Publications

2022
Article

Alleviating Time Poverty Among the Working Poor: A Pre-Registered Longitudinal Field Experiment

By: A.V. Whillans and Colin West

Poverty entails more than a scarcity of material resources—it also involves a shortage of time. To examine the causal benefits of reducing time poverty, we conducted a longitudinal feld experiment over six consecutive weeks in an urban slum in Kenya with a sample of... View Details

Keywords: Time; Subjective Well Being; Administrative Costs; Friction; Poverty; Well-being; Money; Perception; Kenya

November 2021 (Revised November 2023)
Case

Hitting Home: Amazon and Mary's Place

By: Paul M. Healy, Debora L. Spar and Amy Klopfenstein

In 2020, Amazon, the $386 billion online retail behemoth, built an eight-story shelter for women and families experiencing homelessness on its expanding headquarters in Seattle, Washington. The shelter, operated in partnership with a non-profit organization known as... View Details

Keywords: Business Ethics; Homelessness; Business And Society; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Social Issues; Corporate Accountability; Urban Development; Society; Information Technology; Ethics; Technology Industry; Seattle; United States; North America

08 Dec 2015
First Look

December 8, 2015

Big Cities: The Promises and Limitations of Improved Measures of Urban Life By: Glaeser, Edward L., Scott Duke Kominers, Michael Luca, and Nikhil Naik Abstract—New, "big" data sources allow measurement of city characteristics... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

July 2020 (Revised November 2020)
Case

Gera Developments: Leadership at a Crossroads

By: Christina R. Wing and John Masko

For decades, Gera Developments (Gera) was a boutique family-owned real estate development firm in Pune, India. But since 2000, managing director Rohit Gera had turned the company into a dynamic innovator in housing solutions for urban Indian families. Over the 2010s,... View Details

Keywords: Buildings and Facilities; Business Growth and Maturation; Construction; Geographic Location; Global Strategy; Globalized Firms and Management; Housing; Leadership Style; Management Succession; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Family Ownership; Family and Family Relationships; Urban Development; Customization and Personalization; Real Estate Industry; Maharashtra; India; United States

September 2024
Article

Investing in the Next Generation: The Long-Run Impacts of a Liquidity Shock

By: Patrick Agte, Arielle Bernhardt, Erica M. Field, Rohini Pande and Natalia Rigol

How do poor entrepreneurs trade off investments in business enterprises versus children's human capital, and how do these choices influence intergenerational socio-economic mobility? To examine this, we exploit experimental variation in household income resulting from... View Details

Keywords: Socio-economic Mobility; Entrepreneurship; Education; Income; Literacy; Poverty

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January 2008 (Revised September 2009)
Case

Financing American Housing Construction in the Aftermath of War

By: David Moss and Cole Bolton

At the start of WWI, the United States faced a significant housing shortage. Public officials feared the spread of disease—and even communism—in the nation's cramped urban centers where vacancy rates held near zero and families often "doubled up" in single-housing... View Details

Keywords: Central Banking; Bonds; Mortgages; Government Legislation; Business History; Housing; Banking Industry; United States

December 1996 (Revised June 1997)
Case

Trinity College (A)

By: F. Warren McFarlan and Jaan Elias

Trinity College was an elite, private, liberal-arts college of some 1,800 students located in Hartford, CT. When Tom Gerety was chosen as Trinity's 17th president in 1989, he pledged to stay for ten years. Now less than five years at the job, Gerety announced he was... View Details

Keywords: Higher Education; Crisis Management; Management Succession; Planning; Social Enterprise; Education Industry; Connecticut

May 2024
Article

Housing Policies and Energy Efficiency Spillovers in Low and Moderate Income Communities

By: Omar Isaac Asensio, Olga Churkina, Becky D. Rafter and Kira E O'Hare

Housing policies address the human dimensions of increasing urban density, but their energy and sustainability implications are hard to measure due to challenges with siloed civic data. This is especially critical when evaluating policies targeting low- and... View Details

Keywords: Energy Efficiency; Public Policy; Climate Change; Energy Conservation; Housing; Analytics and Data Science; Policy; Income; Environmental Sustainability; Real Estate Industry; United States

