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Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(1,976)
- People (1)
- News (389)
- Research (1,061)
- Events (13)
- Multimedia (8)
- Faculty Publications (460)
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- 2004
- Working Paper
Are Perks Purely Managerial Excess?
By: Raghuram G. Rajan and Julie Wulf
Why do some firms tend to offer executives a variety of perks while others offer none at all? A widespread view in the corporate finance literature is that executive perks are a form of agency or private benefit and a way for managers to misappropriate some of the... View Details
Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Performance Productivity; Executive Compensation; Corporate Finance
Rajan, Raghuram G., and Julie Wulf. "Are Perks Purely Managerial Excess?" NBER Working Paper Series, No. 10494, May 2004. (Published in Journal of Financial Economics 2006.)
- 28 Aug 2023
- Research & Ideas
The Clock Is Ticking: 3 Ways to Manage Your Time Better
several reasons. First, when employees perceive meetings as a waste of time, job satisfaction declines, which then leads to a general fall in happiness. Second, pointless meetings also generally increase fatigue and our subjective sense... View Details
Keywords: by Kristen Senz
- Research Summary
Managing Financial Reporting and the Effect on Firms' Costs of Capital
Amy P. Hutton's research investigates the impact of capital market forces and firm contracts on financial reporting and disclosure policies. Specifically, her research examines how managers use financial reporting to convey a firm's strategy, and the effect of... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Unwinding Loan Prospecting Pressure Through Renegotiation: The Role of Loan Officer Changes in Debt Contracting
By: Jung Koo Kang, Regina Wittenberg Moerman and Jessie Cheong
We examine the impact of loan officer changes on debt contract design. Loan officers play a critical role in initiating and maintaining lending relationships but also face pressure to originate more loans, incentivizing them to offer loan terms more favorable than... View Details
Keywords: Financing and Loans; Borrowing and Debt; Contracts; Negotiation; Motivation and Incentives
Kang, Jung Koo, Regina Wittenberg Moerman, and Jessie Cheong. "Unwinding Loan Prospecting Pressure Through Renegotiation: The Role of Loan Officer Changes in Debt Contracting." Working Paper, March 2025.
- Summer 2021
- Article
The Origin and Development of Firm Management
By: Michela Giorcelli
This paper examines the historical origin and diffusion of management practices. Despite their centrality in the modern world, the concepts of ‘management’ developed fairly recently. Only with the Industrial Revolution, due to the increased firm size, owners needed a... View Details
Keywords: Productivity; Kaizen; Management; Management Practices and Processes; History; Performance Productivity; Technology
Giorcelli, Michela. "The Origin and Development of Firm Management." Oxford Review of Economic Policy 37, no. 2 (Summer 2021): 259–275.
- November 2020
- Article
When the Boss Comes to Town: The Effects of Headquarters' Visits on Facility-Level Misconduct
By: Jonas Heese and Gerardo Pérez Cavazos
We study the effects of headquarters’ visits on facility-level misconduct. We use the staggered introduction of airline routes to identify exogenous travel-time reductions between headquarters and facilities and test whether such reductions affect facility-level... View Details
Keywords: Corporate Misconduct; Visits By Management; Flight Routes; Control Systems; Compliance Programs; Performance Pressure; Business or Company Management; Management Systems; Governance Controls; Governance Compliance; Performance Expectations
Heese, Jonas, and Gerardo Pérez Cavazos. "When the Boss Comes to Town: The Effects of Headquarters' Visits on Facility-Level Misconduct." Accounting Review 95, no. 6 (November 2020): 235–261.
- 2019
- Working Paper
Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 16 Capturing Value by Controlling Bottlenecks in Open Platform Systems
The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the means by which firms capture value in open platform systems. I begin by arguing that the surplus value created by complementarities within a technical system will be split among the owners of the unique and essential... View Details
Keywords: Open Platforms; Bottlenecks; Flow Production; Value Capture; Disintermediation; Production; Management; Digital Platforms
Baldwin, Carliss Y. "Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 16 Capturing Value by Controlling Bottlenecks in Open Platform Systems." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-054, November 2019.
