Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(3,864)
- Faculty Publications (899)
- January 2018
- Article
The Effect of Cost Sharing on an Employee Weight Loss Program: A Randomized Trial
By: Leslie K. John, Andrea Troxel, William Yancy, Joelle Y. Friedman, Jingsan Zhu, Lin Yang, Robert Galvin, Karen Miller-Kovach, Scott Halpern, George Loewenstein and Kevin Volpp
Purpose: We tested the effects of employer subsidies on employee enrollment, attendance, and weight loss in a nationally-available weight management program.
Design: A randomized trial tested the impact of employer subsidy: 100%; 80% 50% and a hybrid 50% subsidy... View Details
Design: A randomized trial tested the impact of employer subsidy: 100%; 80% 50% and a hybrid 50% subsidy... View Details
- January–February 2018
- Article
The New CEO Activists
By: Aaron K Chatterji and Michael W. Toffel
Though corporations have been lobbying the government and making campaign donations for a long time now, in recent years a dramatic new trend has emerged in U.S. politics: CEOs are taking very public stands on thorny political issues that have nothing to do with their... View Details
- 2018
- Working Paper
Trust and Democracy: Leader Turnover during Economic Crises
By: Nathan Nunn, Nancy Qian and Jaya Y. Wen
We study the relationship between interpersonal trust and political stability in democratic countries. Using a six-decade-long annual country-level panel dataset, we find that recessions are more likely to cause political turnover in countries with lower levels of... View Details
- 2018
- Chapter
Why Do So Many Chinese Students Come to the United States?
By: William C. Kirby
Many books offer information about China, but few make sense of what is truly at stake. The questions addressed in this unique volume provide a window onto the challenges China faces today and the uncertainties its meteoric ascent on the global horizon has provoked.... View Details
- October 2017
- Case
Shift Technologies, Inc.
By: Thomas Eisenmann and Nicole Tempest Keller
In 2017, management at Shift, an online marketplace that uses a “high touch,” concierge approach to buy and sell used cars, was formulating plans for the San Francisco–based startup’s next phase of expansion. One option was to preserve Shift’s current business model... View Details
- October 2017 (Revised November 2017)
- Case
NYC311
By: Constantine E. Kontokosta, Mitchell Weiss, Christine Snively and Sarah Gulick
Joe Morrisroe, executive director for NYC311, had some gut instincts but no definitive answer to the question he was just asked by one of the mayor’s deputies: “Are some communities being underserved by 311? How do we know we are hearing from the right people?” Founded... View Details
Keywords: New York City; NYC; 311; NYC311; Big Data; Equal Access; Bias; Data Analysis; Public Entrepreneurship; Urban Informatics; Predictive Analytics; Chief Data Officer; Data Analytics; Cities; City Leadership; Analytics and Data Science; Analysis; Prejudice and Bias; Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; City; Public Administration Industry; New York (city, NY)
- Article
"Troll" Check? A Proposal for Administrative Review of Patent Litigation
By: Lauren Cohen, John Golden, Umit Gurun and Scott Duke Kominers
The patent system is commonly justified as a way to promote social welfare and, more specifically, technological progress. For years, however, there has been concern that patent litigation is undermining, rather than furthering, these goals. Particularly in the United... View Details
- September 2017 (Revised January 2019)
- Case
Public Entrepreneurs? Picking a Path
By: Mitchell Weiss and Matthew Segneri
Direct entry into government remained an uncommon post-HBS path, with only 1%–2% of recent classes going directly into the public sector. But, for public-minded MBAs, government wasn’t the sole province for public problem-solving. MBAs could join or launch companies... View Details
Keywords: Public Entrepreneurship; Careers; Tri-sector Athlete; Job Searching; Government Innovation; Govtech; CivicTech; Civic Technology; Civic Innovation; Government Technology; MBA Class Of 2017; Social Enterprise; Social Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Government Administration; Job Search; Jobs and Positions; Innovation Leadership; Technology Industry; Public Administration Industry; United States
- 2017
- Working Paper
Merchants and the Origins of Capitalism
By: Sophus A. Reinert and Robert Fredona
N.S.B. Gras, the father of Business History in the United States, argued that the era of mercantile capitalism was defined by the figure of the “sedentary merchant,” who managed his business from home, using correspondence and intermediaries, in contrast to the earlier... View Details
- 2017
- Chapter
High Stakes Negotiation: Indian Gaming and Tribal/State Compacts
By: Gavin Clarkson and James K. Sebenius
Although Indian tribes and the surrounding states were often bitter enemies throughout much of the history of the United States, recently tribes and states have been able to work cooperatively in a number of areas. In some instances, Congress has mandated such... View Details
- 2017
- Chapter
Immigrant Entrepreneurship
By: William R. Kerr and Sari Pekkala Kerr
We examine immigrant entrepreneurship and the survival and growth of immigrant-founded businesses over time relative to native-founded companies. Our work quantifies immigrant contributions to new firm creation in a wide variety of fields and using multiple... View Details
- August 8, 2017
- Article
Buying Time Promotes Happiness
By: A.V. Whillans, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Paul Smeets, Rene Bekkers and Michael I. Norton
Around the world, increases in wealth have produced an unintended consequence: a rising sense of time scarcity. We provide evidence that using money to buy time can provide a buffer against this time famine, thereby promoting happiness. Using large, diverse samples... View Details
- August 2017
- Case
Hacking Heroin
By: Mitchell Weiss and Sarah Mehta
"Hacking Heroin" was the first hackathon that Annie Rittgers, founder of Cincinnati-based 17a, had organized or even attended. "There will continue to be a lot of preventable overdose deaths and wasted potential if the opioid crisis continues unabated," she said.... View Details
- August 2017
- Article
Should Governments Invest More in Nudging?
