Publications

June 2016
Case

Augustine Heard & Co.: Building a Family Business in the China Trade (A)

By: William C. Kirby, Joycelyn W. Eby and John S. Ji

Augustine Heard Sr. founded Augustine Heard & Company, a commission house focused on trade between China and the United States, in 1840. He welcomed his four nephews into the family business as it expanded in the increasingly complex economic and political environment... View Details

Keywords: Exports; China; Commissions; Family Business; Family and Family Relationships; China; Boston

September–October 2021
Article

Internalization of Advertising Services: Testing a Theory of the Firm

By: Alvin J. Silk, Birger Wernerfelt and Shuyi Yu

In 1956, a group of trade associations representing publishers and independent advertising agencies signed a consent decree aimed at ending a set of trade practices that for half a century effectively precluded advertisers from owning and operating in-house agencies.... View Details

Keywords: Internationalization; Specialization; Theory Of The Firm; Advertising Agencies; Advertising; Organizational Structure; Theory

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Article

Merchants as Business Groups: British Trading Companies in Asia before 1945

By: G. Jones and Judith Wale

Merchants formed an important component of British foregn direct investment before 1945. Locating in parts of Asia, Latin America and other developing economies, they often diversified into non-trading activities, inclding the ownership of plantations. This article... View Details

Keywords: Trade; Developing Countries and Economies; Diversification; Competency and Skills; Entrepreneurship; Foreign Direct Investment; Asia; Latin America; Europe; Africa; North and Central America

2021
Working Paper

The Value of Intermediation in the Stock Market

By: Marco Di Maggio, Mark Egan and Francesco Franzoni

We estimate a structural model of broker choice to quantitatively decompose the value that institutional investors attach to broker services. Studying over 300 million institutional equity trades, we find that investors are sensitive to both explicit and implicit... View Details

Keywords: Financial Intermediation; Institutional Investors; Research Analysts; Broker Networks; Equity Trading; Institutional Investing; Financial Services Industry

SSRN

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30 Jun 2019
News

Alumni in France honor self-made entrepreneurs; Shih talks trade in Buffalo

Clubs News Clubs News Buffalo Alumni Explore the Future of Manufacturing Amid Global Turbulence The HBS Club of Buffalo hosted HBS Professor Willy Shih as a guest speaker in April for a talk on the impacts... View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley

Article

The Value of Intermediation in the Stock Market

By: Marco Di Maggio, Mark Egan and Francesco Franzoni

We estimate a structural model of broker choice to quantitatively decompose the value that institutional investors attach to broker services. Studying over 300 million institutional equity trades, we find that investors are sensitive to both explicit and implicit... View Details

Keywords: Financial Intermediation; Institutional Investors; Research Analysts; Broker Networks; Equity Trading; Institutional Investing

May 2023
Case

CMA CGM: Reducing the Carbon Footprint of Container Shipping

By: Willy C. Shih and Emilie Billaud

Marine transport is the most cost-effective way to move large volumes over long distances, and container shipping is the backbone of international trade in goods. Yet shipping contributed 3% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, and the deep-sea segment, which... View Details

Keywords: Container Shipping; Logistic Regression; Trade Links; Decarbonization; Environmental Strategies; Environmental Impact; Globalization; Trade; Environmental Regulation; Logistics; Supply Chain; Governance Compliance; Shipping Industry; European Union; Asia; North America

July 2025
Article

Economic Integration and the Transmission of Democracy

By: Marco Tabellini and Giacomo Magistretti

In this paper, we study the effects of economic integration with democratic partners on democracy. We assemble a large country-level panel dataset from 1960 to 2015, and exploit improvements in air, relative to sea, transportation to derive a time-varying instrument... View Details

Keywords: Democratization; Institutional Development; Economic Integration; International Trade; Democracy; Political Preferences; Institutions; Trade; Global Range; Economics; Government and Politics

24 Jun 2015 - 27 Jun 2015
Conference Presentation

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and State-Building: Trade Associations, Antitrust Reform, and the Administrative State, 1912-1925

By: Laura Phillips Sawyer

June 1987
Supplement

Semiconductor Industry Association and the Trade Dispute with Japan, The: Chart of Arguments/SIA's Section 301, Supplement

By: David B. Yoffie and John J. Coleman

21 Sep 2018
News

America traded one recession for a far more serious one

29 Nov 2017
Research & Ideas

How to Succeed in Business (According to a 15th Century Trade Merchant)

issue of responsibility to the community and who you are as a person.” Written in 1458 in Italy by trade merchant Benedetto Cotrugli, The Book of the Art View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

September 2022 (Revised November 2022)
Case

The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act: Trade and Genocide in U.S.-China Relations

By: Jeremy Friedman and David Lane

On June 21, 2022, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) went into effect, requiring companies to prove that goods imported from the People’s Republic of China were not made with forced labor. The bill was a reaction to reports of products being made with... View Details

03 Jan 2019
News

Robots will help Chinese firms cope with wages and the trade war

11 Feb 2015
Working Paper Summaries

Tommy Koh and the US-Singapore Free Trade Agreement: A Multifront ‘Negotiation Campaign’

Keywords: by Laurence A. Green & James K. Sebenius

1986
Other Unpublished Work

Capital Flight, Policy Credibility, and the Option Value of Foreign Exchange

By: K. A. Froot and S. van Wijnbergen

Keywords: Trade Policy; Capital Controls; Liberalization; Currency; International Finance; Capital

19 Nov 2015
Working Paper Summaries

The US Experiment with Fair Trade Laws: State Police Powers, Federal Antitrust, and the Politics of 'Fairness', 1890–1938

Keywords: by Laura Phillips Sawyer; Retail

September 2019 (Revised July 2021)
Case

Port Competition in the Pearl River Delta

By: Willy Shih

This case examines the competition between ports and port operators in the Pearl River Delta over the last four decades. The cities surrounding the Pearl River estuary are the "workshop of the world," and the development of manufacturing in the region was heavily... View Details

Keywords: Trade Links; Global Business; Globalization; Trade; Supply Chain; Logistics; Transportation Industry; Asia; Hong Kong; China