Economist - Publications - Faculty & Research

16 Dec 2011
Research & Ideas

Reintroducing Intellectual Ambition to the Study of Business History

important and contentious subjects where intellectual breakthroughs are possible. 1. Entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is an area in which business historians have made important contributions, but in which most of the recent conceptual work has been done by View Details

Keywords: by Geoffrey Jones & Walter Friedman

17 Oct 2013
Research & Ideas

Reserve Bank Governor Discusses India’s Financial Opportunities

The challenges of monetary policy are not understood or documented Even amongst economists you have debates about what makes sense. Here, if Ben Bernanke raised interest rates, nobody would argue about what he was trying to achieve."... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

12 Mar 2014
Research & Ideas

Entrepreneurship and Multinationals Drive Globalization

firms in the United States to sell equipment enabling the Chinese government to censor the Web and identify political opponents. As the economist William Baumol has argued, entrepreneurship can be productive, unproductive, or destructive,... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Beauty & Cosmetics; Manufacturing; Consumer Products; Pharmaceutical

21 Nov 2006
First Look

First Look: November 21, 2006

equilibrium, belief in the "American dream" is commonplace, workers exert effort, there are high powered contracts (and income is unequally distributed) and punishments are harsh. Economists who believe that deterrence (rather... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

06 Apr 2009
Research & Ideas

Cheers to the American Consumer

Editor's Note: Harvard Business School professor John Quelch writes a blog on marketing issues, called Marketing Know: How, for Harvard Business Online. It is reprinted on HBS Working Knowledge. A recent Economist magazine includes a... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch

08 Jun 2009
Research & Ideas

The Return of the Salesman

seeing its real importance. It didn't help that economists also thought that selling was unimportant in influencing markets and that door-to-door selling declined in the United States in the final decades of the 20th century. But scholars... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

02 Sep 2015
Research & Ideas

Explaining China's Crash

economists as to what the future holds. Are we headed for a “soft landing,” a correction that can be managed so that growth, albeit at a slower pace, will continue to be solid, or are we at an inflection point and we risk a more... View Details

Keywords: by Christina Pazzanese; Financial Services

06 Aug 2007
Research & Ideas

High Hills, Deep Poverty: Explaining Civil War in Nepal

Civil wars have been the dominant form of conflict around the world since World War II, resulting in approximately 20 million deaths. But it's not just sociologists who are diving into the roots of conflict. Increasingly, economists are... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

26 Jun 2019
Research & Ideas

Why the US-China Tariff Standoff Hurts American Companies More

down in May. He teamed with prominent economists to study price data from June 2018—the month before the trade war began—to early 2019. Their work combines import and export prices at the US border, collected by the Bureau of Labor... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Retail; Manufacturing; Steel

23 Jul 2020
Research & Ideas

How Countries Use Financial Policy to Fight COVID-19

realize as a typical citizen as you're going about your daily life.” A resource for COVID researchers Even though the tracker is no longer updated live, the detailed database could serve as a great resource for a growing number of View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

09 Mar 2020
Research & Ideas

Warring Algorithms Could Be Driving Up Consumer Prices

is affecting and, in some cases, upending traditional ways of thinking about and conducting business. Historically, says MacKay, economists have tended to assume that firms have equal capacity to set prices and can therefore change their... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Retail

10 Oct 2005
Research & Ideas

Corporate Responsibility and the Environment: What is the Right Thing To Do?

fiduciary responsibilities. A second approach, by economist Paul Portney, considered whether firms can do CSR without getting hurt competitively, and whether or not they should. He concluded that they could, under limited circumstances,... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Salls

07 Dec 2015
Research & Ideas

Why Immigrant Workers Cluster in Particular Industries

Mandorff, an economist at the Swedish Competition Authority. “But there are very few facts or details to help policymakers and business leaders understand why this occurs—or whether immigrants start more businesses or create more jobs... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Transportation; Beauty & Cosmetics; Retail

24 Jul 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, July 24, 2018

success, and there can be marketplace failures. I'll discuss labor markets like the market for new economists as well as markets for new lawyers and doctors that have suffered from the unraveling of appointment dates to well before... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

03 Nov 2015
First Look

November 3, 2015

administrations are collaborating with academic economists and other quantitative social scientists to apply such rigorous methods to the study of public finance. These developments allow for more reliable measurements of the effects of... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

02 Jan 2012
Research & Ideas

Most Popular Articles of 2011

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6792.html Published: October 31, 2011 When evaluating compensation issues, economists often assume that both an employer and an employee make rational, albeit self-interested choices while working toward a goal.... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

02 Feb 2002
What Do You Think?

Will the Societal Effects of Enron Exceed Those of September 11?

case is finally litigated, we may conclude that both involved criminal behavior. The comparison of loss of life and criminal activity between the two is so forced as to appear not only insensitive but also positively asinine. —Joe Hill MIT View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

30 Jul 2024
Research & Ideas

Do Social Movements Sway Voters? Not Really, Except for One

important implications in an election year marked by widespread protests. Harvard Business School Professor Vincent Pons teamed up with Amory Gethin, a fellow economist at the World Bank Development Research Group, to study 14 major... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

14 Sep 2017
Op-Ed

Op-Ed: Google Engineer Deserved to be Fired by the CEO

feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas, a stronger interest in people rather than things, prefer jobs in social or artistic areas, extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness, and neuroticism, characterized by high anxiety and lower stress... View Details

Keywords: by Bill George

23 Jul 2024
Research & Ideas

Forgiving Medical Debt Won't Make Everyone Happier

should focus their efforts on helping people with debt before they go through the stress of the collections process, he says. “We were optimistic that it could nevertheless have a cost-effective impact.” “An economist might not be that... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Health

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