Richard H.K. Vietor

Richard H.K. Vietor

Paul Whiton Cherington Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, Emeritus

Paul Whiton Cherington Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, Emeritus

+1 (617) 495-6460
 
Richard H.K. Vietor
Contact Information
(617) 495-6460
Featured Work Publications Research Summary Awards & Honors
Received the 1981 Newcomen Award in Business History.
Received the 1978 Harvard-Newcomen Postdoctoral Research Fellowship.
Received the National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship in 1977.

Professor Vietor is Baker Foundation Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. He teaches courses on the international political economy. Before coming to the Business School in 1978, Professor Vietor held faculty appointments at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the University of Missouri at Columbia. He received a B.A. in economics from Union College (1967), an M.A. in history from Hofstra University (1971), and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Pittsburgh (1975). He has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship, the Harvard-Newcomen Postdoctoral Fellowship in Business History, and the Newcomen Award in Business History.

Professor Vietor's research on business and government policy has been published in numerous journals and books. His books include Energy Policy in America Since 1945 (1984), Strategic Management in the Regulated Environment (1989), Contrived Competition: Regulation and Deregulation in America (1994), Business Management and the Natural Environment (1996), Globalization and Growth: Case Studies in National Economic Strategies (2004), Environmental Protection and the Social Responsibility of Firms (ed. with Bruce Hay and Robert Stavins; 2007), How Countries Compete: Strategy, Structure, and Government in the Global Economy (2007), and The Class Moves the World: How Business Elites Decipher the World Economy (available in Japanese only, 2010).

For his courses in business-government relations and environmental management, Professor Vietor has published more than one hundred and eighty case studies on energy policy, the regulation of natural gas, nuclear power and hazardous wastes; on strategy and deregulation in airlines, railroads, telecommunications, and financial services; and on the national development strategies of a dozen countries. He has been a consultant to the Energy Research and Development Administration, serves on the Advisory Boards of IPADE (in Mexico), IESE (in Spain), and INALDE (in Colombia), and IEEM (Uruguay), and is a panel member of the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia International Advisory Panel, the Advisory Council of the Australia China Business Council, and the Clingendael Institute in the Netherlands. He has consulted to the Prime Minister of Malaysia, and currently advised several firms.

Professor Vietor and his wife Cindy have three adult children -- Nicholas, Christopher, and Meredith – and six grandchildren.

Featured Work
How Countries Compete: Strategy, Structure, and Government in the Global Economy
As the world globalizes, countries compete for the markets, technologies, and skills needed to raise their standards of living. These strategies can make--or break--the government's efforts to drive and sustain growth. In How Countries Compete, Richard Vietor sheds light on ways in which governments can best set direction and provide a healthy climate for a nation's economic development and profitable private enterprise. Drawing on history, economic analysis, and interviews with executives and officials around the globe, Vietor provides concentrated examinations of different approaches to government facilitation of development. Individual chapters focus on the unique social, economic, cultural, and historical forces that shape governments' approach to economic growth. Countries discussed include: China, India, Japan, Singapore, the United States, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. Vietor challenges the widespread notion that, in market-driven economies such as the United States, a strong government can only hinder business success. A provocative resource, How Countries Compete offers potent insights into how the business environment has evolved in crucial nations--and what its trajectory might look like in the future.
Books
Journal Articles
Book Chapters
  • Vietor, R. H.K. "Government Regulation of Business." In Cambridge Economic History of the United States. 3 vols. Edited by S. L. Engerman and R. E. Gallman. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. View Details
  • Reinhardt, F. L., Fiona Murray, and Richard Vietor. "Foreign Firms in the Chinese Power Sector: Economic and Environmental Impacts." In Energizing China: Reconciling Environmental Protection and Economic Growth, edited by M. McElroy, C. Nielsen, and P. Lydon. Cambridge: Harvard University, Committee on Environment, 1998. View Details
  • Vietor, R. H.K. "Economic Performance." In Encyclopedia of the United States in the Twentieth Century. Edited by S. I. Kutler. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1996. View Details
  • Vietor, R. H.K. "Bank of America and Deregulation: The Great Turnaround." In Financial Services: Perspectives and Challenges, edited by Samuel L. Hayes III. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1993. View Details
  • Vietor, R. H.K., and D. B. Yoffie. "Telecommunications: Deregulation and Globalization." In Beyond Free Trade: Firms, Governments, and Global Competition, edited by D. B. Yoffie. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1993. View Details
  • Vietor, R. H.K. "The Hubris of Regulated Competition in Airlines." In Economic Regulation: Theory and History, edited by J. High. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1992. View Details
  • Vietor, R. H.K. "Regulation and Competition in America, 1920s-80s." In Governments, Industries and Markets: Aspects of Government-Industry Relations in Great Britain, Japan, West Germany and the United States of America since 1945, edited by M. Chick. Aldershot: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1990. View Details
Cases and Teaching Materials
Presentations
  • Vietor, R. H.K. "Regulation American Style, 1933-89." Paper presented at the International Conference on Business History, January 01, 1996. View Details
Other Publications and Materials
  • Vietor, Richard H. K., Daniel Yergin, and Peter C. Evans. "Fettered Flight: Globalization and the Airline Industry." Cambridge, MA, November 2000. View Details
Research Summary
Macroeconomic management
Richard H. K. Vietor has been studying how national governments foster economic development and compete in a globalized economy. He has been researching these activities in ten countries, publishing the results first in 2007, in a book entitled How Countries Compete, and forthcoming in 2010, in Japanese, a shorter version on the world economy..
Globalization of Wind Power
Professor Vietor has been working to develop teaching materials on energy - especially renewable energy.  Towards this end, he has written cases on Cape Wind, Suzlon, Airtricity's Supergrid, and Sun Tech.  He is currently expanding this research into coal, geothermal power and transportation. 
Awards & Honors
Received the 1981 Newcomen Award in Business History.
Received the 1978 Harvard-Newcomen Postdoctoral Research Fellowship.
Received the National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship in 1977.
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