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- All HBS Web
(2,869)
- Faculty Publications (1,029)
- February 2016 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
Express Scripts: Promoting Prescription Drug Home Delivery (B)
By: John Beshears, Patrick Rooney and Jenny Sanford
The pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) sector processes prescription drug claims on behalf of companies that offer a prescription drug benefit to their employees. This case follows Bob Nease, Chief Scientist at Express Scripts, as he considers methods to promote home... View Details
- February 2016 (Revised July 2017)
- Case
A Nation Divided: The United States and the Challenge of Secession
By: David Moss and Marc Campasano
Americans elected Abraham Lincoln as the nation's first Republican president in November of 1860. Northern political leaders had formed the Republican Party only a few years before, in large measure to combat the spread of slavery. Southerners had long been wary of... View Details
- Article
The Perils of Proactive Churn Prevention Using Plan Recommendations: Evidence from a Field Experiment
By: Eva Ascarza, Raghuram Iyengar and Martin Schleicher
Facing the issue of increasing customer churn, many service firms have begun recommending pricing plans to their customers. One reason behind this type of retention campaign is that customers who subscribe to a plan suitable for them should be less likely to churn... View Details
- January 26, 2016
- Article
Hiding Personal Information Reveals the Worst
By: Leslie K. John, Kate Barasz and Michael I. Norton
Seven experiments explore people's decisions to share or withhold personal information and the wisdom of such decisions. When people choose not to reveal information—to be "hiders"—they are judged negatively by others (experiment 1). These negative judgments emerge... View Details
- January 2016 (Revised December 2024)
- Case
Airbus Versus Boeing (A)
Looks at the development of the competitive actions between Airbus and Boeing from 1992 to 2006. Begins with the question of whether Airbus and Boeing should collaborate on the development of a VLCT (Very Large Commercial Transport) or whether Airbus should develop... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Will a Five-Minute Discussion Change Your Mind? A Countrywide Experiment on Voter Choice in France
By: Vincent Pons
This paper provides the first estimate of the effect of door-to-door canvassing on actual electoral outcomes, via a countrywide experiment embedded in François Hollande's campaign in the 2012 French presidential election. While existing experiments randomized... View Details
- Article
Ethical Blind Spots: Explaining Unintentional Unethical Behavior
By: Ovul Sezer, F. Gino and Max H. Bazerman
People view themselves as more ethical, fair, and objective than others, yet often act against their moral compass. This paper reviews recent research on unintentional unethical behavior and provides an overview of the conditions under which ethical blind spots lead... View Details
- October 2015 (Revised August 2018)
- Case
Ozark Feed and Ag Corporation: The ERP Decision
By: Jan Hammond, Paul Kalmbach and Eric Bernstein
This case describes a medium-sized business that manufactures animal feed for commercial and companion animals. The company has been growing rapidly and is considering whether or not to implement an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Ozark currently uses an IT... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
The Wisdom of Crowds in Operations: Forecasting Using Prediction Markets
By: Achal Bassamboo, Ruomeng Cui and Antonio Moreno
Prediction is an important activity in various business processes, but it becomes difficult when historical information is not available, such as forecasting demand of a new product. One approach that can be applied in such situations is to crowdsource opinions from... View Details
- September 2015 (Revised July 2025)
- Background Note
Ethical Analysis: Situation versus Character
When we think of human behavior, especially from a moral perspective, we often rely on explanations based on character. We think that good decisions and responsible behavior require people with integrity and strong character and that immoral behavior originates within... View Details
- 2015
- Article
International Trade, Multinational Activity, and Corporate Finance
By: C. Fritz Foley and Kalina Manova
An emerging new literature brings unique ideas from corporate finance to the study of international trade and investment. Insights about differences in the development of financial institutions across countries, the role of financial constraints, and the use of... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
Stability, Strategy-Proofness, and Cumulative Offer Mechanisms
By: John William Hatfield, Scott Duke Kominers and Alexander Westkamp
We consider the setting of many-to-one matching with contracts, where firms may
demand multiple contracts but each worker desires at most one contract. We introduce
three novel conditions—observable substitutability, observable size monotonicity,... View Details
- 2015
- Other Teaching and Training Material
Competitive Strategies Marketing Reading
By: Jill Avery and Sunil Gupta
Core Curriculum Readings in Marketing cover the fundamental concepts, theories, and frameworks that business students must study.
