By: Ufuk Akcigit, John Grigsby, Tom Nicholas and Stefanie Stantcheva
| This paper studies the effect of corporate and personal taxes on innovation in the United States over the 20th century. We use three new datasets: a panel of the universe of inventors who patent since 1920; a dataset of the employment, location, and patents of firms... |