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- June 2020 (Revised October 2020)
- Case
Muddy Waters vs. eHealth: The Debate of a 'Lifetime'
By: Jonas Heese and Cristo Liautaud
In May 2020, an analyst was assessing eHealth’s performance. eHealth was an online / tele-sales broker of health insurance products. The stock had recently hit all-time highs, closing at a peak of $146 on March 4, 2020. But now, May 4, 2020, eHealth traded at $103. The... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Dignity, Inequality, and the Populist Backlash: Lessons from America and Europe for a Sustainable Globalization
By: Rawi Abdelal
The greatest challenge to the sustainability of our current era of globalization comes from within the United States. Most Americans have come to reject globalization. We must discern the lessons from the parts of the developed world where the backlash is also... View Details
- 2020
- Article
Inconvenient Truths: Interpreting the Origins of the Internet
By: Shane Greenstein
A conventional economic narrative provides intellectual underpinnings for governments to subsidize research and development ("R&D") that coordinates risky research to benefit many in society. This essay compares this narrative with the origins and invention of the... View Details
- Article
Treatment Of Opioid Use Disorder Among Commercially Insured U.S. Adults, 2008–17
By: Karen Shen, Eric Barrette and Leemore S. Dafny
There is abundant literature on efforts to reduce opioid prescriptions and misuse, but comparatively little on the treatment provided to people with opioid use disorder (OUD). Using claims data representing 12–15 million nonelderly adults covered through commercial... View Details
- June 2020
- Article
U.S. Monetary Policy and Emerging Market Credit Cycles
By: Falk Bräuning and Victoria Ivashina
Foreign banks’ lending to firms in emerging market economies (EMEs) is large and denominated predominantly in U.S. dollars. This creates a direct connection between U.S. monetary policy and EME credit cycles. We estimate that over a typical U.S. monetary easing cycle,... View Details
Keywords: Global Business Cycle; Monetary Policy; Reaching For Yield; Money; Policy; Credit; Emerging Markets
- Article
We Have a Rare Opportunity to Create a Stronger, More Equitable Society
By: Shai Davidai, Martin Day, Daniela Goya-Tocchetto, Oliver Hauser, Jon M. Jachimowicz, M. Usman Mirza, Nailya Ordabayeva, L. Taylor Phillips, Barnabas Szaszi and Stephanie Tepper
Income inequality in the United States was at historic levels before the coronavirus hit. Now, as the disease—and the social and economic implications it brings—spread across the country, it is likely to create even deeper fissures between the poor and rich. View Details
Keywords: Socioeconomic Status; Coronavirus; Inequality; Work; Income; Equality and Inequality; Health Pandemics; Gender; Money; Policy; Race; Society
- May 2020 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
The Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic and the Global Economy (A)
By: Alberto Cavallo and Christian Godwin
In April 2020, the world struggled to contain the exponential escalation of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Dozens of countries had imposed restrictions on travel, work, and social gatherings. A large share of the global population was under lockdowns and... View Details
Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Demand and Consumers; Supply and Industry; Finance; Central Banking; Financial Markets; International Finance; Globalization; Government and Politics; Health Pandemics; Decision Making; Macroeconomics; Employment; Crisis Management; Supply Chain; Risk and Uncertainty; Air Transportation Industry; Banking Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Employment Industry; Financial Services Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Health Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; Public Administration Industry; Retail Industry; Service Industry; Shipping Industry; Tourism Industry; Travel Industry; Asia; China; Europe; Latin America; Africa; United States
- May 2020 (Revised July 2020)
- Case
COVID-19: The Global Shutdown
By: Laura Alfaro and Sarah Jeong
In the first months of 2020, a pandemic overwhelmed the world. COVID-19, commonly known as the coronavirus, spread from China and created a severe public health emergency across countries. While an immediate fear of the disease’s impact on human life permeated society,... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Food Security and Human Mobility During the COVID-19 Lockdown
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Wesley W. Koo, Xina Li, Nishant Kishore, Satchit Balsari and Tarun Khanna
During the COVID-19 crisis, millions of migrants around the world face food insecurity. This could force migrants to travel during the pandemic, exposing them to health risks and accelerating the spread of the virus. Anecdotal evidence demonstrates the importance of... View Details
Keywords: COVID-19; Migrants; Food Security; Mobility; Health Pandemics; Food; Distribution; Policy; Global Range
- May 2020
- Article
Inventory Auditing and Replenishment Using Point-of-Sales Data
By: Achal Bassamboo, Antonio Moreno and Ioannis Stamatopoulos
Spoilage, expiration, damage due to employee/customer handling, employee theft, and customer shoplifting usually are not reflected in inventory records. As a result, records often report phantom inventory, i.e., units of good not available for sale. We derive an... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Social Interactions in Pandemics: Fear, Altruism, and Reciprocity
By: Laura Alfaro, Ester Faia, Nora Lamersdorf and Farzad Saidi
In SIR models, homogeneous or with a network structure, infection rates are assumed to be exogenous. However, individuals adjust their behavior. Using daily data for 89 cities worldwide, we document that mobility falls in response to fear, as approximated by Google... View Details
- April 29, 2020
- Article
How Should We Allocate Scarce Medical Resources?
