Publications

Article

Analyzing Scrip Systems

By: Kris Johnson, David Simchi-Levi and Peng Sun

Scrip systems provide a nonmonetary trade economy for exchange of resources. We model a scrip system as a stochastic game and study system design issues on selection rules to match potential trade partners over time. We show the optimality of one particular rule in... View Details

Keywords: ＂Repeated Games＂; Stochastic Trust Game; Dynamic Program; P2P Lending; Scrip Systems; Artificial Currency; Non-monetary Trade Economies; Marketplace Matching; Currency; Operations; Game Theory

April 6, 2023
Article

A New NFT Launch Strategy: The Wave Mint

By: Scott Duke Kominers and 1337 Skulls Sers

In an NFT project, the mint—the process by which tokens are initially allocated—largely determines who your community is and how they and the broader market view the project going forward. In this piece, we review a new minting strategy recently introduced by 1337... View Details

Keywords: NFTs; Mechanism Design; Sales Management; Sales Model; Crypto Economy; Non-fungible Tokens; Networks; Product Launch; Auctions; Market Design

June 2013 (Revised November 2016)
Case

Goldfinger: Charles W. Engelhard Jr. and Apartheid-era South Africa

By: Geoffrey Jones and Elliot R. Benton

This case considers the strategies of Charles W. Engelhard, an American mining magnate who made large investments in apartheid-era South Africa. Engelhard was widely believed to have been the model for the James Bond villan Auric Goldfinger. During the 1950s and 1960s... View Details

Keywords: Political Economy; Business History; FDI; Corporate Social Responsibility And Impact; South Africa; Mining; Ethics; Globalization; Government and Politics; History; Mining Industry; Africa; South Africa

September 2023
Case

Diamond Standard

By: Lauren H. Cohen, Zhaoheng Gong and Grace Headinger

Cormac Kinney, Founder and CEO of Diamond Standard, was on a mission to transform the U.S. diamond market through unlocking the precious gems as market-traded assets. As a serial FinTech entrepreneur, he hoped to add an additional service to his vault: Carats. The... View Details

July 2021
Article

Outsourcing Tasks Online: Matching Supply and Demand on Peer-to-Peer Internet Platforms

By: Zoë Cullen and Chiara Farronato

We study the growth of online peer-to-peer markets. Using data from TaskRabbit, an expanding marketplace for domestic tasks at the time of our study, we show that growth varies considerably across cities. To disentangle the potential drivers of growth, we look... View Details

Keywords: Two-sided Market; Two-sided Platforms; Peer-to-peer Markets; Platform Strategy; Sharing Economy; Platform Growth; Internet and the Web; Digital Platforms; Strategy; Market Design; Network Effects

August 2022
Article

What Makes a Good Image? Airbnb Demand Analytics Leveraging Interpretable Image Features

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Dokyun Lee, Param Vir Singh and Kannan Srinivasan

We study how Airbnb property demand changed after the acquisition of verified images (taken by Airbnb’s photographers) and explore what makes a good image for an Airbnb property. Using deep learning and difference-in-difference analyses on an Airbnb panel dataset... View Details

Keywords: Sharing Economy; Airbnb; Property Demand; Computer Vision; Deep Learning; Image Feature Extraction; Content Engineering; Property; Marketing; Demand and Consumers

SSRN

February 2005 (Revised June 2007)
Case

Unilever in India: Hindustan Lever's Project Shakti--Marketing FMCG to the Rural Consumer

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Rohithari Rajan

With liberalization of India's economy and the opening up of markets to foreign multinationals such as Procter & Gamble, the Indian subsidiary of Unilever--Hindustan Lever Ltd. (HLL)--was under pressure to grow revenues and profits. HLL had a long and stellar record of... View Details

Keywords: Economy; Market Entry and Exit; Business Subsidiaries; Revenue; Profit; Market Participation; Programs; Rural Scope; Poverty; Multinational Firms and Management; Consumer Products Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; India

May 2012 (Revised September 2012)
Case

HTC Corp. in 2012

By: David B. Yoffie, Juan Alcacer and Renee Kim

After 15 years of remarkable achievements, Taiwan-based HTC Corp. faced difficult times by 2012. CEO Peter Chou, who drove HTC's transformation from an unknown manufacturer of PDAs for other companies to a well-known global player in smartphones, faced an uncertain and... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility; Telecommunications; Brand Management; Economies Of Scale And Scope; Market Positioning; Intellectual Property Management; Technological Innovation; Information Infrastructure; Competitive Strategy; Innovation and Invention; Patents; Product Positioning; Telecommunications Industry; Taiwan