16 May 2016
HBS Seminar

Jared Curhan, MIT Sloan School of Management

16 Jul 2013
First Look

First Look: July 16

http://hbr.org/2013/07/six-ways-to-sink-a-growth-initiative/ar/1 2013 pub Building Sustainable Cities By: Macomber, John D Abstract—By 2050 the number of people living in cities will have nearly doubled, to 6 billion, and the problems created by this rampant View Details

Keywords: Anna Secino

Web

Great American Business Leaders of the 20th Century - Leadership

to northern cities Influence: Medium-High 20 1920 19 Population of urban centers overtakes that of rural communities Tight immigration restrictions Increase in divorce rates Influence: Medium-Low 30 1930 19 Westward migration of... View Details

May 2021
Teaching Plan

Gera Developments: Leadership at a Crossroads

By: Christina R. Wing and John Masko

Teaching Plan for HBS Case No. 621-018. For decades, Gera Developments (Gera) was a boutique family-owned real estate development firm in Pune, India. But since 2000, managing director Rohit Gera had turned the company into a dynamic innovator in housing solutions for... View Details

Keywords: Buildings and Facilities; Business Growth and Maturation; Construction; Geographic Location; Global Strategy; Globalized Firms and Management; Housing; Leadership Style; Management Succession; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Family Ownership; Family and Family Relationships; Urban Development; Customization and Personalization; Real Estate Industry; Maharashtra; India; San Francisco

23 Jan 2024
Research & Ideas

How to Keep Employees Productive: Support Caregivers

workers; transportation subsidies might not matter to remote employees. Shrewd organizations tailor benefits to workers’ roles and demographics. An essential frontline urban worker needs different support than a remote, rural one. Audit... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

Article

Navigating Talent Hot Spots

By: William R. Kerr

Innovation clusters like San Francisco and Boston have long had an outsize impact on the global economy, and their influence keeps growing. In 2017, for instance, America’s ten largest tech hubs accounted for 58% of U.S. patents. Globally, cities such as Tokyo, Paris,... View Details

Keywords: Talent and Talent Management; Innovation and Invention; Urban Scope; Industry Clusters; Innovation and Management

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2019
Working Paper

Biometric Monitoring, Service Delivery and Misreporting: Evidence from Healthcare in India

By: Thomas Bossuroy, Clara Delavallade and Vincent Pons

Developing countries increasingly use biometric identification technology in hopes of improving the reliability of administrative information and delivering social services more efficiently. This paper exploits the random placement of biometric tracking devices in... View Details

Keywords: Biometric Technology; Health Care and Treatment; Technological Innovation; Analytics and Data Science; Quality; Performance Improvement; India

September 2014
Case

FormPrint Ortho500

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Alisa Zalosh

The Senior Vice President of FormPrint's Medical Products business unit is considering issues raised by the upcoming introduction of a new 3D printing system, the Ortho500, which could print custom exoskeletal orthopedic splints, braces, and casts that conformed to a... View Details

Keywords: B2B Marketing; Technological Innovation; Market Entry and Exit; Marketing Strategy; Distribution Channels; Product Development; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

2007
Chapter

Beyond Dependence: Conceptualizing Information and Accountability in NGO-Funder Relations

By: Alnoor Ebrahim

This paper explores the linkages between information systems and accountability in nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations (NGOs). The information systems in four NGOs are introduced: two Indian NGOs engaged in natural resource management and rural development, an... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Corporate Accountability; Information Management; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Non-Governmental Organizations; Information Technology; India; District of Columbia

Article

Health Equity, Schooling Hesitancy, and the Social Determinants of Learning

By: Meira Levinson, Alan C. Geller, Joseph G. Allen and John D. Macomber

At least 62 million K-12 students in North America—disproportionately low-income children of color— have been physically out of school for over a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These children are at risk of significant academic, social, mental, and physical harm... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Public Health; Air Quality; Social Determinants Of Health; Schooling Hesitancy; Vaccine Hesitancy; Racial Injustice; Inequity; Inequality; Health Pandemics; Education; Health Care and Treatment; Policy; Race; Equality and Inequality