Publications

2021
Working Paper

The Great Unequalizer: Initial Health Effects of COVID-19 in the United States

By: Marcella Alsan, Amitabh Chandra and Kosali I. Simon

We measure inequities from the COVID-19 pandemic on mortality and hospitalizations in the United States during the early months of the outbreak. We discuss challenges in measuring health outcomes and health inequality, some of which are specific to COVID-19 and others... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Health Inequality; Health Pandemics; Demographics; Equality and Inequality

03 Jan 2007
First Look

First Look: January 3, 2007

Bureau's Longitudinal Business Database. The comprehensive micro-data allow us to study how both the entry rate and the distribution of entry sizes for new startups responded to changes in banking competition. Moreover, we distinguish the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Web

Behavioral Finance & Financial Stability

Stephen’s other research here . More Info Sizing up Corporate Restructuring in the COVID Crisis By: Robin Greenwood , Benjamin Iverson & David Thesmar NOV 2020 In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the financial and legal system will need... View Details

March 1993 (Revised April 1995)
Case

IBM After-Sales Service

By: Janice H. Hammond

IBM has established a service delivery system to provide service and maintenance parts for its installed base of computers. The case outlines the competitive pressures IBM faces from alternative providers of maintenance services (e.g. other OEMs, third-party... View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Service Operations; Supply Chain; Supply Chain Management; Logistics; Operations; Distribution; Customer Focus and Relationships; Competitive Strategy; Computer Industry

Article

Representative Democracy and the Implementation of Majority-Preferred Alternatives

By: Katherine Baldiga Coffman

In this paper, we contrast direct and representative democracy. In a direct democracy, individuals have the opportunity to vote over the alternatives in every choice problem the population faces. In a representative democracy, the population commits to a candidate ex... View Details

Keywords: Economic Systems; Voting; Decision Choices and Conditions

June 1994 (Revised October 1999)
Background Note

Beer Game, The: Board Version

By: Janice H. Hammond

The beer game is an exercise that demonstrates supply channel dynamics. Simulates the flow of material and information in a simplified channel of beer production and distribution, focusing on the linkages among a beer manufacturer, its distributors, a wholesaler, and a... View Details

Keywords: Cost Management; Information; Distribution Channels; Production; Supply Chain Management; Problems and Challenges

July 2019 (Revised November 2019)
Case

Osaro: Picking the Best Path

By: William R. Kerr, James Palano and Bastiane Huang

The founder of Osaro saw the potential of deep reinforcement learning to allow robots to be applied to new applications. Osaro targeted warehousing, already a dynamic industry for robotics and automation, for its initial product—a system which would allow robotic arms... View Details

25 Jul 2017
First Look

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

different types of seats are filled) on distributional objectives is comparable to the effect of adjusting reserve sizes. Either lowering the precedence order positions of reserve seats at a school or increasing the number of reserve... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

2014
Article

Unequality: Who Gets What and Why It Matters

By: Michael I. Norton

Who should get what, and what are the consequences? Economic inequality in the United States has been rising for decades, yet only recently have behavioral scientists explored two central questions surrounding the optimal level of inequality. First, what are the... View Details

Keywords: Inequality; Ethics; Productivity; Gambling; Equality and Inequality; Fairness; Income; Performance Productivity; United States

March 2013
Article

Punctuated Generosity: How Mega-events and Natural Disasters Affect Corporate Philanthropy in U.S. Communities

By: Andras Tilcsik and Christopher Marquis

Geographic communities have been shown to affect organizations through their enduring features, but less attention has been given to communities as sites of human-made and natural events that occasionally disrupt the lives of organizations. We develop a... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Communities; Punctuated Equilibrium; Corporate Social Responsibility; Institutional Theory; Natural Disasters; Situation or Environment; Balance and Stability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Community Relations; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; United States

21 Sep 2010
First Look

First Look: September 21, 2010

welfare. We attempt to insert the desires of "regular" Americans into these debates by asking a nationally representative online panel to estimate the current distribution of wealth in the United States and to "build a... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

20 May 2014
First Look

First Look: May 20

Hellenic Bottling Company) and the role of regulation in integrated reporting (Anglo-American). Download working paper: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2388716 Information Technology and the Distribution of Inventive Activity By: Forman, Chris,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Web

Topics - HBS Working Knowledge

Development Economics (33) Diasporas (3) Disruption (22) Disruptive Innovation (27) Distribution Channels (20) Distribution (45) Diversification (1) Diversity (248) Duopoly and Oligopoly (2) Early Childhood... View Details

30 May 2024
Research & Ideas

Racial Bias Might Be Infecting Patient Portals. Can AI Help?

Health and Hospital Association about the digital transformation of health care and the growing use of apps and other technologies in patient care. During the presentation, Stern recalls, an audience member asked “a wonderfully thoughtful question: How do we know about... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Health

25 Jan 2021
Book

In a Nutshell, Why American Capitalism Succeeded

How did the United States become the world’s center of business growth following its founding in 1776? Surely a number of nations had powerful natural resources, stable financial and legal institutions, and dynamic entrepreneurs over that same span. Why was American... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Manufacturing

April 2023
Article

Performance on Patient Experience Measures of Former Chief Medical Residents as Physician Exemplars Chosen by the Profession

By: Lucy Chen and J. Michael McWilliams

OBJECTIVE To compare care for patients of primary care physicians (PCPs) who were former chiefs with care for patients of nonchief PCPs.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Using 2010 to 2018 Medicare Fee-For-Service Consumer Assessment of Healthcare... View Details

Keywords: Performance Evaluation; Forecasting and Prediction; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Competency and Skills; Surveys; Health Industry

04 Sep 2001
Research & Ideas

Governing the Family-Run Business

policies, debt policies, even fire emergency policies. Brings the right people together at the right time to discuss the right (important) things. No organization is effective for long without doing these things. You should measure the effectiveness of your governance... View Details

2022
White Paper

Census II of Free and Open Source Software - Application Libraries

By: Frank Nagle, James Dana, Jennifer Hoffman, Steven Randazzo and Yanuo Zhou

Produced in partnership with Harvard Laboratory for Innovation Science (LISH) and the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), Census II is the second investigation into the widespread use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). The Census II effort utilizes data... View Details

Keywords: Open Source Software; Applications and Software; Cybersecurity; Open Source Distribution

November 2023
Case

Open Source Machine Learning at Google

By: Shane Greenstein, Martin Wattenberg, Fernanda B. Viégas, Daniel Yue and James Barnett

Set in early 2023, the case exposes students to the challenges of managing open source software at Google. The case focuses on the challenges for Alex Spinelli, Vice President of Product Management for Core Machine Learning. He must set priorities for Google’s efforts... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Technological Innovation; Open Source Distribution; Strategy; AI and Machine Learning; Applications and Software; Technology Industry; United States