Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,038)
- Faculty Publications (273)
- May 2022
- Case
Rawbank's Illico Cash: Can 'Fast Money' Overcome Cash Dependency in the DRC?
By: Lauren Cohen and Grace Headinger
Thomas de Dreux-Brézé, the Head of Strategy and Project Management at Rawbank Congo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was perplexed as he reviewed annual adoption rates for the bank’s launch of Illico Cash 2.0. As the bank’s mobile money app, Illico Cash... View Details
Keywords: Fintech; Inflation; Deflation; Rural; Urban; Emerging Market; Mobile Technology; Finance; Money; Inflation and Deflation; Business Growth and Maturation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Demographics; Developing Countries and Economies; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Behavioral Finance; Currency; Banks and Banking; Commercial Banking; Financial Strategy; Rural Scope; Urban Scope; Innovation Strategy; Emerging Markets; Network Effects; Consumer Behavior; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Technology Adoption; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; Congo, Democratic Republic of the
- Article
Weak Corporate Insolvency Rules: The Missing Driver of Zombie Lending
By: Bo Becker and Victoria Ivashina
"Zombie lending"—lending to less-productive firms at subsidized rates—can help banks with misaligned incentives in the short run, but it prolongs economic downturns. We propose that inefficient resolution of insolvency is a significant contributor to this problem. We... View Details
- February 2022 (Revised May 2022)
- Case
Jaypee Infratech and the Indian Bankruptcy Code
By: Kristin Mugford, William Vrattos and Radhika Kak
In 2016, India passed a new bankruptcy law (IBC) to counter a brewing bank crisis and increased corporate distress. Homebuilder Jaypee Infratech, one of India largest distressed companies (the “dirty dozen”) began restructuring under the IBC in 2017. Two years later,... View Details
Keywords: Restructuring; Decisions; Judgments; Voting; Developing Countries and Economies; Financial Crisis; Public Sector; Asset Pricing; Borrowing and Debt; Corporate Finance; Credit; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Debt Securities; Bonds; Investment Return; Price; Government Legislation; Laws and Statutes; Bids and Bidding; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Risk and Uncertainty; Valuation; Real Estate Industry; India; Delhi
- February 2022
- Module Note
Behavioral Economics and Choice Architecture
By: John Beshears
This module note for instructors describes a module on the design of choice architecture solutions to organizational problems. View Details
- 2022
- Article
Alleviating Time Poverty Among the Working Poor: A Pre-Registered Longitudinal Field Experiment
By: A.V. Whillans and Colin West
Poverty entails more than a scarcity of material resources—it also involves a shortage of time. To examine the causal benefits of reducing time poverty, we conducted a longitudinal feld experiment over six consecutive weeks in an urban slum in Kenya with a sample of... View Details
Keywords: Time; Subjective Well Being; Administrative Costs; Friction; Poverty; Well-being; Money; Perception; Kenya
- 2022
- Chapter
CIP Deviations, the Dollar, and Frictions in International Capital Markets
By: Wenxin Du and Jesse Schreger
The covered interest rate parity (CIP) condition is a fundamental arbitrage relationship in international finance. In this chapter, we review its breakdown during the Global Financial Crisis and its continued failure in the subsequent decade. We review how to measure... View Details
- November 2021 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
The Global Great Depression, 1929-1939
By: Alberto Cavallo, Sophus A. Reinert and Federica Gabrieli
The Great Depression was, by far, the worst economic contraction of the twentieth century, and some of the most important ideas about both fiscal and monetary policy in the second half of the century were developed in response to it. The economic collapse, which... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
The International Price of Remote Work
By: Agostina Brinatti, Alberto Cavallo, Javier Cravino and Andres Drenik
We study how the price of remote work is determined in a globalized labor market using data from a large web-based job platform, where workers from around the world compete for remote jobs. Despite the global nature of the platform, we find that remote wages are higher... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Cognitive Uncertainty in Intertemporal Choice
By: Benjamin Enke and Thomas Graeber
This paper studies the relevance of cognitive uncertainty – subjective uncertainty over one's utility-maximizing action – for understanding and predicting intertemporal choice. The main idea is that when people are cognitively noisy, such as when a decision is complex,... View Details
- October 2021 (Revised November 2022)
- Case
The 2012 Spanish Labor Reform: Lifting All Boats, or Leveling Down?