- July 2019
- Article
The Impact of Price Regulation on the Availability of New Drugs in Germany
By: Ariel Dora Stern, Felicitas Pietrulla, Annika Herr, Aaron S. Kesselheim and Ameet Sarpatwari
The 2011 German Pharmaceutical Market Restructuring Act (“AMNOG”) subjected branded, non-rare disease drugs to price regulation based on an assessment of their clinical benefit. Assessment outcomes range from “major added benefit” to “less benefit than the appropriate... View Details
Keywords: Regulation; Pharmaceuticals; Healthcare; Health Care and Treatment; Price; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Pharmaceutical Industry; Germany
Stern, Ariel Dora, Felicitas Pietrulla, Annika Herr, Aaron S. Kesselheim, and Ameet Sarpatwari. "The Impact of Price Regulation on the Availability of New Drugs in Germany." Health Affairs 38, no. 7 (July 2019): 1182–1187.
- Research Summary
Formulating technology commercialization strategies
Even if young organizations succeed in acquiring the specialized talent necessary to further develop a recently-discovered technology, they may face an uncertain path in commercializing the original invention. Initial conceptions of what might constitute a useful... View Details
- Article
Populism and the Return of the 'Paranoid Style': Some Evidence and a Simple Model of Demand for Incompetence as Insurance against Elite Betrayal
By: Rafael Di Tella and Julio J. Rotemberg
We present a simple model of populism as the rejection of “disloyal” leaders. We show that adding the assumption that people are worse off when they experience low income as a result of leader betrayal (than when it is the result of bad luck) to a simple voter choice... View Details
Di Tella, Rafael, and Julio J. Rotemberg. "Populism and the Return of the 'Paranoid Style': Some Evidence and a Simple Model of Demand for Incompetence as Insurance against Elite Betrayal." Journal of Comparative Economics 46, no. 4 (December 2018): 988–1005.
- September 2015
- Article
Banks as Patient Fixed-Income Investors
By: Samuel G. Hanson, Andrei Shleifer, Jeremy C. Stein and Robert W. Vishny
We examine the business model of traditional commercial banks when they compete with shadow banks. While both types of intermediaries create safe "money-like" claims, they go about this in different ways. Traditional banks create money-like claims by holding illiquid... View Details
Hanson, Samuel G., Andrei Shleifer, Jeremy C. Stein, and Robert W. Vishny. "Banks as Patient Fixed-Income Investors." Journal of Financial Economics 117, no. 3 (September 2015): 449–469. (Internet Appendix Here.)
- May 2014
- Article
Observation Bias: The Impact of Demand Censoring on Newsvendor Level and Adjustment Behavior
By: Nils Rudi and David Drake
In an experimental newsvendor setting we investigate three phenomena: level behavior—the decision-maker's average ordering tendency; adjustment behavior—the tendency to adjust period-to-period order quantities; and observation bias—the tendency to... View Details
Rudi, Nils, and David Drake. "Observation Bias: The Impact of Demand Censoring on Newsvendor Level and Adjustment Behavior." Management Science 60, no. 5 (May 2014): 1334–1345.
- February 2025
- Tutorial
Preparing Business Leaders for an Era of Climate Instability: Understanding and Managing Physical Climate Risk
By: Michael W. Toffel and Spencer Glendon
In this compelling video, Spencer Glendon, founder of Probable Futures and Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School, describes the profound implications of climate change for businesses, the economy, and societies around the world. Drawing from his background in... View Details
- July–August 2022
- Article
How Do Disadvantaged Groups Seek Information about Public Services? A Randomized Controlled Trial of Communication Technologies
By: Katerina Linos, Melissa Carlson, Laura Jakli, Nadia Dalma, Isabelle Cohen, Afroditi Veloudaki and Stavros Nikiforos Spyrellis
Governments and NGOs are switching to phone- and Internet-based communication technologies to reduce costs and broaden access to public services. However, these technological shifts can backfire if they exacerbate administrative burden in high-need communities. We... View Details
Linos, Katerina, Melissa Carlson, Laura Jakli, Nadia Dalma, Isabelle Cohen, Afroditi Veloudaki, and Stavros Nikiforos Spyrellis. "How Do Disadvantaged Groups Seek Information about Public Services? A Randomized Controlled Trial of Communication Technologies." Public Administration Review 82, no. 4 (July–August 2022): 708–720.
