Publications

December 2022
Case

Ed Catmull: Lessons from Leading Pixar Animation Studios

By: Francesca Gino, Linda Hill, Gary Pisano and Ruth Page

This stand-alone multimedia case follows Ed Catmull, cofounder of Pixar, after he was vice president at Lucasfilm. Catmull was honored with five Academy Awards®, including an Oscar of Lifetime Achievement for his technical contributions and leadership in computer... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Organizational Culture; Motion Pictures and Video Industry

December 7, 2022
Article

Why Decentralized Crypto Platforms Are Weathering the Crash

By: Shai Bernstein and Scott Duke Kominers

In the past year, crypto markets dropped from $2.9 trillion in value to around $800 billion. In the wake of the collapse, crypto lenders and exchanges have been accused of fraud and other wrongdoing. What went wrong? One factor is competition. In theory, competition... View Details

Keywords: Crypto Economy; Cryptocurrency; Financial Complexity; Financial Crisis; Decentralization; Decentralized Markets; Decentralized Autonomous Organizations; Finance; Market Design; Financial Services Industry

December 2022
Article

Collaborative Rooming: An Innovative Pilot Project to Overcome Primary Care Challenges

By: Gagandeep Singh, Jill G. Lenhart, Richard A. Helmers, Michele Renee Eberlee, Heather Costley, Joel B. Roberts and Robert S. Kaplan

Primary care physicians are overburdened with growing complexities and increasing expectations for primary care visits. To meet expectations, primary care physicians must multitask during visits and spend extra hours in the office for charting, billing, and... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Groups and Teams; Job Design and Levels; Health Industry

Winter 2022
Article

Distributing a Billion Vaccines: COVAX Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities

By: Eric Budish, Hannah Kettler, Scott Duke Kominers, Erik Osland, Canice Prendergast and Andrew A. Torkelson

By January 2022, the COVAX international vaccine collaboration had allocated over a billion vaccines to over 140 countries. We describe and review the allocation process chosen, which reflected both an objective of equitably distributing vaccines across the world and... View Details

Keywords: Vaccines; Pandemics; Health Care and Treatment; Health Pandemics; Distribution; Supply Chain; Equality and Inequality

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December 2022
Supplement

Driving Decarbonization at BMW - Video Supplement

By: Shirley Lu, George Serafeim and Michael W. Toffel

Videos of Thomas Becker, Vice President of Sustainability and Mobility at BMW Group, in support of the case "Driving Decarbonization at BMW" (HBS No. 123-008) View Details

2022
Working Paper

Regulatory Incentives for Innovation: The FDA's Breakthrough Therapy Designation

By: Amitabh Chandra, Jennifer Kao, Kathleen Miller and Ariel D. Stern

Regulators of new products confront a tradeoff between speeding a new product to market and collecting additional product quality information. The FDA’s Breakthrough Therapy Designation (BTD) provides an opportunity to understand if a regulator can use new policy to... View Details

Keywords: Research and Development; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Product Development

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Winter 2022
Article

Vaccines and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons from Failure and Success

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Alex Tabarrok

The losses from the global COVID-19 pandemic have been staggering—trillions in economic costs, on top of significant losses of life, health, and well-being. The world made significant and successful investments in vaccines to mitigate the pandemic, yet there were... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Vaccination; Market Design; Health Pandemics; Loss; Outcome or Result; Opportunities; Crisis Management

November 2022
Technical Note

National Security and Transnational Capitalism

By: Meg Rithmire

Though the relationship between national security and transnational commerce had long been interrogated and contested, the 2020s saw the escalation of concerns about insecurity and interdependence. These concerns manifested in a suite of institutional innovations and... View Details

Keywords: Capitalism; National Security; Globalization

2022
Working Paper

The Issuance and Design of Sustainability-linked Loans

By: Maria Loumioti and George Serafeim

Sustainability-linked loans (i.e., syndicated loans for which pricing is linked to a sustainability performance indicator) have rapidly evolved into a significant private debt product. We find that sustainability-linked lending has been available mostly to borrowers... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Sustainability Management; Credit Products; Loan Contracts; Loans; Corporate Finance; Credit Risk; Environment; ESG; ESG Ratings; Climate Change; Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Risk and Uncertainty; Credit

SSRN

October 2022 (Revised December 2022)
Case

SMART: AI and Machine Learning for Wildlife Conservation

By: Brian Trelstad and Bonnie Yining Cao

Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART), a set of software and analytical tools designed for the purpose of wildlife conservation, had demonstrated significant improvements in patrol coverage, with some observed reductions in poaching and contributing to wildlife... View Details

Keywords: Business and Government Relations; Emerging Markets; Technology Adoption; Strategy; Management; Ethics; Social Enterprise; AI and Machine Learning; Analytics and Data Science; Natural Environment; Technology Industry; Cambodia; United States; Africa

October 2022
Case

An Heir with No Spare: The Deitch Family Office

By: Lauren Cohen and Grace Headinger

Joe and Matt Deitch, father and son, knew it was time to start their own family office. Matthew had recently joined his father at the family’s three enterprises, and they both realized that their family’s needs had grown increasingly complex over the years. In search... View Details

October–December 2022
Article

Achieving Reliable Causal Inference with Data-Mined Variables: A Random Forest Approach to the Measurement Error Problem

By: Mochen Yang, Edward McFowland III, Gordon Burtch and Gediminas Adomavicius

Combining machine learning with econometric analysis is becoming increasingly prevalent in both research and practice. A common empirical strategy involves the application of predictive modeling techniques to "mine" variables of interest from available data, followed... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning; Econometric Analysis; Instrumental Variable; Random Forest; Causal Inference; AI and Machine Learning; Forecasting and Prediction

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2022
Working Paper

Coordination and Incumbency Advantage in Multi-Party Systems: Evidence from French Elections

By: Kevin Dano, Francesco Ferlenga, Vincenzo Galasso, Caroline Le Pennec and Vincent Pons

In theory, free and fair elections can improve the selection of politicians and incentivize them to exert effort. In practice, incumbency advantage and coordination issues may lead to the (re)election of bad politicians. We ask whether these two forces compound each... View Details

Keywords: Political Parties; Incumbent Politicians; Democracy; Political Elections; Competitive Advantage