Publications

Educators

September 2017 (Revised August 2018)
Case

The Productivity Decline: Demographics, Robots, or Globalization?

By: Laura Alfaro, Hayley Pallan and Sarah Jeong

In the early 21st century, there was a noticeable trend of declining productivity growth. Despite the persistent decline in productivity growth, a consensus on its explanation had not been reached. Some of the debate focused on the technicalities of productivity... View Details

Keywords: Productivity; Performance Productivity; Measurement and Metrics; Technological Innovation; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Globalization; Business and Government Relations

Educators

2011
Working Paper

From Counting Risk to Making Risk Count: Boundary-Work in Risk Management

By: Anette Mikes

For two decades, risk management has been gaining ground in banking. In light of the recent financial crisis, several commentators concluded that the continuing expansion of risk measurement is dysfunctional (Taleb, 2007; Power, 2009). This paper asks whether the... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Financial Crisis; Risk Management; Measurement and Metrics; Organizational Culture; Situation or Environment; Banking Industry

January – March 2012
Article

Bond Risk, Bond Return Volatility, and the Term Structure of Interest Rates

By: Luis M. Viceira

This paper explores time variation in bond risk, as measured by the covariation of bond returns with stock returns and with consumption growth, and in the volatility of bond returns. A robust stylized fact in empirical finance is that the spread between the yield on... View Details

Keywords: Bonds; Volatility; Forecasting and Prediction; Interest Rates; Inflation and Deflation; Investment Return; Risk and Uncertainty; Currency Exchange Rate; Cash Flow; Stocks

Find at Harvard

2024
Working Paper

Corporate Culture Homogeneity and Top Executive Incentive Design: Evidence from CEO Compensation Contracts

By: Dennis Campbell, Ruidi Shang and Zhifang Zhang

We examine how corporate cultures characterized by high degrees of homogeneity in the underlying values and beliefs of organizational members are related to the design of CEO incentive compensation contracts. We argue that culture homogeneity within firms lowers... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Culture; Compensation Design; Accounting; Management Control; Incentive Systems; Organizational Culture; Job Design and Levels; Governance; Executive Compensation; Motivation and Incentives

2012
Working Paper

School Accountability and Principal Mobility: How No Child Left Behind Affects the Allocation of School Leaders

By: Danielle Li

The move toward increased school accountability may substantially affect the career risks that school leaders face without providing commensurate changes in pay. Since effective school leaders likely have significant scope in choosing where to work, these uncompensated... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Corporate Accountability; Education; North Carolina

2015
Chapter

The Fourth Wave: Business Management and Business Education in the Age of the Anthropocene

By: Andrew J. Hoffman and John Ehrenfeld

Sustainability has become mainstream in both management practice and management research. Firms incorporate sustainability strategies into their core mission. University administrators promote sustainability as central to their curricula. Scholars pursue sustainability... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Social Issues; Natural Environment; Leading Change; Management Systems

Find at Harvard

29 May 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, May 29, 2018

more sensitive to losses than gains in terms of economic growth? We find that measures of subjective well-being are more than twice as sensitive to negative as compared to positive View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

25 Jul 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas: July 25, 2017

experience physical improvements? In this paper, we introduce a computer vision method to measure changes in the physical appearances of neighborhoods from time-series street-level imagery. We connect changes in the physical appearance of... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

03 Jun 2008
First Look

First Look: June 3, 2008

Working PapersAccountability and Inequality in Single-Party Regimes: A Comparative Analysis of Vietnam and China Authors:Regina Abrami, Edmund Malesky, and Yu Zheng Abstract Over the past two decades, no two economies have averaged more rapid View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2013
Working Paper

Learning from Double-Digit Growth Experiences

By: Eric D. Werker

This extended memorandum identifies episodes of sustained double-digit growth in real GDP, defined as a compound annual growth rate of 10 percent or more over a period of 8 years or longer. Using a measure of real GDP reported in the World Development Indicators, we... View Details

Keywords: Growth; Liberia

September 2017
Teaching Note

The Productivity Decline: Demographics, Robots, or Globalization?

By: Laura Alfaro and Hayley Pallan

In the early 21st century, there was a noticeable trend of declining productivity growth. Despite the persistent decline in productivity growth, a consensus on its explanation had not been reached. Some of the debate focused on the technicalities of productivity... View Details

Keywords: Performance Productivity; Measurement and Metrics; Technological Innovation; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Globalization; Business and Government Relations

Research Summary

Overview

ECONOMICS OF THE ADVERTISING AND MARKETING SERVICEC INDUSTRY

Professor Silk’s recent research has been focused on the economics of the advertising and marketing services industry. He has conducted econometric studies of the effects of scale and scope on the... View Details

14 Apr 2021
Research & Ideas

The High Cost of the Slow COVID Vaccine Rollout

Associate Professor of Business Administration at HBS. “You are losing hundreds of billions in raw economic activity each month—and that’s not even accounting for all the other forms of loss the pandemic has caused. So you can put a lot... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health

2012
Teaching Note

ChemChina (TN)

By: F. Warren McFarlan, Donghong Li, Lei Li and Hong Zhang

ChemChina is China's largest basic chemical manufacturing firm. It was included in Fortune Global 500 in 2011 and 2012, ranked No. 475 and 402. Its sales revenue in 2011 was 179 billion yuan, and profit was 600 million yuan. The year-end total assets were 254.2 billion... View Details

Keywords: Reorganization; Strategy; China; China

Article

Healthy Buildings in 2070

By: John D. Macomber and Joseph G. Allen

Fifty years seems a very long time in the future for most industries. Not so in buildings and real estate; built structures routinely last decades if not hundreds of years, as long as they are economically competitive. Any discussion of the 50-year future has to... View Details

Keywords: Health ＆ Wellness; Real Estate; Architectural Innovation; Public Health; Health; Buildings and Facilities; Well-being

2012
Case

ChemChina

By: F. Warren McFarlan, Donghong Li, Lei Li and Hong Zhang

ChemChina is China's largest basic chemical manufacturing firm. It was included in Fortune Global 500 in 2011 and 2012, ranked No. 475 and 402. Its sales revenue in 2011 was 179 billion yuan, and profit was 600 million yuan. The year-end total assets were 254.2 billion... View Details

Keywords: Reorganization; Strategy; China; China

June 2015 (Revised January 2017)
Case

Greece's Debt: Sustainable?

By: George Serafeim

The case "Greece's Debt: Sustainable?" describes the Greek economic crisis, bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the debt restructuring that followed. Because of a lack of trust in Greece's ability to repay its debt, two... View Details

Keywords: Debt Crisis; Accounting; Debt Sustainability; Austerity; Solvency Opinions; Borrowing and Debt; Restructuring; Valuation; Accrual Accounting; Fair Value Accounting; Economy; Greece

Educators

Stefan Thomke (sthomke@hbs.edu), an authority on the management of innovation, is the William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He has worked with firms on product, process, and... View Details

2025
Working Paper

Exports in Disguise? Trade Rerouting During the U.S.-China Trade War

By: Ebehi Iyoha, Edmund Malesky, Jaya Wen and Sung-Ju Wu

This paper introduces a new measure of tariff evasion through rerouting and applies it to the 2018 U.S.–China trade war, focusing on Vietnam as a transit country. We use transaction-level trade data and define rerouting as the flow of a granular eight-digit Harmonized... View Details

Keywords: Trade; International Relations; Logistics; China; Viet Nam; United States