Publications

The Price of Fairness

We study resource allocation problems that involve multiple self-interested parties and a central decision maker. We introduce and study the price of fairness, which is the... View Details

August 2005 (Revised May 2007)
Case

Partners Healthcare

By: Joshua D. Coval

Focuses on the portfolio allocation decision of a passive fund manager. Provides a setting to study portfolio theory, including mean-variance analysis, the capital market line, and the efficient frontier. View Details

Keywords: Investment Portfolio; Capital Markets; Business or Company Management; Decisions; Health Industry

Educators

On the Efficiency-Fairness Trade-Off

How does one approach the problem of designing the "right" objective for a given resource allocation problem? The notion of what is right can be fairly nebulous; we consider two issues that we see as key: efficiency and fairness. We approach the problem of designing... View Details

January – February 2011
Article

The Price of Fairness

By: Dimitris Bertsimas, Vivek F. Farias and Nikolaos Trichakis

In this paper we study resource allocation problems that involve multiple self-interested parties or players and a central decision maker. We introduce and study the price of fairness, which is the relative system efficiency loss under a "fair" allocation assuming that... View Details

Keywords: Price; Fairness

June 2018
Case

Feeding America (A)

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Alan Lam

This case describes how Feeding America, the third-largest nonprofit organization in the U.S., designed a marketplace for allocating donated food across its network of food banks. It considers the promises and pitfalls of using market-based allocation in the context of... View Details

Keywords: Social Enterprise; Nonprofit Organizations; Food; Resource Allocation; Fairness; Performance Efficiency; United States

Educators

December 2012
Article

On the Efficiency-Fairness Trade-Off

By: Dimitris Bertsimas, Vivek F. Farias and Nikolaos Trichakis

This paper deals with a basic issue: How does one approach the problem of designing the "right" objective for a given resource allocation problem? The notion of what is right can be fairly nebulous; we consider two issues that we see as key: efficiency and fairness. We... View Details

Keywords: Decision Support; Cost vs Benefits; Fairness; Resource Allocation; Performance Efficiency; Air Transportation Industry

Awards

Pierskalla Award

Finalist for the 2011 Pierskalla Award from the Health Applications Society of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) for his paper with Dimitris Bertsimas and Vivek F. Farias, "Fairness, Efficiency and Flexibility in Organ... View Details

06 Jul 2017
Working Paper Summaries

Do All Your Detailing Efforts Pay Off? Dynamic Panel Data Methods Revisited

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Keywords: by Doug J. Chung, Byungyeon Kim, and Byoung Park; Pharmaceutical

2009
Working Paper

Running Out of Numbers: Scarcity of IP Addresses and What to Do About It

By: Benjamin Edelman

The Internet's current numbering system is nearing exhaustion: Existing protocols allow only a finite set of computer numbers ("IP addresses"), and central authorities will soon deplete their supply. I evaluate a series of possible responses to this shortage: Sharing... View Details

Keywords: Policy; Resource Allocation; Market Transactions; Internet; Technology Networks; Technology Industry; Telecommunications Industry

2009
Article

Running Out of Numbers: Scarcity of IP Addresses and What To Do About It

By: Benjamin Edelman

Keywords: Internet; Performance Capacity; Technology Networks; Market Transactions; Resource Allocation; Policy; Price; Information Technology Industry

August 2016 (Revised July 2017)
Background Note

Brand Portfolio Strategy and Brand Architecture

By: Jill Avery

While companies choose to brand their products and services in many different ways, there are some central tenets that help define an optimal brand portfolio and associated brand architecture. Brand portfolio strategy involves the design, deployment, and management of... View Details

Keywords: Brand Management; Brand Portfolio; Brand Extension; Brand Portfolio Strategy; Brand Architecture; Consumer Behavior; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy

Educators

2010
Working Paper

Does Diversification Create Value in the Presence of External Financing Constraints? Evidence from the 2007-2009 Financial Crisis

We show that the value of corporate diversification increased during the 2007-2009 financial crisis. Diversification gave firms both financing and investment advantages. First, conglomerates became significantly more leveraged relative to comparable focused firms.... View Details

Keywords: Diversification; Financial Crisis; Resource Allocation; Investment; Financing and Loans; Business Conglomerates; Capital Markets

01 Dec 2015
HBS Seminar

Nicola Lacetera, University of Toronto

Article

The Effect of Institutional Factors on the Value of Corporate Diversification

By: Venkat Kuppuswamy, George Serafeim and Belen Villalonga

Using a large sample of diversified firms from 38 countries we investigate the influence of several national-level institutional factors or 'institutional voids' on the value of corporate diversification. Specifically, we explore whether the presence of frictions in a... View Details

Keywords: Diversification Discount; Institutions; Labor Market; Competition; Human Capital; Diversification; Value; Capital Markets

SSRN

Article

Landing the First Job: The Value of Intermediaries in Online Hiring

By: Christopher Stanton and Catherine Thomas

Online markets for remote labor services allow workers and firms to contract with each other directly. Despite this, intermediaries—called outsourcing agencies—have emerged in these markets. This paper shows that agencies signal to employers that inexperienced workers... View Details

Keywords: Marketplace Matching; Agency Theory

Elisabeth C. Paulson

Elisabeth Paulson is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at Harvard Business School. She teaches the first year course on Technology and Operations Management in the required curriculum.
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Keywords: agriculture; federal government; state government; grocery; nonprofit industry

July 2021
Article

Redistribution through Markets

By: Piotr Dworczak, Scott Duke Kominers and Mohammad Akbarpour

Policymakers frequently use price regulations as a response to inequality in the markets they control. In this paper, we examine the optimal structure of such policies from the perspective of mechanism design. We study a buyer-seller market in which agents have private... View Details

Keywords: Optimal Mechanism Design; Redistribution; Inequality; Welfare Theorems; Market Design; Equality and Inequality

2008
Working Paper

'Fair Marriages:' An Impossibility

By: Bettina-Elisabeth Klaus

For the classical marriage model (introduced in Gale and Shapley, 1962) efficiency and envy-freeness are not always compatible, i.e., fair matchings do not always exist. However, for many allocation of indivisible goods models (see Velez, 2008, and references therein),... View Details

Keywords: Marketplace Matching; Fairness