Publications

2019
Working Paper

Second Chance: Life with Less Student Debt

By: Marco Di Maggio, Ankit Kalda and Vincent Yao

Rising student debt is considered one of the creeping threats of our time. This paper examines the effect of student debt relief on individual credit and labor market outcomes. We exploit the plausibly random debt discharge due to the inability of National Collegiate,... View Details

Keywords: Student Debt; Private Student Loans; Legal Settlement; Mobility; Debt Collection; Debt Relief; Borrowing and Debt; Personal Finance; Outcome or Result; United States

SSRN

Read Now

March 2003 (Revised August 2005)
Case

National Parks Conservation Association

By: Forest L. Reinhardt and Briana Huntsberger

The National Parks Conservation Association seeks to help the U.S. National Park Service increase its efficiency by incorporating principles of business management so that American national parks will be better managed. Its efforts raise fundamental questions about the... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Business or Company Management; Corporate Governance; Government and Politics; Natural Environment; Cooperation; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Tourism Industry; Public Administration Industry; United States

15 May 2012
First Look

First Look: May 15

people, and activities across numerous self-governing enterprises in ways that are advantageous for the group as well as for the designer's own firm or community. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/12-100.pdf Platform... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

04 Feb 2008
Research & Ideas

Putting Entrepreneurship in the Social Sector

take the ideas from our MBA social entrepreneurship course, which has been taught at HBS for many years, beyond the walls of the HBS classroom. The book is geared toward students with whom we would not otherwise have the opportunity to... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

Article

Why Leadership Training Fails—and What to Do about It

By: Michael Beer, Magnus Finnström and Derek Schrader

U.S. corporations spend enormous amounts of money—some $456 billion globally in 2015 alone—on employee training and education, but they aren't getting a good return on their investment. People soon revert to old ways of doing things, and company performance doesn't... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Leadership Development; Organizational Design; Employees; Business Processes; United States

Find at Harvard

Register to Read

17 Jul 2008
Working Paper Summaries

A Replication Study of Alan Blinder’s “How Many U.S. Jobs Might Be Offshorable?”

Keywords: by Troy Smith & Jan W. Rivkin

August 2023 (Revised December 2023)
Case

Automating Morality: Ethics for Intelligent Machines

By: Joseph L. Badaracco Jr. and Tom Quinn

As autonomy became a more significant part of modern life – most notably in autonomous vehicles (AVs), such as Teslas – ethical debates about whether and how to impart ethics to machines heated up. Utilitarians pointed out that autonomous vehicles crashed much less... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Judgments; Fairness; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Disruptive Innovation; Technology Adoption; Risk and Uncertainty; Cognition and Thinking; Technological Innovation; Auto Industry; Technology Industry; Africa; Asia; Europe; North and Central America; Oceania; South America

September–October 2020
Article

The Air War Versus the Ground Game: An Analysis of Multi-Channel Marketing in U.S. Presidential Elections

By: Lingling Zhang and Doug J. Chung

This study jointly examines the effects of television advertising and field operations in U.S. presidential elections, with the former referred to as the “air war” and the latter as the “ground game.” Specifically, the study focuses on how different campaign... View Details

Keywords: Multi-channel Marketing; Ground Campaigning; Political Campaigns; Discrete-choice Model; Instrumental Variables; Political Elections; Marketing Channels; Advertising; United States

Find at Harvard

Read Now

2008
Chapter

A New Generation of Pension Fund Management

By: Robert C. Merton

In talking about pension plans at this point in American economic and corporate history, we need to discuss three linked issues: the defined-benefit (DB) corporate plans that worked for our parents; the defined-contribution (DC) plans we're getting today because... View Details

Keywords: Asset Management; Investment Funds; Compensation and Benefits; Risk Management; Retirement; United States

July 2020 (Revised January 2021)
Case

Pattern Brands

By: Sunil Gupta, Elie Ofek and Julia Kelley

In March 2020, direct-to-consumer (DTC) company Pattern Brands needed to decide how to allocate resources across its different brands. Pattern Co-Founders Nick Ling and Emmett Shine hoped to avoid the pitfalls faced by some DTC companies—such as inability to scale and... View Details

14 Sep 2023
Research & Ideas

Working Moms Are Mostly Thriving Again. Can We Finally Achieve Gender Parity?

So much has changed since a groundbreaking study found that daughters of working moms often perform better in their own careers than daughters of stay-at-home moms—and are just as happy, to boot. Diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

2012
Chapter

Pursuing Public Value: Frameworks for Strategic Analysis and Action

By: Herman B. Leonard and Mark H. Moore

Features Harvard Kennedy School scholars who focus diverse conceptual lenses on a single high-stakes management task—enhancing port security across the United States. This title considers the challenge of driving change in a complex system involving hundreds of private... View Details

Keywords: Leading Change; National Security; Complexity; Performance Improvement; United States

Find at Harvard

July 2017
Case

Centerbridge Partners and Great Wolf Resorts: Buying from a Highly Regarded Competitor

By: Josh Lerner, John D. Dionne and Amram Migdal

The case examines the March 2015 Centerbridge Partners investment decision regarding whether to acquire Great Wolf Resorts, a North American family-oriented indoor water parks and hotel operator, from a private equity (PE) competitor, Apollo Global Management. The case... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity Financing; Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities; CMBS; Secondary Buyouts; Business Ventures; Acquisition; Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Cost; Cost of Capital; Equity; Private Equity; Financial Instruments; Debt Securities; Accommodations Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Financial Services Industry; North and Central America; United States

07 Aug 2018
Working Paper Summaries

Gifts of the Immigrants, Woes of the Natives: Lessons from the Age of Mass Migration

Keywords: by Marco Tabellini

October 21, 2022
Article

Climate Regulations Are About to Disrupt Global Shipping

By: Willy C. Shih

Ships that transport goods across oceans are collectively a major generator of greenhouse gases. Rules from the International Maritime Organization and the European Union aimed at curbing these emission promise to make transoceanic and regional shipping more expensive... View Details

Keywords: Shipping; Decarbonization; Environmental Regulation; Supply Chain; Disruption; Shipping Industry; Atlantic Ocean; Oceania; Asia; Europe; North and Central America

Register to Read

21 Aug 2012
First Look

First Look: August 21

across and within metropolitan areas, but the endogeneity of these measures bedevils interpretation. Chinitz (1961) hypothesized that coal mines near Pittsburgh led that city to specialization in industries, like steel, with significant... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

18 Apr 2022
HBS Case

Dick’s Sporting Goods Followed Its Conscience on Guns—and It Paid Off

mass school shootings across the United States, the case says. Indeed, after the mass killings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012, Dick’s Sporting Goods began removing assault-style rifles from its stores,... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

22 Nov 2011
First Look

First Look: November 22

need for the additional funding, determine how best to allocate the money across the various platforms, and establish effective ways to measure return on investment (ROI) for digital marketing spending . She must also take into account... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

January 2014 (Revised February 2016)
Case

U.S. Government Debt and the Debate over a Balanced Budget Amendment

By: Matthew Weinzierl, Katrina Flanagan and Alastair Su

In the first decade of the 21st century, national debt as a share of GDP rose dramatically in the United States and across the developed world. This case consists of excerpts from leading commentators explaining and commenting on this trend and the economic and moral... View Details

Keywords: National Debt; Social Discount Rate; Ricardian Equivalence; Government and Politics; Macroeconomics; United States