Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,940)
- Faculty Publications (470)
- 2011
- Article
How Should the Graduate Economics Core be Changed?
By: Vincent Pons, Jose Miguel Abito, Katarina Borovickova, Hays Golden, Jacob Goldin, Matthew A. Masten, Miguel Morin, Alexander Poirier, Israel Romem, Tyler Williams and Chamna Yoon
The authors present suggestions by graduate students from a range of economics departments for improving the first-year core sequence in economics. The students identified a number of elements that should be added to the core: more training in building microeconomic... View Details
- 2011
- Chapter
Promoting Entrepreneurship, Growth, and Job Creation
By: Ejaz Ghani, William R. Kerr and Stephen O'Connell
- December 2010
- Background Note
Risk and Reward in Venture Capital
This note describes the payoff structure of investment in individual venture capital–backed companies and in venture capital portfolios. Venture Capital investments are characterized by high failure rate (0ver 50%) and a small number of given successes (greater than... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Agglomerative Forces and Cluster Shapes
By: William R. Kerr and Scott Duke Kominers
We model spatial clusters of similar firms. Our model highlights how agglomerative forces lead to localized, individual connections among firms, while interaction costs generate a defined distance over which attraction forces operate. Overlapping firm interactions... View Details
- 2010
- Chapter
Breakthrough Inventions and the Growth of Innovation Clusters
By: William R. Kerr
This report provides a comprehensive look at the role of innovation in promoting economic and social development. It examines the impact of innovation on the economic growth of developing countries and the future role of technological innovation in international... View Details
- November 2010
- Case
Gilt Groupe
By: Michael J. Roberts, William A. Sahlman and Tamara Obradov
The case explores decisions faced by Gilt Groupe co-founders in 2009 regarding how rapidly to grow, which growth strategies to pursue and how much capital to raise. View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Growth through Heterogeneous Innovations
By: Ufuk Akcigit and William R. Kerr
We study how exploration versus exploitation innovations impact economic growth through a tractable endogenous growth framework that contains multiple innovation sizes, multi-product firms, and entry/exit. Firms invest in exploration R&D to acquire new product lines... View Details
- July – August 2010
- Article
The Secret to Job Growth: Think Small
By: Edward L. Glaeser and William R. Kerr
- July 2010
- Article
The Supply Side of Innovation: H-1B Visa Reforms and U.S. Ethnic Invention
By: William R. Kerr and William F. Lincoln
This study evaluates the impact of high-skilled immigrants on U.S. technology formation. We use reduced-form specifications that exploit large changes in the H-1B visa program. Higher H-1B admissions increase immigrant science and engineering (SE) employment and... View Details
- June 2010
- Article
What Causes Industry Agglomeration? Evidence from Coagglomeration Patterns
By: Glenn Ellison, Edward Glaeser and William R. Kerr
Why do firms cluster near one another? We test Marshall's theories of industrial agglomeration by examining which industries locate near one another, or coagglomerate. We construct pairwise coagglomeration indices for US manufacturing industries from the Economic... View Details
- April – May 2010
- Article
Banking Deregulations, Financing Constraints and Firm Entry Size
By: William R. Kerr and Ramana Nanda
We examine the effect of US branch banking deregulations on the entry size of new firms using micro-data from the US Census Bureau. We find that the average entry size for startups did not change following the deregulations. However, among firms that survived at least... View Details
- 2010
- Chapter
The Agglomeration of U.S. Ethnic Inventors
By: William R. Kerr
The ethnic composition of US inventors is undergoing a significant transformation - with deep impacts for the overall agglomeration of US innovation. This study applies an ethnic-name database to individual US patent records to explore these trends with greater detail.... View Details
- February 2010
- Case
Saginaw Parts Co. and the General Motors Corp. Credit Default Swap
This two-page case demonstrates how to unbundle the cost of credit extensions from product prices by observing the price of a credit default swap. It also explores how credit default swaps work, and how trade creditors are treated under U.S. bankruptcy law. Finally it... View Details
- January 2010
- Article
Breakthrough Inventions and Migrating Clusters of Innovation
By: William R. Kerr
We investigate the speed at which clusters of invention for a technology migrate spatially following breakthrough inventions. We identify breakthrough inventions as the top one percent of U.S. inventions for a technology during 1975-1984 in terms of subsequent... View Details
- January 2010
- Article
Clusters of Entrepreneurship
By: Edward L. Glaeser, William R. Kerr and Giacomo A.M. Ponzetto
Employment growth is strongly predicted by smaller average establishment size, both across cities and across industries within cities, but there is little consensus on why this relationship exists. Traditional economic explanations emphasize factors that reduce entry... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Labor Regulations and European Private Equity
By: Ant Bozkaya and William R. Kerr
European nations substitute between employment protection regulations and labor market expenditures (e.g., unemployment insurance benefits) for providing worker insurance. Employment regulations more directly tax firms making frequent labor adjustments than other labor... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Labor Regulations and European Private Equity
By: Ant Bozkaya and William R. Kerr
European nations substitute between employment protection regulations and labor market expenditures (e.g., unemployment insurance benefits) for providing worker insurance. Employment regulations more directly tax firms making frequent labor adjustments than other labor... View Details