Publications

SSRN

12 Oct 2017
HBS Seminar

Benjamin Marx, MIT

2024
Working Paper

Trade Policy in the Shadow of Conflict: The Case of Dual-use Goods

By: Maxim Alekseev and Xinyue Lin

Policymakers increasingly use trade instruments to address national security concerns. This paper studies optimal policy for dual-use goods, items with both military and civilian applications. We begin by documenting that regulation and trade flows of dual-use goods... View Details

Keywords: Policy; National Security; Trade; Taxation; Financial Instruments; Macroeconomics

2021
Working Paper

Granular Corporate Hedging Under Dominant Currency

By: Laura Alfaro, Mauricio Calani and Liliana Varela

Foreign currency use can be a source of risk associated with currency mismatches, which firms can hedge using FX derivatives. This paper uncovers five novel facts about firms’ use of foreign currency (FX) derivatives employing a unique dataset covering the universe of... View Details

Keywords: FX Derivatives; Hedging; Currency; Cash Flow; Emerging Markets; Chile

August 2019 (Revised September 2019)
Case

Dirk Nowitzki: Changing the Game

By: Boris Groysberg, Sascha L. Schmidt and Evan M.S. Hecht

NBA Superstar Dirk Nowitzki was unsure whether the 2018–2019 season would be his last as an NBA player. He had not faced such uncertainty since 1998, when he had navigated a difficult decision regarding the timing of his move to the NBA. He also did not know what he... View Details

Keywords: Career Decisions; Career Journey; ＂Sports Organizations,; Mentoring; Retirement; Sports; Performance; Training; Personal Development and Career; Sports Industry; United States

Educators

Purchase

2013
Working Paper

Managing Firms in an Emerging Economy: Evidence from the Time Use of Indian CEOs

By: Raffaella Sadun

The success or failure of a company is often ascribed to the behavior of its CEO. Yet little is known about what top managers actually do, whether this matters for firm performance, and why it differs across firms. We provide some answers by developing a new survey... View Details

Keywords: Management Style; Performance; Outcome or Result; Management Teams; Manufacturing Industry; India

2008
Working Paper

Etiquette and Process Puzzles of Negotiating Business in China: A Questionnaire

By: James K. Sebenius and Cheng (Jason) Qian

Cultural differences can affect negotiations in many ways, from influencing the basic motivations and perceptions of the players to guiding the surface aspects, such as etiquette, protocol, and process, of business interactions. Navigating the challenges of these... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Governance; Questionnaires; Negotiation Process; Behavior; China

15 Nov 2019
HBS Seminar

Ashley Nunes (Senior Research Associate, Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School), Harvard Law School

Louis E. Caldera

Louis Caldera is a Senior Lecturer of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He teaches Leadership and Corporate Accountability, a required first-year course in the MBA program. He has previously taught law school courses on corporate... View Details

2025
Chapter

Marjorie Yang Mun Tak 楊梅德：Entrepreneur and Innovator

By: William C. Kirby

Chinese Encounters with America tells the stories of twelve women and men whose American experiences transformed their lives and influenced China’s trajectory, with a particular focus on the period after Beijing and Washington established full diplomatic relations in... View Details

Keywords: International Relations; China

Purchase

2023
Working Paper

Trusting Talent: Cross-Country Differences in Hiring

By: Letian Zhang and Shinan Wang

This article argues that a society’s social trust influences employers’ hiring strategies. In selecting workers, employers could either focus on applicants’ potential and select on foundational skills (e.g., social skills, math skills) or focus on their readiness and... View Details

Keywords: Selection and Staffing; Trust; Competency and Skills; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; European Union

2020
Working Paper

The Effects of Hierarchy on Learning and Performance in Business Experimentation

By: Sourobh Ghosh, Stefan Thomke and Hazjier Pourkhalkhali

Do senior managers help or hurt business experiments? Despite the widespread adoption of business experiments to guide strategic decision-making, we lack a scholarly understanding of what role senior managers play in firm experimentation. Using proprietary data of live... View Details

Keywords: Experimentation; Innovation; Search; New Product Development; Innovation and Invention; Organizational Design; Learning; Performance

2020
Working Paper

Digital Experimentation and Startup Performance: Evidence from A/B Testing

By: Rembrand Koning, Sharique Hasan and Aaron Chatterji

Recent work argues that experimentation is the appropriate framework for entrepreneurial strategy. We investigate this proposition by exploiting the time-varying adoption of A/B testing technology, which has drastically reduced the cost of experimentally testing... View Details

Keywords: Experimentation; A/B Testing; Data-driven Decision-making; Entrepreneurship; Strategy; Business Startups; Information Technology; Performance

SSRN

January 1999
Article

An Analysis of Value Destruction and Recovery in the Alliance and Proposed Merger of Volvo and Renault

By: Robert Bruner

Volvo's attempt to merge with Renault in 1993 temporarily destroyed SEK 8.6 billion (US$ 1.1 billion) in Volvo shareholder wealth. This study traces the destruction to hubris, managerialism, and the escalation of commitment—elements suggested in previous research. In... View Details

Keywords: Mergers ＆ Acquisitions; Institutional Investors; Alliances; Privatization; Mergers and Acquisitions; Institutional Investing; Auto Industry

November 2012
Article

The Organization of Firms Across Countries

By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

We argue that social capital as proxied by trust increases aggregate productivity by affecting the organization of firms. To do this we collect new data on the decentralization of investment, hiring, production, and sales decisions from Corporate Headquarters to local... View Details

Keywords: Decentralization; Social Capital; Theory Of The Firm; Firm Objectives, Organization, And Behavior; Business Economics; Management Of Technological Innovation And R＆D; Technological Change: Choices And Consequences; Diffusion Processes; Organizational Structure; Performance Productivity; Trust; Technology Adoption; Multinational Firms and Management

Carl Kester is a Baker Foundation Professor and the George Fisher Baker Jr. Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus at Harvard Business School. He is a member of the Finance Unit. He served as Deputy Dean for Academic Affairs (2006-2010), Chairman of the... View Details

Keywords: asset management; banking; education industry; financial services; investment banking industry; pharmaceuticals; private equity (LBO funds)

02 Jan 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, January 3, 2018

regulations needed to be based on hard science and engineering knowledge. To achieve this, collaboration with the Swedish government was seen as instrumental and joint R&D was regarded as a means to share knowledge and costs. The... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

November–December 2024
Article

Loss of Peers and Individual Worker Performance: Evidence From H-1B Visa Denials

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Kirk Doran, Astrid Marinoni and Chungeun Yoon

We study how restrictive immigration policies that result in the unexpected loss of co-workers affect the performance of skilled migrants employed in organizations. Specifically, we examine the impact of the loss of team members on their co-workers’ performance in... View Details

Keywords: Immigration; Performance Productivity; Employees; Human Capital; Ethnicity; Groups and Teams