Publications

SSRN

March 2011
Teaching Note

International Lobbying and the Dow Chemical Company (TN) (A) & (B)

By: Arthur A. Daemmrich

Teaching Note for 710027 and 710028. View Details

Keywords: Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Production; Non-Governmental Organizations; Strategy; Business and Government Relations; Government Legislation; Chemical Industry

July 2009
Supplement

Who Killed Bhavani Manjula?--A Story of Microfinance in Andhra Pradesh (B)

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Katharine Lee

The (B) case updates the readers on the outcome of the situation described in the (A) case. It provides data on the growth of microfinance in the region. It introduces the possibility of tighter regulation on the industry through the passage of a "microfinance" bill. View Details

Keywords: Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Industry Growth; Microfinance; Government Legislation; Financial Services Industry; Andhra Pradesh

January 2007 (Revised August 2007)
Case

Lobbying for Love? Southwest Airlines and the Wright Amendment

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Dennis A. Yao, Libby Cantrill and Patricia Wu

The fall of 2004 brought exciting news to Love Field, the Texas headquarters of Southwest Airlines. Delta Airlines, one of Southwest's main competitors, had announced that it would dramatically decrease service from the nearby Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW)... View Details

Keywords: Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Government Legislation; Business and Government Relations; Opportunities; Competitive Advantage; Air Transportation Industry; Texas

May 2004 (Revised March 2005)
Case

SOX-POX?

By: Jay W. Lorsch

Describes the experiences of audit committee chairmen in responding to and implementing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Teaching Purpose: To help students understand the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on audit committees. View Details

Keywords: Government Legislation; Financial Reporting; Laws and Statutes; Accounting Audits

Find at Harvard

February 2017 (Revised May 2018)
Case

The Flint, Michigan Sit-Down Strike

By: Tom Nicholas, Christopher T. Stanton and Matthew Preble

For roughly six weeks between late December 1936 and February 1937, a major strike at several critical General Motors (GM) plants in Flint, Michigan, essentially halted the corporation’s U.S. production and resulted in significant gains for the nascent United... View Details

February 2016 (Revised July 2017)
Case

Leadership and Independence at the Federal Reserve

By: David Moss and Marc Campasano

“From the Great Depression, to the stagflation of the seventies, to the current economic crisis caused by the housing bubble, every economic downturn suffered by this country over the past century can be traced to Federal Reserve policy.” Ron Paul, a Republican from... View Details

Keywords: Government Legislation; Central Banking; Policy; Financial Crisis; Business and Government Relations; Banking Industry; Public Administration Industry; United States

April 2025
Case

The CHIPS Program Office (Abridged)

By: Mitch Weiss and Sebastian Negron-Reichard

In February 2023, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo weighed signing off on a Notice of Funding Opportunity (“NOFO”) with at least one unconventional provision: a pre-application (“pre-app”) to the actual application for parts of $39 billion in direct semiconductor... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Government Administration; Government Legislation; Motivation and Incentives; Semiconductor Industry; Public Administration Industry; United States

December 2007
Case

Envisioning "Free Banking" in Antebellum New York (A)

By: David A. Moss and Cole Bolton

Banks throughout New York State suspended specie payments (i.e., payments in gold and silver) in May 1837 following the collapse of several state banks and the onset of a nationwide financial panic. Amid the chaos, the upstart Whigs were able to depose the longstanding... View Details

Keywords: History; Government Legislation; Capital; Financial Crisis; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry; New York (state, US)

13 Apr 2010
First Look

First Look: April 13

five-year legislative process for a major new law regulating chemicals in the European Union appeared to be nearing its conclusion. REACH—the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals—would create a new... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

June 2023
Case

The Business of Campaigns

By: Vincent Pons and Mel Martin

In 2022, the U.S. Congress examined the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act, the latest in a long series of campaign finance reforms. According to its authors, the law would be the “most consequential overhaul of federal... View Details

Keywords: Political Elections; Government Legislation; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business and Government Relations; United States

26 Nov 2013
First Look

First Look: November 26

find significant evidence for the idea that barriers to entry induce persistence in lobbying. The existence of these costs is further confirmed in studying how firms responded to a particular policy change: the expiration of legislation... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

October 2008 (Revised June 2010)
Case

Executive Pay and the Credit Crisis of 2008 (A)

By: V.G. Narayanan, Fabrizio Ferri and Lisa Brem

The credit crisis of 2008 placed compensation practices at publicly traded firms in the United States under scrutiny. This case examines perceived excessive pay and severance packages at several firms implicated in the credit crisis of 2008, the executive compensation... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Governing and Advisory Boards; Government Legislation; Executive Compensation; United States

Forthcoming
Article

Black Empowerment and White Mobilization: The Effects of the Voting Rights Act

By: Andrea Bernini, Giovanni Facchini, Marco Tabellini and Cecilia Testa

How did southern whites respond to the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA)? Leveraging newly digitized data on county-level voter registration by race between 1956 and 1980, and exploiting pre-determined variation in exposure to the federal intervention, we document that... View Details

Keywords: Government Legislation; Race; Behavior; Voting; Prejudice and Bias

Read Now

18 Nov 2021
Op-Ed

5 Principles for Scaling Change from IBM’s High School Innovation

immediately build in a barrier because then it will only work in those kinds of schools. People also said IBM should spend a whole lot more money. But if you do that, if you look at the results, when you've spent a lot of private money, it won't sustain itself because... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

18 Mar 2014
First Look

First Look: March 18

the ratings. Our tests examine whether these forms of disclosure reflect firms' real efforts to combat corruption or are cheap talk. We find that the ratings are related to enforcement and monitoring, country and industry corruption risk, and View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2007
Working Paper

Taxes and Portfolio Choice: Evidence from JGTRRA's Treatment of International Dividends

By: Mihir A. Desai and Dhammika Dharmapala

This paper investigates how taxes influence portfolio choices by exploring the response to the distinctive treatment of foreign dividends in the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (JGTRRA). JGTRRA lowered the dividend tax rate to 15% for American equities... View Details

Keywords: Equity; Financial Markets; International Finance; Investment Portfolio; Government Legislation; Taxation; United States

February 2022 (Revised November 2022)
Case

Fondeadora

By: Álvaro Rodríguez Arregui and Mitchell Weiss

Norman Müller and René Serrano, cofounders of Fondeadora, a Mexican “neobank,” had lined up a $12.5 million in Series A funding round in 2020 only to run into a major obstacle: The lead investor was Gradient Ventures, a venture firm launched by Alphabet, Inc., and... View Details

Keywords: Fundraising; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Financial Institutions; Business Startups; Government Legislation; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Financial Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Mexico City; Latin America