By: Vincent Pons, Rafael Di Tella, Santiago Botella and Elena Corsi
Since 1978, Spain had struggled to control unemployment. The country’s labor law was protective of employees hired long-term and companies used temporary contracts as buffers. In 2012, amid economic recession and a 23.6% unemployment rate, a center-right government of... View Details
Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Labor Market; Unemployment; Recession; Globalized Markets and Industries; Government Legislation; International Relations; Working Conditions; Employment; Labor Unions; Contracts; Social Issues; Public Opinion; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Spain; European Union
- September–October 2021
- Article
Frontiers: Can an AI Algorithm Mitigate Racial Economic Inequality? An Analysis in the Context of Airbnb
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Nitin Mehta, Param Singh and Kannan Srinivasan
We study the effect of Airbnb’s smart-pricing algorithm on the racial disparity in the daily revenue earned by Airbnb hosts. Our empirical strategy exploits Airbnb’s introduction of the algorithm and its voluntary adoption by hosts as a quasi-natural experiment. Among... View Details
- September 2021
- Article
Gender Stereotypes in Deliberation and Team Decisions
By: Katherine B. Coffman, Clio Bryant Flikkema and Olga Shurchkov
We explore how groups deliberate and decide on ideas in an experiment with communication. We find that gender biases play a significant role in which group members are chosen to answer on behalf of the group. Conditional on the quality of their ideas, individuals are... View Details
- August 2021 (Revised March 2023)
- Technical Note
Crossing Borders and Cultures: Global Branding
By: Jill Avery and Michael Moynihan
Many of the world's most valuable brands are global in scope. They benefit from shared meanings, systems, and stories across markets, and much of their allure for consumers lies in their "global-ness." Creating value from global brands requires successfully managing... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Consumer Choice and Corporate Bankruptcy
By: Samuel Antill and Megan Hunter
We estimate the indirect costs of corporate bankruptcy associated with lost
customers. In incentivized experiments, randomly informing consumers about a firm’s Chapter 11 reorganization lowers their willingness to pay for the firm’s products by 18-35%. Up
to 48% of... View Details
- July–August 2021
- Article
Lowering the Bar? External Conditions, Opportunity Costs, and High-Tech Startup Outcomes
By: Annamaria Conti and Maria P. Roche
We assess the heterogeneous impact of economic downturns on individuals’ decisions to bring high-technology ideas to the market in the form of new ventures. We thereby examine how worsening labor market conditions influence individuals’ opportunity costs of starting... View Details
- June 2021
- Case
CFM International (A): Building a Durable Partnership That Works
By: Ranjay Gulati, Yves Doz, Kim Wilkinson and Kerry Herman
It is spring 1995, and the CFM partnership—a joint venture between GE Aviation and France’s jet engine manufacturer Snecma—is facing difficult challenges. The parent companies must decide whether and how to renew their nascent partnership agreement, in the face of... View Details
- June 2021
- Article
The Role of Beliefs in Driving Gender Discrimination
By: Katherine B. Coffman, Christine L. Exley and Muriel Niederle
While there is ample evidence of discrimination against women in the workplace, it can be difficult to understand what factors contribute to discriminatory behavior. We use an experiment to both document discrimination and unpack its sources. First, we show that, on... View Details
