Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,686)
- Faculty Publications (315)
- September 2011
- Article
The Labor Illusion: How Operational Transparency Increases Perceived Value
By: Ryan W. Buell and Michael I. Norton
A ubiquitous feature of even the fastest self-service technology transactions is the wait. Conventional wisdom and operations theory suggests that the longer people wait, the less satisfied they become; we demonstrate that due to what we term the labor illusion, when... View Details
- July 2011 (Revised June 2013)
- Case
Foxconn Technology Group (A)
By: Robert G. Eccles, George Serafeim and Beiting Cheng
In 2010, Foxconn Technology Group, the largest and fastest growing multinational company in the Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS) industry, came under public scrutiny after a string of employee suicides reached the international press. Although the company was... View Details
Keywords: Multinational; Labor Market; Electronic Manufacturing Services; Health ＆ Wellness; Robots; Automation; Social Responsibility; Employee Relationship Management; Leadership; Stocks; Social Issues; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Capital Markets; Supply Chain Management; Safety; Environmental Accounting; Human Capital; Human Resources; Electronics Industry; Manufacturing Industry; China
- March 2011 (Revised March 2012)
- Case
Fraunhofer: Innovation in Germany
By: Diego A. Comin, J. Gunnar Trumbull and Kerry Yang
Fraunhofer is one of the largest applied research organizations in the world. With 17,000 employees and a 1.6 billion euros budget, Fraunhofer has 60 institutes in Germany that cover most fields of science. The case examines the consequences that Fraunhofer has for the... View Details
- Article
Economic Impacts of Immigration: A Survey
By: Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr
This paper surveys recent empirical studies on the economic impacts of immigration. The survey first examines the magnitude of immigration as an economic phenomenon in various host countries. The second part deals with the assimilation of immigrant workers into... View Details
- 2011
- Working Paper
The 'IKEA Effect': When Labor Leads to Love
By: Michael I. Norton, Daniel Mochon and Dan Ariely
In a series of studies in which consumers assembled IKEA boxes, folded origami, and built sets of Legos, we demonstrate and investigate the boundary conditions for what we term the "IKEA effect&"—the increase in valuation of self-made products. Participants saw their... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Agglomerative Forces and Cluster Shapes
By: William R. Kerr and Scott Duke Kominers
We model spatial clusters of similar firms. Our model highlights how agglomerative forces lead to localized, individual connections among firms, while interaction costs generate a defined distance over which attraction forces operate. Overlapping firm interactions... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Marketplace Institutions Related to the Timing of Transactions
By: Alvin E. Roth
This paper describes the unraveling of transaction dates in several markets, including the labor markets for new lawyers hired by large law firms and for gastroenterology fellows, and the market for post-season college football bowls. Together these will illustrate... View Details
- June 2010
- Article
What Causes Industry Agglomeration? Evidence from Coagglomeration Patterns
By: Glenn Ellison, Edward Glaeser and William R. Kerr
Why do firms cluster near one another? We test Marshall's theories of industrial agglomeration by examining which industries locate near one another, or coagglomerate. We construct pairwise coagglomeration indices for US manufacturing industries from the Economic... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Unraveling Results from Comparable Demand and Supply: An Experimental Investigation
By: Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth and M. Utku Unver
Markets sometimes unravel, with offers becoming inefficiently early. Often this is attributed to competition arising from an imbalance of demand and supply, typically excess demand for workers. However this presents a puzzle, since unraveling can only occur when firms... View Details
- March 2010 (Revised September 2010)
- Case
TeamLease: Putting India to Work (Il) Legally
By: Tarun Khanna and Anjali Raina
This case focuses on the growth dilemmas facing Manish Sabharwal, co-founder, TeamLease Services Pvt. Ltd. TeamLease is a human resource outsourcing and temp staffing company located in India, which has grown rapidly from 2002 to 2009. Set in the context of the highly... View Details
- February 2010 (Revised August 2010)
- Case
Sheikh Mohammed and the Making of 'Dubai, Inc.'
By: Anthony Mayo, Nitin Nohria, Umaimah Mendhro and Johnathan Cromwell
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has converted Dubai from a sleepy little coastal village into a world-class city, famous for its ambition, drive, and economic promise. He is the founder, part-owner, and visionary behind companies such as Emirates Airlines, a... View Details
- January 2010
- Article
Clusters of Entrepreneurship
By: Edward L. Glaeser, William R. Kerr and Giacomo A.M. Ponzetto
Employment growth is strongly predicted by smaller average establishment size, both across cities and across industries within cities, but there is little consensus on why this relationship exists. Traditional economic explanations emphasize factors that reduce entry... View Details
- 2010
- Chapter
Deferred Acceptance Algorithms: History, Theory, Practice
By: Alvin E. Roth
The deferred acceptance algorithm proposed by Gale and Shapley (1962) has had a profound influence on market design, both directly, by being adapted into practical matching mechanisms, and indirectly, by raising new theoretical questions. Deferred acceptance algorithms... View Details
- Article
Recent Advances in the Empirics of Organizational Economics
By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
We present a survey of recent contributions in empirical organizational economics, focusing on management practices and decentralization. Productivity dispersion between firms and countries has motivated the improved measurement of firm organization across industries... View Details
Keywords: Economics; Management Practices and Processes; Performance Productivity; Geographic Location; Motivation and Incentives; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Competition; Human Capital; Markets; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Multinational Firms and Management; India; Brazil; United States
- 2009
- Working Paper
Labor Regulations and European Private Equity
By: Ant Bozkaya and William R. Kerr
European nations substitute between employment protection regulations and labor market expenditures (e.g., unemployment insurance benefits) for providing worker insurance. Employment regulations more directly tax firms making frequent labor adjustments than other labor... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Labor Regulations and European Private Equity
By: Ant Bozkaya and William R. Kerr
European nations substitute between employment protection regulations and labor market expenditures (e.g., unemployment insurance benefits) for providing worker insurance. Employment regulations more directly tax firms making frequent labor adjustments than other labor... View Details
- 2009
- Chapter
The Effects of a Central Clearinghouse on Job Placement, Wages, and Hiring Practices
By: Muriel Niederle and Alvin E. Roth
New gastroenterologists participated in a labor market clearinghouse (a "match") from 1986 through the late 1990s, after which the match was abandoned. This provides an opportunity to study the effects of a match by observing the differences in the outcomes and... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Breakthrough Inventions and Migrating Clusters of Innovation
By: William R. Kerr
We investigate the speed at which clusters of invention for a technology migrate spatially following breakthrough inventions. We identify breakthrough inventions as the top one percent of US inventions for a technology during 1975-1984 in terms of subsequent citations.... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Clusters of Entrepreneurship
By: Edward L. Glaeser, William R. Kerr and Giacomo A.M. Ponzetto
Employment growth is strongly predicted by smaller average establishment size, both across cities and across industries within cities, but there is little consensus on why this relationship exists. Traditional economic explanations emphasize factors that reduce entry... View Details
- Article
Local Industrial Conditions and Entrepreneurship: How Much of the Spatial Distribution Can We Explain?
By: Edward L. Glaeser and William R. Kerr
Why are some places more entrepreneurial than others? We use Census Bureau data to study local determinants of manufacturing startups across cities and industries. Demographics have limited explanatory power. Overall levels of local customers and suppliers are only... View Details