Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,511)
- Faculty Publications (346)
- October 2015 (Revised July 2017)
- Case
OMV Petrom: Investment as Partnership—When It Takes Three to Tango
By: Dante Roscini, Emer Maloney and Daniela Beyersdorfer
Petrom was privatized by the Romanian state in 2004 and acquired by Austrian oil company OMV, with the state retaining a 20.6% stake in the company. The situation was particularly challenging for the foreign investor since the sector in which the company operated was... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Self-Interest: The Economist's Straitjacket
By: Robert Simons
This paper examines contemporary economic theories that focus on the design and management of business organizations. In the first part of the paper, a taxonomy is presented that describes the different types of economists interested in this subject—market economists,... View Details
Keywords: Self-interest; Economist; Moral Philosophers; Regulation; Capture; Organization Design; Economy Theory; Organization Theory; Management Theory; Commitment; Controls; Governance; Customers; Conflict of Interests; Business or Company Management; Competition; Organizational Design; Business Education; Agency Theory; Economics; Theory; Boundaries
- September 2015
- Article
Codes in Context: How States, Markets, and Civil Society Shape Adherence to Global Labor Standards
By: Michael W. Toffel, Jodi L. Short and Melissa Ouellet
Transnational business regulation is increasingly implemented through private voluntary programs—like certification regimes and codes of conduct—that diffuse global standards. But little is known about the conditions under which companies adhere to these standards. We... View Details
- August 2015 (Revised January 2017)
- Background Note
Evolving Trends in Global Trade
By: Dante Roscini and Annelena Lobb
The note, while not intended to be historically comprehensive, explores the regulation of international trade from the period after World War II to developments in 2010, focusing on shifts in trade theory and policy as well as economic benefits and disadvantages... View Details
- August 2015 (Revised October 2017)
- Case
Turnaround at Norsk Gjenvinning (A)
By: George Serafeim
Erik Osmundsen, CEO of Norsk Gjenvinning (NG), had initiated a program to strenghten corporate governance, eliminate corruption and improve compliance, and as a result the company had experienced a turnover of almost half of its top 70 line managers and strained... View Details
Keywords: Change Leadership; Governance; Compliance; Waste Management; Environmental Impact; Social Responsibility; Industry Regulation; Regulatory Enforcement; Turnaround; Turn Around Management; Corruption; Leading Change; Change Management; Crime and Corruption; Governance Compliance; Wastes and Waste Processing; Industrial Products Industry; Norway; Scandinavia; Europe
- 2015
- Article
Regulator Leniency and Mispricing in Beneficent Nonprofits
By: Jonas Heese, Ranjani Krishnan and Frank Moers
We posit that nonprofits that provide a greater supply of unprofitable services (beneficent nonprofits) face lenient regulatory enforcement for mispricing in price-regulated markets. Consequently, beneficent nonprofits exploit such regulatory leniency and exhibit... View Details
- March 2015
- Case
Statoil: Transparency on Payments to Governments
By: George Serafeim
The Statoil case describes the challenge of increasing transparency, in extractive industries, around host county government payments. The case describes Statoil's reasoning behind voluntarily disclosing host country government payments, and the events that led to this... View Details
Keywords: Corruption; Disclosure; Disclosure Strategy; Regulation; Industry Self-regulation; Corporate Governance; Corporate Accountability; Bribery; Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility; Government Legislation; Cost vs Benefits; Corporate Disclosure; Mining; Mining Industry; United States
- March 2015 (Revised November 2017)
- Case
Bonitas
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Natalie Kindred
Bonitas, a South African medical scheme (i.e., health insurer), must navigate highly restrictive regulations that make it difficult for Bonitas to innovate, grow, and compete with market leader Discovery as well as providers of alternative insurance products. Bonitas... View Details
- March 2015 (Revised March 2016)
- Background Note
Note: Industry Self-Regulation: Sustaining the Commons in the 21st Century?