Spring 2012
Article

The Roadmap for Private Equity, Venture Capital and Hedge Funds in Mexico: Alternative Assets as an Accelerator of Credit to Firms in Emerging Markets

By: Roberto Charvel

This article shows how alternative assets could be a good way for banks to start providing more loans to firms in emerging markets and finance growth, while giving local institutional investors access to new asset types. View Details

October 2016
Supplement

Airbnb in Amsterdam (B)

By: Mitchell Weiss, Emer Moloney and Vincent Dessain

In December 2014, Amsterdam and Airbnb announced an MOU to promote responsible home sharing and to simplify the payment of tourist tax for hosts in the city. It was the most comprehensive agreement that Airbnb had with any city in the world. Its final provision read,... 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

SSRN

2013
Working Paper

These Are the Good Old Days: Foreign Entry and the Mexican Banking System

By: Stephen Haber and Aldo Musacchio

In 1997, the Mexican government reversed long-standing policies and allowed foreign banks to purchase Mexico's largest commercial banks and relaxed restrictions on the founding of new, foreign-owned banks. The result has been a dramatic shift in the ownership structure... View Details

Keywords: Market Entry and Exit; Balance and Stability; Foreign Direct Investment; Banks and Banking; Society; Economics; Banking Industry; Mexico

SSRN

February 2018 (Revised June 2019)
Case

Jaguar Capital S.A.S., Take the Money and Run?

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Sayiddah Fatima McCree

In January 2014, Tomas Uribe and Rodrigo Sanchez-Rios of Jaguar Capital S.A.S. (Jaguar or Jaguar Capital), were considering an offer from White Stone, the world’s largest private equity real estate investor. Jaguar Capital needed capital to fund its investment thesis,... View Details

Keywords: Real Estate; Investing; Private Equity Financing; Deal Structuring; Emerging Market; Emerging Economies; Emerging Market Finance; International Entrepreneurship; Finance; Entrepreneurship; Agreements and Arrangements; Emerging Markets; Real Estate Industry; Retail Industry; Financial Services Industry; Colombia; Latin America; United States

August 2024
Case

Ashesi University: The Journey from Vision to Reality

By: Ranjay Gulati and Caroline de Lacvivier

In 1997, Patrick Awuah had a dream: to bring liberal arts education to Ghana. Amid the country’s declining economy and pervasive corruption problems, Awuah saw education as an opportunity to reverse its fortunes by investing in the next generation of African leaders.... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Higher Education; Entrepreneurship; Leadership Development; Growth Management; Mission and Purpose; Private Ownership; Education Industry; Ghana

21 Aug 2006
Research & Ideas

How Europe Wrote the Rules of Global Finance

near future. Q: The article devotes a lot of discussion to the OECD and the liberalization of developed markets. Is it possible that a large, rapidly developing country such as India or China could have an... View Details

Keywords: by Ann Cullen

February 1998 (Revised April 2002)
Case

India in 1996

Five years after economic liberalization, reform in India was stalled. Palaniappan Chidambaram had been recently appointed finance minister and was responsible for developing an economic plan. This case examines the economic and political impact of liberalization... View Details

Keywords: Development Economics; Macroeconomics; India

July 13, 2023
Article

Threads Foreshadows a Big—and Surprising—Shift in Social Media

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Liang Wu

Threads, Meta’s Twitter competitor, has become the fastest downloaded app in history. One of the reasons for this is because it allows users to port over their profiles and follows from the already popular social media platform Instagram, also owned by Meta—a feature... View Details

Keywords: Decentralization; Twitter; Facebook; Instagram; Crypto Economy; Blockchain; Network; Industrial Organization; Competition; Open Innovation; Open Platforms; Open Source Innovation; Social Networks; Social Media; Applications and Software; Information Technology Industry

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28 Jun 2022
Book

The Moral Enterprise: How Two Companies Profit with Purpose

How can government and business work together in this fractious political moment, when finding solutions to pressing problems like inequality and climate change are more urgent than ever? Rebecca Henderson, Harvard University’s John and Natty McArthur University... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

January 2000 (Revised November 2001)
Case

Mavesa (A): Business Strategy Amid Economic and Political Turmoil

Examines Mavesa's response to external liberalization in 1989. The consumer packaged goods firm, which had been extensively vertically integrated, completely revamps its business strategy in the 1990s. View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Economy; Business Strategy; Government and Politics