Publications

October 1997
Article

Does Competition Kill Corruption?

By: Christopher Bliss and Rafael Di Tella

Corrupt agents (officials or gangsters) exact money from firms. Corruption affects the number of firms in a free-entry equilibrium. The degree of deep competition in the economy increases with lower overhead costs relative to profits and with a tendency toward similar... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Crime and Corruption

18 Sep 2018
Working Paper Summaries

After the Carnival: Key Factors to Enhance Olympic Legacy and Prevent Olympic Sites from Becoming White Elephants

Keywords: by Isao Okada and Stephen A. Greyser; Sports

11 Sep 2017
Video

Are Carbon Tariffs Protectionism or Climate Policy?

July 2025
Article

Reputation Burning: Analyzing the Impact of Brand Sponsorship on Social Influencers

By: Mengjie Cheng and Shunyuan Zhang

The growth of the influencer marketing industry warrants an empirical examination of the effect of posting sponsored videos on influencers' reputations. We collected a novel dataset of user-generated YouTube videos created by prominent English-speaking influencers in... View Details

Keywords: Reputation; Mathematical Methods; Marketing Reference Programs; Social Media; Brands and Branding

Forthcoming
Book

Innovating in Healthcare: Creating Breakthrough Tech, Services, Drugs, Products, and Business Models

By: Regina E. Herzlinger

Innovating in Healthcare offers effective approaches for designing, reworking, and implementing innovative healthcare services, products, and business models. It will help anyone working in healthcare service or product development, from hospitals to startups,... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Service Delivery; Product Development; Business Model; Innovation and Invention; Health Industry

January 2016
Article

Making Do with Less: Working Harder During Recessions

By: Edward P. Lazear, Kathryn L. Shaw and Christopher Stanton

Why did productivity rise during recent recessions? One possibility is that average worker quality increased. A second is that each incumbent worker produced more. The second effect is termed "making do with less." Using data from 2006 to 2010 on individual worker... View Details

Keywords: Performance Productivity; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation

02 Mar 2007
What Do You Think?

What Is the Government’s Role in US Health Care?

Summing Up This month's exchange of ideas regarding U.S. healthcare reform ranged far and wide. Some of us were interested primarily in the issue of cost escalation and how to contain it. Others addressed issues of quality. For still... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett; Health

22 Jul 2014
First Look

First Look: July 22

based on the costs of using efficient processes and contingent on achieving superior outcomes. The end result will be a more effective and more productive health care sector. The paper concludes with... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

January 2010
Case

DR Corporation

By: Roy D. Shapiro

DR Corporation is a manufacturer of major appliances. The traffic manager is facing a decision of selecting a carrier for the inbound movement of motors. The primary case decisions are 1) what factors are critical to the decision; 2) how to calculate the tradeoffs... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Decision Choices and Conditions; Managerial Roles; Logistics; Supply Chain Management; Truck Transportation; Consumer Products Industry

Educators

Article

Market Heterogeneity and Local Capacity Decisions in Services

By: Dennis Campbell and Frances X. Frei

We empirically document factors that influence how local operating managers use discretion to balance the tradeoff between service capacity costs and customer sensitivity to service time. Our findings, using data from one of the largest financial services providers in... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Cost; Standards; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Performance Capacity; Performance Productivity; Financial Services Industry; United States

Article

Counterfactual Explanations Can Be Manipulated

By: Dylan Slack, Sophie Hilgard, Himabindu Lakkaraju and Sameer Singh

Counterfactual explanations are useful for both generating recourse and auditing fairness between groups. We seek to understand whether adversaries can manipulate counterfactual explanations in an algorithmic recourse setting: if counterfactual explanations indicate... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning Models; Counterfactual Explanations

10 Dec 2014
Research & Ideas

Minimum Wage Debate Is Really About Social Values

several decades—and it's hard to argue that a mild increase in a low minimum wage would cause a lot of unemployment. Nevertheless, a minimum wage increase is controversial. Why is that? Because the conversation is really about much more than a technical debate on the... View Details

Keywords: by April White; Retail; Manufacturing

2024
Working Paper

Open Source Software Policy in Industry Equilibrium

Open source software (OSS) is a form of public knowledge widely provided and relied on by the private sector. To study the effects of growing government involvement in this critical public good, I build a new empirical model where high-tech firms choose software inputs... View Details

01 Sep 2017
News

States Focus On Middle-Skills Jobs Gap

March 2021
Article

Opting-in to Prosocial Incentives

By: Daniel Schwartz, Elizabeth A. Keenan, Alex Imas and Ayelet Gneezy

The design of effective incentive schemes that are both successful in motivating employees and keeping down costs is of critical importance. Research has demonstrated that prosocial incentives, where individuals’ effort benefits a charitable organization, can sometimes... View Details

Keywords: Incentives; Prosocial Behavior; Behavioral Economics; Field Experiments; Recycling; Prosocial Motivation; Decision Making; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior

Disease management programs aim to reduce cost by improving the quality of care for chronic diseases. Evidence of their effectiveness is mixed. Reducing health care spending sufficiently to cover program costs has proved particularly challenging. This study uses a... View Details

January 2000 (Revised October 2002)
Case

Cambridge Hospital Community Health Network - The Primary Care Unit

By: V.G. Narayanan, Lisa Brem and Ryan Moore

The Cambridge Hospital Community Health Network needed to gain a better understanding of its unit-of-service costs, which had been rising at a rate of 10% per year. The network's step-down costing system gave only aggregate costing information, and there was some... View Details

Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management; Health Care and Treatment; Cost Accounting; Cost; Network Effects; Health Industry; Service Industry; Massachusetts

Educators

March 2000
Case

Lockheed Martin: The Employer of Choice Mission

By: Clayton M. Christensen and Michael D Overdorf

A Lockheed Martin manager is faced with the decision of where to focus the organization's resources in order to develop a world-class employee development system. The manager's recommendation will serve as the basis for the company's goal of becoming an Employer of... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Culture; Resource Allocation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Employees; Human Resources; Leadership Development; Cost Management; Organizational Design; Aerospace Industry

Educators