By: Max Bazerman, Regan Bernhard, Joshua D. Greene, Karen Huang and Netta Barak-Corren
Who should get a ventilator if there aren’t enough to go around? Research on decision making leads to three concrete guidelines that policy-makers and physicians can use to make fair choices when allocating scarce, life-saving resources. The key to making fair and... View Details
Keywords: COVID-19; Health Pandemics; Resource Allocation; Decision Making; Policy; Fairness; Ethics
- 2020
- Working Paper
HBS COVID-19 Global Policy Tracker
By: Alberto Cavallo and Tannya Cai
The HBS COVID-19 Global Policy Tracker is an initiative by the Business, Government and the International Economy (BGIE) unit at Harvard Business School (HBS) to collect and standardize economic policies implemented as a response to the coronavirus pandemic around the... View Details
- Article
The Impact of Penalties for Wrong Answers on the Gender Gap in Test Scores
By: Katherine B. Coffman and David Klinowski
Multiple-choice exams play a critical role in university admissions across the world. A key question is whether imposing penalties for wrong answers on these exams deters guessing from women more than men, disadvantaging female test-takers. We consider data from a... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Global Talent and U.S. Immigration Policy
By: William R. Kerr
Talent is a critical resource for today’s knowledge economy. The United States has benefited substantially from high-skilled migration since the 1970s, especially with respect to innovation and entrepreneurship. This chapter reviews data on these immigrant... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Immigration Policy Levers for U.S. Innovation and Startups
By: William R. Kerr and Sari Pekkala Kerr
Immigrants account for about a quarter of U.S. invention and entrepreneurship despite a policy environment that is not well suited for these purposes. This chapter reviews the U.S. immigration policy environment that governs how skilled migrants move to America for... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Job Loss, Credit and Crime in Colombia
By: Gaurav Khanna, Carlos Medina, Anant Nyshadham, Christian Posso and Jorge Tamayo
We investigate the effects of job displacement, as a result of mass layoffs, on criminal arrests using a matched employer-employee-crime dataset from Medellín, Colombia. Job displacement leads to immediate and persistent earnings losses and higher probability of arrest... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Changing Ingroup Boundaries: The Effect of Immigration on Race Relations in the U.S.
By: Vasiliki Fouka and Marco Tabellini
How do social group boundaries evolve? Does the appearance of a new outgroup change the ingroup's perceptions of other outgroups? We introduce a conceptual framework of context-dependent categorization, in which exposure to one minority leads to recategorization of... View Details
Keywords: In-group-out-group Relations; Immigration; Race; Attitudes; Boundaries; Prejudice and Bias
- April 2020 (Revised August 2021)
- Case
Singapore: 'Facing Challenges Together'
Since its expulsion from Malaysia in 1965, Singapore had transformed itself from a third world island nation into a vibrant city-state with one of the highest levels of GDP per capita in the world. However, sluggish demand among Singapore's major trade partners began... View Details
Keywords: Savings; Productivity Growth; Productivity; Economic Institutions; Economic Development; Government And Business; Government Policy; Economic Policy; Country Analysis; Investment And Savings; Institutions; Economic Growth; Macroeconomics; Development Economics; Investment; Government and Politics; Trade; Policy; Research and Development; Analysis; Economics; Business and Government Relations; Asia; Singapore; Southeast Asia
- April 2020
- Article
Field Comparisons of Incentive-Compatible Preference Elicitation Techniques
By: Shawn A. Cole, A. Nilesh Fernando, Daniel Stein and Jeremy Tobacman
Knowledge of consumer demand is important for firms, policy makers, and economists. One common tool for incentive-compatible demand elicitation, the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) mechanism, has been widely used in laboratory settings but rarely evaluated for... View Details