Publications

February 2009 (Revised February 2022)
Case

Fannie Mae: Public or Private?

By: David A. Moss, Cole Bolton and Kimberly Hagan

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan established the President's Commission on Privatization to identify federal government functions that could be shifted to the private sector. One agency that the Commission considered was the Federal National Mortgage Association, or... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Financial Institutions; Mortgages; Government and Politics; Business History; Privatization; Private Sector; Laws and Statutes; United States

01 Mar 2005
News

Turkish Delight

BYFORD: Changing careers is well worth the effort. Grenville Byford (MBA ’79) was practical when he decided to pursue his interest in international relations. “Unless your name is Kissinger, you have to specialize in a particular area of the world,” he says. “As a... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; Executive, Legislative, and Other General Government Support; Executive, Legislative, and Other General Government Support

23 Mar 2011
Research & Ideas

China’s 60-Year Road from Revolution to World Power

at mid-century was that the Republican era had been a political interregnum, without a functioning central government, an interregnum called to an end by the New China of the Chinese Communist Party. China's central governments were... View Details

Keywords: by William C. Kirby

2019
Working Paper

Southern Responses to Gold Certification: Cooperate, Compete, Reject, Revise

By: Kristin Sippl

Artisanal gold mining is a Southern subsistence livelihood posing both challenges and opportunities for sustainable development. In 2011, Fairtrade International launched a certification program to address sustainability problems in the sector. Southern activists,... View Details

Keywords: Eco-labeling; Extractive Industries; Emerging Economies; Fair Trade; Environmental Sustainability; Standards; Programs; Governance Compliance; Competition; Adaptation; Mining Industry

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22 Nov 2023
News

So You Want to Join a Startup

Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe on Spotify More Skydeck episodes Dan Morrell: At age 29, Gus Bessalel (MBA 1988) decided to leave consulting for a decidedly less glamorous life as an entrepreneur, working out of a storage room in the bowels of an underground hotel... View Details

21 Feb 2018
Research & Ideas

When a Competitor Abandons the Market, Should You Advance or Retreat?

test results, changing market conditions, deteriorating financials of the host company, or escalating project costs. Krieger chose to focus on drug development, in part, because in the United States companies follow a well-defined, three-phase approval process View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Pharmaceutical; Health

April 2007
Case

Microfinance in Bolivia: A Meeting with the President of the Republic

By: Michael Chu

Herbert Muller, chair of leading microfinance bank BancoSol, has met with Evo Morales one year after the populist leader's inauguration as president of Bolivia and proceeds to write an email to his fellow board directors. The bank is world famous for pioneering... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Race; Government Administration; Business and Government Relations; Microfinance; Poverty; Interest Rates; Banks and Banking; Financial Services Industry; Bolivia; South America

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March 2019 (Revised June 2019)
Case

Global Sourcing at Nike

By: Nien-hê Hsieh, Michael W. Toffel and Olivia Hull

This case explores the evolution of Nike’s global product sourcing strategy, in particular ongoing efforts to improve working conditions at its suppliers’ factories. When the case opens in July 2018, Vice President of Sourcing Amanda Tucker and her colleagues in Nike’s... View Details

October 2012
Teaching Note

Liberia (TN)

By: Eric Werker and Ian Cornell

From 1989 to 2003 civil war raged in Liberia, causing GDP per capita to drop an unprecedented 90% from peak to trough. The roots of Liberia's conflict and economic decline are complex and intertwined, resting on over a century of discriminatory elite rule and twisted... View Details

Keywords: Transition; Economic Systems; War; Economy; Government and Politics; Liberia

Web

Events - Business History

Loathe Government and Love the Free Market" Organized by Geoff Jones and Kwelina Thompson Seminar meets on Zoom. Oct 23 23 Oct 2023 Business History Seminar: Business, Society, and the Environment Ann-Kristin Bergquist (Uppsala... View Details

2012
Working Paper

Big BRICs, Weak Foundations: The Beginning of Public Elementary Education in Brazil, Russia, India, and China

By: Latika Chaudhary, Aldo Musacchio, Steven Nafziger and Se Yan

Our paper provides a comparative perspective on the development of public primary education in four of the largest developing economies circa 1910: Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC). These four countries encompassed more than 50% of the world's population in 1910,... View Details

Keywords: History; Middle School Education; Data and Data Sets; Residency; Integration; Perspective; Surveys; Geographic Location; Welfare or Wellbeing; Government and Politics; Developing Countries and Economies; Growth and Development; China; India; Brazil; Russia

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14 Aug 2007
First Look

First Look: August 14, 2007

prompting a takeover, than at engaging in long-term corporate governance or operating issues. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/08-004.pdf Correlated Equilibrium and Nash Equilibrium as an Observer's Assessment of the... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Web

FAQ - Alumni

recognizes alumni and friends who make planned gifts to HBS. It was named in honor of the late John C. Whitehead (MBA 1947), a visionary business leader, government official, and philanthropist. How old do I need to be to make a planned... View Details

Web

Confronting Climate Change - Business & Environment

segments of the business community have opposed government action on climate change. More recently, some companies have begun advocating for government policies to address climate change. Electricity... View Details

17 Nov 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Network Effects in Countries’ Adoption of IFRS

Keywords: by Karthik Ramanna & Ewa Sletten

Teaching

Overview

By: John D. Macomber

Teaching and research interests center around the matching of private and instituional capital into large public infrastructure and resilience projects that shape the future of cities and urban environments around the world. The world's population is increaslingly... View Details

Winter 2019
Article

Value-based Health Care: Lessons for the Anesthesiologist

By: J.A. Martin, B.L. Potter, T.F. Flanagan and T.W. Feeley

At one point or another in our life, we all become consumers of the health care industry. Indeed, health care affects everyone and encompasses a diverse set of services from childbirth, to illness prevention, to the management of chronic disease and end-of-life care.... View Details

Keywords: Value-based Health Care; Anesthesiologists; Health Care and Treatment; Value; Cost Management; Problems and Challenges; Health Industry; United States

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April 2019 (Revised October 2021)
Case

The Rohingya Refugee: Past, Genocide, Future

By: Reshmaan N. Hussam

In August 2017, the Myanmar military commenced a brutal pogrom of the Rohingya minority in Rakhine State, Myanmar. The genocidal campaign marked the most recent and decisive of a series of ethnic cleansing efforts fueled by contention around race, religion, and... View Details

Keywords: War; Ethnicity; Race; Religion; Identity; Change; Resource Allocation; Social Issues; Myanmar; Africa; Bangladesh

Article

Learning from Potentially Biased Statistics: Household Inflation Perceptions and Expectations in Argentina

By: Alberto Cavallo, Guillermo Cruces and Ricardo Perez-Truglia

When forming expectations, households may be influenced by perceived bias in the information they receive. In this paper, we study how individuals learn from potentially biased statistics using data from both a natural experiment and a survey experiment during a... View Details

Keywords: Inflation Expectations; Bayesian Estimation; Inflation and Deflation; Information; Household; Behavior; Argentina