Publications

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25 Sep 2017
Research & Ideas

Why Politics is Failing America, and What Business Can Do To Help

project has surveyed HBS alumni and other business leaders to assess perceptions about which aspects of the country, such as the economy or education, they see as thriving and which as lacking. The survey results consistently showed that Washington’s persistent failure... View Details

Keywords: by Christina Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette

24 Jul 2014
Op-Ed

Reform Tax Law to Keep US Firms at Home

consumption tax, are preferred if feasible. Legislation that is narrowly focused on preventing inversions or specific transactions runs the risk of being counterproductive. These transactions are nested in a broader set of corporate... View Details

Keywords: by Mihir Desai; Pharmaceutical

13 Dec 2011
First Look

First Look: Dec. 13

Norway, cartels received support from the Norwegian government when they were deemed to be beneficial to Norwegian economic interests. The legislation was used to foster the development of domestic cartels,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

August 2012
Supplement

Albert 'Jack' Stanley in Nigeria (C)

By: Lena G. Goldberg and Annelena Lobb

The international joint venture that successfully bid for $6 billion in contracts to build LNG trains on Nigeria's Bonny Island became entangled in a widening bribery and corruption probe triggered by an unrelated accusation against an employee of one of the JV... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Crime and Corruption; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Governance Compliance; Law; Joint Ventures; Business Subsidiaries; Government Legislation; Rail Industry; Nigeria; United States; United Kingdom

14 Mar 2011
Research & Ideas

Keeping Credit Flowing to Consumers in Need

cycle could not continue. That erosion spread to nonprime consumer credit and commercial mortgages. Those factors helped spark a global financial crisis. Credit markets were seizing up. The US government was spending billions of dollars... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Financial Services; Construction; Real Estate

09 Sep 2013
Lessons from the Classroom

Teaching Climate Change to Skeptics

A few years ago, Joseph B. Lassiter traveled to San Francisco, Houston, and New York to hold discussions with Harvard alumni on the topic of business and the environment. Each time, he surveyed the audience about the touchy subject of climate change and how society... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

April 2025
Case

The CHIPS Program Office (Abridged)

By: Mitch Weiss and Sebastian Negron-Reichard

In February 2023, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo weighed signing off on a Notice of Funding Opportunity (“NOFO”) with at least one unconventional provision: a pre-application (“pre-app”) to the actual application for parts of $39 billion in direct semiconductor... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Government Administration; Government Legislation; Motivation and Incentives; Semiconductor Industry; Public Administration Industry; United States

December 2007
Case

Envisioning "Free Banking" in Antebellum New York (A)

By: David A. Moss and Cole Bolton

Banks throughout New York State suspended specie payments (i.e., payments in gold and silver) in May 1837 following the collapse of several state banks and the onset of a nationwide financial panic. Amid the chaos, the upstart Whigs were able to depose the longstanding... View Details

Keywords: History; Government Legislation; Capital; Financial Crisis; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry; New York (state, US)

September 1992 (Revised October 1994)
Case

Pesticide Export Reform Act of 1990

By: Lynn S. Paine

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Government Legislation; United States

Find at Harvard

2009
Working Paper

Watch What I Do, Not What I Say: The Unintended Consequences of the Homeland Investment Act

By: Dhammika Dharmapala, C. Fritz Foley and Kristin J. Forbes

This paper analyzes the impact on firm behavior of the Homeland Investment Act of 2004, which provided a one-time tax holiday for the repatriation of foreign earnings by U.S. multinationals. The analysis controls for endogeneity and omitted variable bias by using... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Multinational Firms and Management; Government Legislation; Taxation; Business and Shareholder Relations; Behavior; United States

Forthcoming
Article

Black Empowerment and White Mobilization: The Effects of the Voting Rights Act

By: Andrea Bernini, Giovanni Facchini, Marco Tabellini and Cecilia Testa

How did southern whites respond to the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA)? Leveraging newly digitized data on county-level voter registration by race between 1956 and 1980, and exploiting pre-determined variation in exposure to the federal intervention, we document that... View Details

Keywords: Government Legislation; Race; Behavior; Voting; Prejudice and Bias

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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

Keywords: Equity; Financial Markets; International Finance; Investment Portfolio; Government Legislation; Taxation; United States

December 2018 (Revised May 2019)
Case

Darling Ingredients International

By: David E. Bell and Natalie Kindred

Led by CEO Randall Stuewe, Texas-based Darling Ingredients International was a rendering firm with $3.7 billion in 2017 revenues. Since 2003, Darling had transformed from U.S. focused into a global player in the processing of biological waste from meat and foodservice... View Details

23 Nov 2010
First Look

First Look: November 23

http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/11-048.pdf Regulating for Legitimacy: Consumer Credit Access in France and America Author: Gunnar Trumbull Abstract Theories of legitimate regulation have emphasized the role of governments either in fixing... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

03 Nov 2003
What Do You Think?

Can Investors Have Too Much Accounting Transparency?

Legislation is therefore a problematic way to achieve the golden mean in normative behavior." Edward Hare agrees, pointing out that "Corporate governance is a system that continues to fail us ...... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

05 Jun 2013
Op-Ed

Corporate Leaders Need to Step Up on Climate Change

governments can provide, firms serious about addressing it have a critical role well beyond greening their own operations. They must spur government action. But few are. "Green business" as... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Toffel & Auden Schendler

June 2023
Case

ByteDance: TikTok and the Trials of Going Viral in 2023

By: William C. Kirby, Noah B. Truwit and John P. McHugh

In March 2023, Chew, with an army of well-paid U.S. lobbyists and TikTok creators, descended on Washington. In his testimony, he planned to highlight the 150 million daily active American users on TikTok and how the platform had benefitted small business owners and... View Details

Keywords: Social Media; International Relations; Government Legislation; China; United States