Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,916)
- Faculty Publications (281)
- 2008
- Working Paper
Just Keep My Money! Supporting Tax-time Savings with U.S. Savings Bonds
By: Peter Tufano
This paper reports the results of a 2007 experiment testing if specific process simplification can foster increased take-up rates for savings products, particularly by low-to-moderate income (LMI) households. Tax refund recipients at certain H&R Block tax preparation... View Details
- September 2008
- Article
Firm Heterogeneity and Credit Risk Diversification
By: Samuel G. Hanson, M. Hashem Pesaran and Til Schuermann
This paper examines the impact of neglected heterogeneity on credit risk. We show that neglecting heterogeneity in firm returns and/or default thresholds leads to under estimation of expected losses (EL), and its effect on portfolio risk is ambiguous. Once EL is... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Open to Negotiation: Phenomenological Assumptions and Knowledge Dissemination
By: Corinne Bendersky and Kathleen L. McGinn
Phenomenological assumptions-assumptions about the fundamental qualities of the phenomenon being studied and how it relates to the environment in which it occurs-affect the dissemination of knowledge from subfields to the broader field of study. Micro-process research... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Communication (and Coordination?) in a Modern, Complex Organization
By: Adam M. Kleinbaum, Toby E. Stuart and Michael L. Tushman
This is a descriptive study of the structure of communications in a modern organization. We analyze a dataset with millions of electronic mail messages, calendar meetings and teleconferences for many thousands of employees of a single, multidivisional firm during a... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Financial Development, Bank Ownership, and Growth. Or, Does Quantity Imply Quality?
By: Shawn A. Cole
In 1980, India nationalized its large private banks. This induced different bank ownership patterns across different towns, allowing credible identification of the effects of bank ownership on financial development, lending rates, and the quality of intermediation, as... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Investable Tax Credits: The Case of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit
By: Mihir A. Desai, Dhammika Dharmapala and Monica Singhal
The Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) represents a novel tax expenditure program that employs "investable" tax credits to spur production of low-income rental housing. While it has grown into the largest source of new affordable housing in the U.S. and its... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Where Does It Go? Spending by the Financially Constrained
By: Shawn A. Cole, John Thompson and Peter Tufano
In this paper, we analyze the spending decisions of over 1.5 million Americans who vary in their degree of revealed credit constraints. Specifically, we analyze how these Americans spend their income tax refunds, using transaction-level data from a stored-value card... View Details
- January 2008 (Revised April 2009)
- Case
Kinyuseisaku: Monetary Policy in Japan (A)
By: Laura Alfaro and Akiko Kanno
Toshihiko Fukui, Governor of the Bank of Japan, faced a complex situation in the fall of 2007. An economic recovery had allowed the central bank to abandon its zero interest rate policy, which had been in place for years, and raise rates to 0.5%. The Bank of Japan was... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Cost of External Finance and Selection into Entrepreneurship
By: Ramana Nanda
This paper examines the extent to which the positive relationship between personal wealth and entry into entrepreneurship is due to financing constraints. I exploit a tax reform and use unique micro-data from Denmark to study how exogenous changes in the cost of... View Details
- January 2008
- Article
Entrepreneurship and Urban Success: Toward a Policy Consensus
By: Zoltan J. Acs, Edward L. Glaeser, Robert E. Litan, Lee Fleming, Stephan J. Goetz, William R. Kerr, Steven Klepper, Stuart S. Rosenthal, Olav Sorenson and William C. Strange
Like all politics, all entrepreneurship is local. Individuals launch firms and, if successful, expand their enterprises to other locations. But new firms must start somewhere, even if their businesses are conducted largely or exclusively on the Internet. Likewise,... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Incompatible Assumptions: Barriers to Producing Multidisciplinary Knowledge in Communities of Scholarship
By: Corinne Bendersky and Kathleen L. McGinn
Co-locating knowledge workers from different disciplines may be a necessary but insufficient step to generating multidisciplinary knowledge. We explore the role of assumptions underlying knowledge creation within the field of organizational studies, and investigate how... View Details
- November 2007
- Article
A Model of Consumer Learning for Service Quality and Usage
By: Raghuram Iyengar, Asim Ansari and Sunil Gupta
In many services, e.g., the wireless service industry, consumers choose a service plan based on their expected consumption. In such situations, consumers experience two forms of uncertainty. First, consumers may be uncertain about the quality of their service provider... View Details
- November 2007
- Article
Standing Out from the Crowd: The Visibility-Enhancing Effects of IPO-related Signals on Alliance Formation by Entrepreneurial Firms
By: Tim Pollock and Ranjay Gulati
In this study, we explore how multiple signals related to entrepreneurial companies at the time of their initial public offering (IPO) influence the firms' ability to acquire non-financial resources over time. Specifically, the study looks at how signals based on... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Optimal Reserve Management and Sovereign Debt
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
Most models currently used to determine optimal foreign reserve holdings take the level of international debt as given. However, given the sovereign's willingness-to-pay incentive problems, reserve accumulation may reduce sustainable debt levels. In addition, assuming... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Taxes and Portfolio Choice: Evidence from JGTRRA's Treatment of International Dividends
By: Mihir A. Desai and Dhammika Dharmapala
This paper investigates how taxes influence portfolio choices by exploring the response to the distinctive treatment of foreign dividends in the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (JGTRRA). JGTRRA lowered the dividend tax rate to 15% for American equities... View Details
- March 2007 (Revised October 2008)
- Case
The Vancouver 2010 Olympics
By: Anita Elberse, Catherine Anthony and Joshua Callahan
It is February 2007, exactly three years before Vancouver hosts the 2010 Winter Olympics. Judy Rogers, City Manager for the City of Vancouver and a member of the Board of Directors for Vancouver's Organizing Committee (VANOC), is keen to ensure the Games will have a... View Details
- March 2007 (Revised March 2010)
- Case
Rovna Dan: The Flat Tax in Slovakia
By: Laura Alfaro, Rafael M. Di Tella, Ane Damgaard Jensen and Vincent Marie Dessain
Explores the tax policy choices made by Slovakia and the impact of reforms. Set in 2006, looks at the decision facing new Prime Minister Robert Fico as he faces the public's "reform fatigue." Traces the development of tax and fiscal policies since Slovakia's... View Details
Keywords: Investment; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy; Taxation; Labor; Welfare; Slovakia
- December 2006
- Article
Europe vs America: Institutional Hysteresis in a Simple Normative Model
By: Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch
We show how the differences in US and European institutions can arise in a normative model. The paper focuses on the labor market and the government's decision to set unemployment benefits in response to an unemployment shock. The government balances insurance... View Details
- September 2006
- Article
Dynamic Scoring: A Back-of-the-Envelope Guide
By: Matthew C. Weinzierl and N. Gregory Mankiw
This paper uses the neoclassical growth model to examine the extent to which a tax cut pays for itself through higher economic growth. The model yields simple expressions for the steady-state feedback effect of a tax cut. The feedback is surprisingly large: for... View Details
- September 2006
- Article
The Speed of Learning in Noisy Games: Partial Reinforcement and the Sustainability of Cooperation
By: Yoella Bereby-Meyer and Alvin E. Roth
In an experiment, players ability to learn to cooperate in the repeated prisoners dilemma was substantially diminished when the payoffs were noisy, even though players could monitor one anothers past actions perfectly. In contrast, in one-time play against a succession... View Details