Publications

August 2016
Teaching Note

The Role of Real Estate in Endowment Portfolios: The Case of Christ Church College

By: Arthur I. Segel and Alexander W. Schultz

The case centers on Christ Church’s Treasurer, James Lawrie, who is contemplating his options for investing a portion of the College’s endowment in real estate. Approximately 1/3 of the total $690 million endowment was allocated towards real estate, much higher than... View Details

Keywords: Portfolio Allocation; Oxford; England; Real Estate; University Endowment; Higher Education; Investment Portfolio; Property; Corporate Finance; Financial Services Industry; England

28 Sep 2010
First Look

First Look: September 28, 2010

Review (forthcoming) Abstract Companies in Victorian Britain operated in a laissez-faire legal environment from the perspective of outside investors, implying that such investors were not protected by the legal system. This article seeks... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2023
Working Paper

Dynamic Pricing, Intertemporal Spillovers, and Efficiency

By: Alexander J. MacKay, Dennis Svartbäck and Anders G. Ekholm

Pricing technology that allows firms to rapidly adjust prices has two potential benefits. Time-varying prices can respond to high-frequency demand shocks to generate greater revenues, and they can also be used to smooth out demand to reduce costs. Using data... View Details

Keywords: Price; Consumer Behavior; Applications and Software; Volatility

September 2022 (Revised February 2023)
Case

EnergyNow: Powering a New Market

By: Alexander MacKay and James Barnett

In August 2022, EnergyNow co-founder and CEO Stuart MacWilliam (MBA 2015) considers the company strategy for building solar panels to provide power in South Africa’s recently deregulated energy market. View Details

Educators

Forthcoming
Article

When Should Public Programs Be Privately Administered? Theory and Evidence from the Paycheck Protection Program

By: Alexander W. Bartik, Zoë Cullen, Edward L. Glaeser, Michael Luca, Christopher Stanton and Adi Sunderam

What happens when public resources are allocated by private companies whose objectives may be imperfectly aligned with policy goals? We study this question in the context of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which relied on private banks to disburse aid to small... View Details

Keywords: Paycheck Protection Program; Targeting; Impact; Entrepreneurship; Health Pandemics; Small Business; Financing and Loans; Outcome or Result; United States

2024
Working Paper

Consumer Inertia and Market Power

By: Alexander MacKay and Marc Remer

We study the pricing decisions of firms in the presence of consumer inertia. Inertia, which can arise from habit formation, brand loyalty, and switching costs, generates dynamic pricing incentives. These incentives mediate the impact of competition on market power in... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Inertia; Market Power; Dynamic Competition; Demand Estimation; Consumer Behavior; Markets; Performance; Competition; Price

March 2019 (Revised March 2020)
Case

Choosing the Right Esports Business Model

By: David Collis and Alexander MacKay

Two esports entrepreneurs must choose on which business model to focus their time and money. After successfully launching an online esports coaching platform, a number of new opportunities emerge in the rapidly growing esports space that now has close to one billion... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Ecosystems; Business Development; Esports; Business Ventures; Entrepreneurship; Business Model; Management; Strategy; Sports; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Information Technology Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Sports Industry; Video Game Industry; North and Central America; Europe; Asia

Educators

2023
Working Paper

When Should Public Programs Be Privately Administered? Theory and Evidence from the Paycheck Protection Program

By: Alexander Bartik, Zoë B. Cullen, Edward L. Glaeser, Michael Luca, Christopher Stanton and Adi Sunderam

What happens when public resources are allocated by private companies whose objectives may be imperfectly aligned with policy goals? We study this question in the context of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which relied on private banks to disburse aid to small... View Details

Keywords: Paycheck Protection Program; Targeting; Impact; Entrepreneurship; Health Pandemics; Small Business; Financing and Loans; Outcome or Result; United States

03 Apr 2014
News

Cross-Class Connection

When Alexander C. Crisses stepped up to cochair his 5th Reunion, he decided to couple his own ideas about what would appeal to his classmates with the tried-and-true strategies used by HBS alumni with... View Details

11 Sep 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, September 11, 2018

process helps improve the dealer's profit by at least $269. These estimates suggest a potentially high return to taking the "information-based" approach to pricing idiosyncratic products. Publisher's link:... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

24 Feb 2009
First Look

First Look: February 24, 2009

for Implementing Planned Organizational Change Authors:Julie Battilana, M.J. Gilmartin, A.-C., Pache, M. Sengul, and J. Alexander Periodical:Leadership Quarterly (forthcoming) Abstract This paper bridges the leadership and organizational... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Forthcoming
Article

Estimating Models of Supply and Demand: Instruments and Covariance Restrictions

By: Alexander MacKay and Nathan H. Miller

We consider the identification of empirical models of supply and demand with imperfect competition. We show that a restriction on the covariance between unobserved demand and cost shocks can resolve endogeneity and identify the price parameter. We demonstrate how to... View Details

Keywords: Demand Estimation; Identification; Endogeneity Bias; Covariance Restrictions; Ordinary Least Squares; Instrumental Variables; Price; Demand and Consumers; Competition

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March 2022
Article

Where to Locate COVID-19 Mass Vaccination Facilities?

By: Dimitris Bertsimas, Vassilis Digalakis Jr, Alexander Jacquillat, Michael Lingzhi Li and Alessandro Previero

The outbreak of COVID-19 led to a record-breaking race to develop a vaccine. However, the limited vaccine capacity creates another massive challenge: how to distribute vaccines to mitigate the near-end impact of the pandemic? In the United States in particular, the new... View Details

Keywords: Vaccines; COVID-19; Health Care and Treatment; Health Pandemics; Performance Effectiveness; Analytics and Data Science; Mathematical Methods

August 2022
Case

The Spreadsheet

By: Zoë B. Cullen and Alexander J. MacKay

Compensation is the largest expenditure of almost every venture. Getting compensation packages right affects talent acquisition, retention, and profitability. In this case, and accompanying negotiation exercise, students learn strategies and tactics for setting... View Details

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Recruitment; Selection and Staffing

Educators

July 7, 2022
Other Article

Are Online Prices Higher Because of Pricing Algorithms?

By: Zach Y. Brown and Alexander J. MacKay

This article reviews recent work examining pricing strategies of major online retailers and the potential effects of pricing algorithms. We describe how pricing algorithms can lead to higher prices in a number of ways, even if some characteristics of these algorithms... View Details

Keywords: Pricing Algorithms; Online Marketplace; Digital Strategy; Internet and the Web; Retail Industry

25 Jul 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas: July 25, 2017

Kominers, and Alexander Westkamp Abstract—We introduce a framework of matching with flexible allotments that can be used to model firms with cross-division hiring restrictions. Our framework also allows us to nest some prior models of... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

02 Dec 2015
Blog Post

Alumni: Where Are They Now? Featuring: Laura Mackay...

that something was missing. I saw firsthand that the pace and breadth of activity that are inherent to start-ups are in fact very difficult for large corporations to support, despite a business being arm’s length from “the mothership.” As such, I recently moved to... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Health Care; Entrepreneurship

2025
Working Paper

Markups and Cost Pass-through Along the Supply Chain

By: Santiago E. Alvarez-Blaser, Alberto Cavallo, Alexander MacKay and Paolo Mengano

We study markups and pricing strategies along the supply chain. Our unique dataset combines detailed price and cost information from a large global manufacturer with matched retail prices collected online for the period July 2018 through June 2023. We show that total... View Details

Keywords: Markups; Pricing; Price; Supply Chain; Inflation and Deflation; Cost