- March 2021
- Article
Parental Burnout Around the Globe: A 42-Country Study
By: Isabelle Roskam, Joyce Aguiar, Ege Akgun, Gizem Arikan, Mariana Artavia, Herve Avalosse, Kaisa Aunola, Michael Bader, Claire Bahati, Elizabeth J. Barham, Elaine Besson, Wim Beyers, Emilie Boujut, Maria Elena Brianda, Anna Brytek-Matera, Neomie Carbonneau, Filipa Cesar, Bin-Bin Chen, Geraldine Dorard, Luciana Carla dos Santos Elias, Sandra Dunsmuir, Natalia Egorova, Nicolas Favez, Anne-Marie Fontaine, Heather Foran, Julia Fricke, Kaichiro Furutani, Laura Gallee, Myrna Gannage, Maria Gaspar, Lucie Godbout, Amit Goldenberg, James J. Gross, Maria Ancuta Gurza, Ruby Hall, Muhammad Aamir Hashmi, Ogma Hatta, Mai Helmy, Thi Van Hoang, Mai Trang Huynh, Emerence Kaneza, Taishi Kawamoto, Goran Knezevic, Bassantea Lodegaena Kpassagou, Ljiljana B. Lazarevic, Sarah Le Vigouroux, Astrid Lebert-Charron, Vanessa Leme, Gao-Xian Lin, Carolyn MacCann, Denisse Manrique-Millones, Marisa Marias, Maria Isabel Miranda-Orrego, Marina Miscioscia, Clara Morgades-Bamba, Seyyedeh Fatemeh Mousavi, Badra Moutassem-Mimouni, Ana Muntean, Hugh Murphy, Alexis Ndayizigiye, Josue Ngnombouowo Tenkue, Sally Olderbak, Sophie Ornawka, Fatumo Osman, Daniela Oyarce-Cadiz, Pablo A Perez-Diaz, Konstantinos V Petrides, Claudia Pineda-Marin, Katharina Prandstetter, Alena Prikhidko, Ricardo T Ricci, Fernando Salinas-Quiroz, Raquel Sanchez-Rodriguez, Ainize Sarrionandia, Celine Scola, Vincent Sezibera, Paola Silva, Alessandra Simonelli, Bart Soenens, Emma Sorbring, Matilda Sorkkila, Charlotte Schrooyen, Elena Stanculescu, Elena Starchenkova, Dorota Szczygiel, Javier Tapia, Thi Minh Thuy Tri, Melissa Tremblay, A. Meltem Ustandag-Budak, Maday Valdes Pacheco, Hedwig van Bakel, Lesley Verhofstadt, Jaqueline Wendland, Saengduean Yotanyamaneewong and Moira Mikolajczak
High levels of stress in the parenting domain can lead to parental burnout, a condition that has severe consequences for both parents and children. It is not yet clear, however, whether parental burnout varies by culture, and if so, why it might do so. In this study,... View Details
- February 2021
- Article
Do Household Wealth Shocks Affect Productivity? Evidence from Innovative Workers During the Great Recession
By: S. Bernstein, T. McQuade and R. Townsend
We investigate how the deterioration of household balance sheets affects worker productivity, and, in turn, economic downturns. Specifically, we compare the output of innovative workers who experienced differential declines in housing wealth during the financial crisis... View Details
- January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Supplement
Juno (B): Leveraging Student Power
By: Joshua Schwartzstein, Kathleen L. McGinn and Amy Klopfenstein
In March 2020, Juno co-founders Chris Abkarians and Nikhil Agarwal decided to pitch banks in anticipation of their annual auction while negotiating directly with private lender Eager. Responses from the majority of private lenders—including Juno’s 2019 partner—were not... View Details
Keywords: Decision Making; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decisions; Cost vs Benefits; Judgments; Education; Higher Education; Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Strategy; Adaptation; Alignment; Negotiation; Negotiation Deal; Negotiation Offer; Negotiation Participants; Negotiation Process; Negotiation Types; Financial Services Industry; Education Industry; North and Central America; United States; Massachusetts; Boston