Economist - Publications - Faculty & Research

15 Aug 2016
Research & Ideas

Black Swans and Big Trends Can Ruin Anyone's Internet Prediction

skepticism, are beginning to overdose. The bust likes to think of itself as a radical departure from the boom, but it has in common with it one big thing: a mob mentality.” Likewise, the economist Charles Kindleberger, in his seminal 1978... View Details

Keywords: by Thomas R. Eisenmann; Technology

05 Nov 2014
What Do You Think?

Are We Entering an Era of Neuromanagement?

that people tend to devalue long-term returns in relation to short-term gains. They tend not to buy and sell according to self-set rules. A person willing to pay up to $200 for a ticket to a sporting event is not, once he owns it, willing to sell it at any price above... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

19 Jul 2006
Research & Ideas

Political Turmoil and Mexico’s Economy

without having their economies fall apart. On average, such countries don't do nearly as well as liberal democracies; but there's still a mystery in that they're not doing as badly as the economists and political scientists would have... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

17 Sep 2001
Research & Ideas

Why E-commerce Didn’t Die With the Fall of Webvan

they lack the glamour and the smell of revolution that was associated with these garage-based startups. To an economist or to someone from Mars or to someone studying the phenomenon, they should be just as interesting. But because they... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Consumer Products; 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

29 Oct 2008
Research & Ideas

The Next Marketing Challenge: Selling to ’Simplifiers’

more goods as their net worth increases. Their increasing reluctance to consume will dampen expected demand growth in developed economies further and therefore slow economic recovery, requiring consumer-goods multinationals to further focus their efforts on emerging... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch; Retail; Consumer Products; Entertainment & Recreation

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

10 Nov 2015
First Look

November 10, 2015

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 different policy... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

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

23 May 2019
Book

These Entrepreneurs Take a Pragmatic Approach to Solving Social Problems

In 1908, Harvard Business School’s first dean, Edwin Francis Gay, welcomed the School’s inaugural class of 59 students by saying that HBS was challenged with encouraging its students to have the “intellectual respect for business as a profession, with the social... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Green Technology

28 Jun 2016
First Look

June 28, 2016

jurists, including Louis Brandeis and institutional economist E.R.A. Seligman, supported RPM as a protection to independent proprietors. The breakdown of legal and economic consensus regarding what constituted “unfair competition” allowed... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

20 Jan 2010
First Look

First Look: Jan. 20

Decentralize? Authors:Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun, and John Van Reenen Abstract There is a widespread sense that over the last two decades firms have been decentralizing decisions to employees further down the managerial hierarchy. View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

24 Jul 2019
Lessons from the Classroom

Can These Business Students Motivate Londoners to Do the Right Thing?

economists working to solve problems. Retailers such as Walmart are also putting together behavioral teams. New frameworks are continuing to develop, and the broader use of behavioral economics has continued to scale at an impressive... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

23 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

The Gulf: It’s a Family Affair

Davis Goes To Hbs I was originally trained in economics, getting my undergraduate and Masters degrees in this field. I was working in Boston as an economist in my early twenties and realized that I really liked psychology—and family... View Details

Keywords: by Wendy Guild & Andrea Schulman

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

11 Sep 2019
Research & Ideas

Germany May Have the Answer for Reducing Drug Prices

on performance, a step toward what health economists call “value-based pricing.” “The implication for German health insurers—and indirectly, consumers—has been millions of euros in savings on drug spending, without any evidence so far of... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Health

29 May 2013
Research & Ideas

Faculty Symposium Showcases Breadth of Research

Employee theft and fraud: $600 billion. "The costs to business and society are striking," she said. Gino, an associate professor and behavioral economist at HBS, studies ethical decision making and the psychology of moral... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Financial Services

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

Publications