By: Rebecca Henderson, Amram Migdal and Tony He
Industry self-regulation has, in general, a lousy track record. Many studies have shown that it is often ineffective unless backed by the power of the state, and that in some cases it serves rather to forestall government intervention or to reduce competition than as... View Details
- January 2015
- Article
Competing with Privacy
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Andres Hervas-Drane
We analyze the implications of consumer privacy for competition in the marketplace. We consider a market where firms set prices and disclosure levels for consumer information, and consumers observe both before deciding which firm to patronize and how much information... View Details
- October 2014
- Case
CreditEase: Providing Credit and Financial Services for China's Underclass
By: Lena G. Goldberg, Paul Healy and Nancy Hua Dai
In 2013 Ning Tang, who in 2006 founded CreditEase as a broker of P2P loans to unbanked individuals and small businesses in China, confronts the challenges of rapid growth and expansion in a changing regulatory environment. CreditEase needs to develop technology to... View Details
Keywords: P2P Lending; HNW Products And Services; Business Growth; Business Start-ups; Government Regulation; Change Management; Credit; Microcredit; Banking; Innovation And Management; Developing Countries And Economies; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Social Entrepreneurship; Law; Financing and Loans; Change; China
- June 2014
- Case
The Special Master for TARP Executive Compensation
By: Brian Hall, Aaron Chadbourne, Vibha Kagzi and Caren Kelleher
This case is about the response of the US government to the excessive compensation of executives following the market collapse of 2008. In particular, the case focuses on the special committee that was formed to oversee and regulate any financial companies that had... View Details
- June 2014
- Article
Frictions in Shadow Banking: Evidence from the Lending Behavior of Money Market Funds
By: Sergey Chernenko and Adi Sunderam
We document the consequences of money market fund risk taking during the European sovereign debt crisis. Using a novel data set of security-level holdings of prime money market funds, we show that funds with large exposures to risky Eurozone banks suffered significant... View Details
- March 2014
- Teaching Note
E-Cigarettes: Marketing Versus Public Health
By: John A. Quelch
Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) were heralded by some as a healthcare game changer, enabling smokers to switch to a new product which carried lower risk of cancer. However, there were concerns about the public health risk of e-cigarettes, particularly the chance... View Details
- Article
Anger and Regulation
By: Rafael Di Tella and Juan Dubra
We study a model in which agents experience anger when they see a firm that has displayed insufficient concern for the welfare of its clients (i.e., altruism) making high profits. Regulation can increase welfare, for example, through fines (even with no changes in... View Details
- Forthcoming
- Chapter
Oil, Macroeconomic Volatility and Crime in the Determination of Beliefs in Venezuela
By: Rafael Di Tella, Javier Donna and Robert MacCulloch
Book Abstract: At the beginning of the twentieth century Venezuela had one of the poorest economies in Latin America, but by 1970 it had become the richest country in the region and one of the twenty richest countries in the world, ahead of countries such as Greece,... View Details
- December 2013
- Case
Yara International
By: Forest Reinhardt and James Weber
This case examines world fertilizer markets from the perspective of a large Norwegian producer. The global fertilizer industry is critical to food production and to food security, and hence is the object of numerous forms of government intervention. The case analyzes... View Details
- Winter 2013
- Article
Fear of Rejection? Tiered Certification and Transparency
By: Emmanuel Farhi, Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole
The sub-prime crisis has shone a harsh spotlight on the practices of securities underwriters, which provided too many complex securities that proved to ultimately have little value. This uproar calls attention to the fact that the literature on intermediaries has... View Details
- November 2013 (Revised June 2014)
- Case
E-Cigarettes: Marketing Versus Public Health
By: John A. Quelch and Margaret L. Rodriguez
Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) were heralded by some as a healthcare game changer, enabling smokers to switch to a new product which carried lower risk of cancer. However, there were concerns about the public health risk of e-cigarettes, particularly the chance... View Details
- Winter 2013
- Article
Corporate Governance Reform and Executive Incentives: Implications for Investments and Risk-Taking
By: Daniel Cohen, Aiyesha Dey and Thomas Lys
We investigate the mechanism through which the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) was associated with changes in corporate investment strategies. We document that the passage of the governance regulations in SOX was followed by a significant decline in pay‐performance... View Details