By: Shlomo Benartzi, John Beshears, Katherine L. Milkman, Cass R. Sunstein, Richard H. Thaler, Maya Shankar, Will Tucker-Ray, William J. Congdon and Steven Galing
Governments are increasingly adopting behavioral science techniques for changing individual behavior in pursuit of policy objectives. The types of “nudge” interventions that governments are now adopting alter people’s decisions without coercion or significant changes... View Details
Keywords: Nudge; Nudge Unit; Choice Architecture; Behavioral Science; Behavioral Economics; Savings; Pension Plan; Education; College Enrollment; Energy; Electricity Usage; Preventive Health; Influenza Vaccination; Flu Shot; Open Materials; Behavior; Governance; Economics; Policy; Power and Influence
- July 2017 (Revised November 2017)
- Case
Propel
By: Mitchell Weiss and Sarah McAra
In 2014, Jimmy Chen, a former product manager at Facebook, founded the start-up Propel to build software for low-income Americans. After conducting in-depth behavioral research, Chen and his small team in New York City began to develop technology to address the... View Details
Keywords: Public Entrepreneurship; Govtech; Food Stamps; EBT; Mobile App; User Research; Financial Services Referrals; Grocery Marketing; Customer Discovery; Social Entrepreneurship; Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Business Model; Research; Social Enterprise; Poverty; Welfare; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Applications and Software; Technology Industry; United States
- 2017
- Working Paper
The Role of Taxes in the Disconnect Between Corporate Performance and Economic Growth
By: Urooj Khan, Suresh Nallareddy and Ethan Rouen
We investigate the relation between the growth in corporate profits and the overall U.S. economy, focusing on the impact of the U.S. corporate tax regime on this relation. We document that the growth of corporate profits, on average, has outpaced the growth of the... View Details
- June 2017
- Case
Veolia: Resourcing the World
By: Gautam Ahuja, Tarun Khanna, Kristina Maslauskaite and Vincent Dessain
In March 2016, Antoine Frérot, CEO of Veolia, a global environmental services provider, was undergoing an important transformation of the company. In 2013, Frérot presented a growth strategy that focused on increasing the share of industrial clients, enhancing growth... View Details
- June 2017
- Teaching Note
The U-Turns of National Truck Stops
By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Alexander W. Schultz
Raj Makam had spent months trying to restructure a 2006 investment he had made in National Truck Stops, Inc. (“NTS”) as a senior member of Oaktree Capital Management’s (“Oaktree”) Mezzanine finance business within their Corporate Debt platform. It was the first time... View Details
- June 2017
- Case
Waze Connected Citizens Program
By: Mitchell Weiss and Alissa Davies
Di-Ann Eisnor, Director of Growth at Waze, founded the company’s Connected Citizens Program (CCP), a data-sharing partnership that provided officials with traffic incident and congestion data. Since 2015, her program had enabled officials in Kentucky and elsewhere to... View Details
Keywords: Public Entrepreneurship; Waze; Public-Private Partnerships; Scaling Technology Ventures; Di-Ann Eisnor; Paige Fitzgerald; Noam Bardin; Ehud Shabtai; Cities; Traffic; Crowdsourcing; API; Scaling Innovation; Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Information Technology; Transportation; Growth Management; Transportation Industry; Israel; Indonesia; United States; Brazil; Los Angeles; Kentucky
- April 2017 (Revised August 2018)
- Case
The U.S. Shale Revolution: Global Rebalancing?
By: Laura Alfaro and Richard H.K. Vietor
The American shale revolution has upended oil and gas markets for nearly a decade. Prices have risen then plunged, production has surged and then waned, LNG has boomed, and technology and productivity have improved. The U.S. energy policy, under the Obama... View Details