This Reading illuminates the dynamics of companies in competition and offers a process for planning and executing marketing... View Details
This Reading illuminates the dynamics of companies in competition and offers a process for planning and executing marketing... View Details
Keywords: Competitive Strategy
- Article
Leaders as Decision Architects: Structure Your Organization's Work to Encourage Wise Choices
By: John Beshears and F. Gino
Everyone from CEOs to frontline workers commits preventable mistakes—for example, underestimating how long it will take to finish a project or focusing too much on information that supports their current view. It is extraordinarily difficult to rewire the human brain... View Details
- April 2015 (Revised April 2022)
- Case
Bankruptcy in the City of Detroit
By: Stuart Gilson, Kristin Mugford and Annelena Lobb
The June 2013 bankruptcy of the city of Detroit, Michigan was, at the time, the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. Detroit had struggled for years with a weakening tax base, high unemployment, a heavy debt load and increasing retiree costs. These... View Details
Keywords: Chapter 9; Chapter 11; Bankruptcy; Municipal Finance; Restructuring; Financial Liquidity; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; City; Government Administration; Public Sector; Financial Crisis; Financial Management; Failure; Labor Unions; Urban Development; Budgets and Budgeting; Decision Making; Demographics; Economics; Finance; Public Administration Industry; Michigan; Detroit
- Article
De Gustibus non est Taxandum: Heterogeneity in Preferences and Optimal Redistribution
By: Benjamin B Lockwood and Matthew Weinzierl
The prominent but unproven intuition that preference heterogeneity reduces redistribution in a standard optimal tax model is shown to hold under the plausible condition that the distribution of preferences for consumption relative to leisure rises, in terms of... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Internalizing Global Value Chains: A Firm-Level Analysis
By: Laura Alfaro, Pol Antràs, Davin Chor and Paola Conconi
In recent decades, advances in information and communication technology and falling trade barriers have led firms to retain within their boundaries and in their domestic economies only a subset of their production stages. A key decision facing firms worldwide is the... View Details
- March 2015
- Case
Tim Keller at Katzenbach Partners LLC (A) (Abridged)
By: Boris Groysberg and James Weber
Tracks the first six months of a recent MBA grad, Tim Keller, at Katzenbach Partners, a boutique consulting firm focused on organizational change and strategy. Covers how Keller initially struggles with his assignment and ends with a question of whether or not he... View Details
Keywords: Interpersonal Relations; Organization Behavior; Superior ＆ Subordinate; Managing Projects; Informal Organization; Consulting; Professional Services; Leadership; Work-Life Balance; Decision Choices and Conditions; Organizations; Rank and Position; Product Development; Service Industry; Consulting Industry
- March 2015
- Article
Signaling to Partially Informed Investors in the Newsvendor Model
By: William Schmidt, Vishal Gaur, Richard Lai and Ananth Raman
We investigate a puzzling phenomenon in which firms make investment decisions that purposefully do not maximize expected profits. Using an extension to the newsvendor model, we focus on a relatively common scenario in which the firm's investor has imperfect information... View Details
- Article
The Effect of Providing Peer Information on Retirement Savings Decisions
By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian and Katherine L. Milkman
Using a field experiment in a 401(k) plan, we measure the effect of disseminating information about peer behavior on savings. Low-saving employees received simplified plan enrollment or contribution increase forms. A randomized subset of forms stated the fraction of... View Details