Publications

28 Jan 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Does Product Market Competition Lead Firms To Decentralize?

Keywords: by Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun & John Van Reenen

Research Summary

Financing Payouts

Despite the obvious interest in payout policy, no paper to date has systematically analyzed how payouts are funded, perhaps because the answer might have appeared just too obvious: payouts are funded with free cash flow — at least over long enough time periods.... View Details

February 2025 (Revised February 2025)
Case

What's Heiring Next? The Saga of the Murdoch Media Empire

By: Lauren Cohen, Mayra Gazel and Sophia Pan

As Lachlan Murdoch left the courthouse, he puzzled on the next phase of his battle for control over his father Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. With Rupert aging and his siblings determined to retain their voting rights, Lachlan was convinced that the future of News... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Lawsuits and Litigation; Rights; Management Succession; Family Ownership; Family and Family Relationships; Power and Influence; Media and Broadcasting Industry

December 2011
Article

CEO and Board Chair Roles: To Split or Not to Split?

By: Aiyesha Dey, Ellen Engel and Xiaohui Liu

We examine the performance and compensation implications of firms' decisions to combine the roles of CEO and board chairman (duality). We document that firms that split the CEO and chairman positions due to investor pressure have significantly lower announcement... View Details

Keywords: CEO Duality; Board Chairman; Firm Performance; Pay-performance Sensitivity; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Leadership; Performance Efficiency

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December 2016 (Revised February 2019)
Case

Kurt Summers: Investing in Our Chicago

By: Joshua Margolis and Michael Norris

In 2016, Kurt Summers, the Chicago City Treasurer, faced a decision with potential personal and political ramifications: whether or not to ask the city’s Mayor to join a class action antitrust suit against the city’s creditors for actions they took during the Global... View Details

Keywords: Personal Development; Career Journey; Leadership Development; Career; Leadership; Government and Politics; Personal Development and Career; Public Administration Industry; United States; Chicago

January 2017
Article

Impact Evaluation Methods in Public Economics: A Brief Introduction to Randomized Evaluations and Comparison with Other Methods

By: Dina Pomeranz

Recent years have seen a large expansion in the use of rigorous impact evaluation techniques. Increasingly, public administrations are collaborating with academic economists and other quantitative social scientists to apply such rigorous methods to the study of public... View Details

Keywords: Practice; Public Sector; Research; Policy; Performance Evaluation

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April 2013 (Revised June 2016)
Case

AIG and the American Taxpayers (A)

By: Karthik Ramanna and Matthew Shaffer

Explores the decision faced by AIG's board on whether to join shareholder and ex-CEO Maurice Greenberg's lawsuit against the U.S. government. The suit, argued by super-lawyer David Boies (of Bush v. Gore and California Gay Marriage fame), claims that in September 2008... View Details

Keywords: Property Rights; Financial Institutions; Financial Markets; Financial Crisis; Property; Insurance Industry; United States

January 2013 (Revised April 2017)
Supplement

Maxum Petroleum, Inc.

By: W. Carl Kester

Maxum seeks an oil-price hedging strategy that yields substantial cash during oil price spikes, is affordable under ordinary circumstances, and is easily managed. It is striving to avoid a repeat of the challenging situation encountered in 2008 when spiking oil prices... View Details

Keywords: Hedging; Options; Commodities; Credit Derivatives and Swaps; Risk Management; Futures and Commodity Futures; Financial Strategy; Volatility

2008
Working Paper

Accountability and Inequality in Single-Party Regimes: A Comparative Analysis of Vietnam and China

Over the past two decades, no two economies have averaged more rapid economic growth than China and Vietnam. But while China's income inequality has risen rapidly over that same time frame, Vietnam's has only grown moderately. Structural and socio-cultural determinants... View Details

Keywords: Income Characteristics; Economic Growth; Policy; Government and Politics; Equality and Inequality; China; Viet Nam

June 2001
Case

AtomFilms

By: Bharat N. Anand and Taslim Pirmohamed

Examines the evolution of AtomFilms--one of the few companies that survived the spate of failures in digital entertainment in 2000--from the time of its founding in 1998 to its merger with Shockwave in December 2000. Within a short period of time, AtomFilms had built... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Resource Allocation; Brands and Branding; Organizational Structure; Problems and Challenges; Alliances; Strategy; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

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November 2000
Case

Clust.com: Dream More and Pay Less

Clust is a French group-buying Web site. Instead of marketing products to consumers, Clust is marketing aggregated consumer demands to manufacturers. Consequently, beyond the usual act of choosing among predefined alternatives, consumers are expected to bring up their... View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Marketing

This chapter revisits core ideas from my 1994 article “Managing for Organizational Integrity” and explores a critical issue not discussed in the article: the role of corporate boards. In the chapter, I first re-examine the article’s ideas about the origins of... View Details

May 2021
Teaching Plan

Middlebury College: Energy2028

By: Brian Trelstad and Michael Norris

Teaching Plan for HBS Case No. 320-029. In 2018, Middlebury College’s board of trustees is considering a proposal called Energy2028 that would push the small, liberal arts and sciences college in Vermont to become a net zero carbon emitter, decrease energy usage by... View Details

Keywords: Divestment; Energy; Higher Education; Energy Conservation; Climate Change

09 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Organizations

In Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices, the authors combine the latest thinking from the biological and social sciences to lay out a new theory on human nature. The idea: We are all influenced and guided by four drives: acquiring, bonding, learning, and... View Details

Keywords: by Paul Lawrence & Nitin Nohria

February 2009 (Revised February 2012)
Case

Exeter Group, Inc. (A)

By: Robert G. Eccles, Das Narayandas and Kerry Herman

Jonathan Kutchins and Mark Cullen, managing partners of IT consulting firm Exeter Group, Inc., are considering four potential client engagements. Three of them involve prominent universities, an area of market strength for the firm, and one involves a top-tier strategy... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Resource Allocation; Market Entry and Exit; Service Operations; Performance Capacity; Business Strategy; Information Technology; Consulting Industry