- 2023
- Working Paper
Cognitive Uncertainty in Intertemporal Choice
By: Benjamin Enke and Thomas Graeber
This paper studies the relevance of cognitive uncertainty – subjective uncertainty over one's utility-maximizing action – for understanding and predicting intertemporal choice. The main idea is that when people are cognitively noisy, such as when a decision is complex,... View Details
Keywords: Cognitive Uncertainty; Intertemporal Choice; Cognition and Thinking; Complexity; Decision Choices and Conditions
Enke, Benjamin, and Thomas Graeber. "Cognitive Uncertainty in Intertemporal Choice." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 29577, December 2021. (R&R at The Quarterly Journal of Economics.)
- 2020
- Working Paper
Dog Eat Dog: Balancing Network Effects and Differentiation in a Digital Platform Merger
By: Chiara Farronato, Jessica Fong and Andrey Fradkin
Digital platforms are increasingly the subject of regulatory scrutiny. In comparison to multiple competitors, a single platform may increase consumer welfare if network effects are large or may decrease welfare due to higher prices or reduction in platform variety. We... View Details
Keywords: Platform Differentiation; Digital Platforms; Network Effects; Measurement and Metrics; Mergers and Acquisitions; Outcome or Result
Farronato, Chiara, Jessica Fong, and Andrey Fradkin. "Dog Eat Dog: Balancing Network Effects and Differentiation in a Digital Platform Merger." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 28047, November 2020.
- February 2014
- Article
Gender Differences in Willingness to Guess
We present the results of an experiment that explores whether women are less willing than men to guess on multiple-choice tests. Our test consists of practice questions from SAT II subject tests; we vary whether a penalty is imposed for a wrong answer and the salience... View Details
Keywords: Behavioral Decision Making; Microeconomic Behavior; Education Systems; Behavior; Decision Choices and Conditions; Gender; Economics
Coffman, Katherine Baldiga. "Gender Differences in Willingness to Guess." Management Science 60, no. 2 (February 2014): 434–448.
- Article
The Impact of Intangibles on Firm Growth
By: Stefano Denicolai, E. Cotta Ramusino and F. Sotti
Persuading users to try new technologies continues to be a problem confronting organisations and technology vendors alike. To better understand the process of new technology trial and adoption, several theoretical models have been proposed, of which the Technology... View Details
Denicolai, Stefano, E. Cotta Ramusino, and F. Sotti. "The Impact of Intangibles on Firm Growth." Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 27, no. 2 (2015): 219–236.
- 2011
- Working Paper
Divide and Rule or the Rule of the Divided? Evidence from Africa
By: Stelios Michalopoulos and Elias Papaioannou
We investigate jointly the importance of contemporary country-level institutional structures and local ethnic-specific pre-colonial institutions in shaping comparative regional development in Africa. We utilize information on the spatial distribution of African... View Details
Michalopoulos, Stelios, and Elias Papaioannou. "Divide and Rule or the Rule of the Divided? Evidence from Africa." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 17184, June 2011.
- Article
Power, Competitiveness, and Advice Taking: Why the Powerful Don't Listen
By: L. P. Tost, F. Gino and R. Larrick
Four experiments test the prediction that feelings of power lead individuals to discount advice received from both experts and novices. Experiment 1 documents a negative relationship between subjective feelings of power and use of advice. Experiments 2 and 3 further... View Details
Tost, L. P., F. Gino, and R. Larrick. "Power, Competitiveness, and Advice Taking: Why the Powerful Don't Listen." Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 117, no. 1 (January 2012): 53–65.