Publications

March 2006 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Rwanda: National Economic Transformation

By: Michael E. Porter, Kaia Miller, Michael McCreless, Kjell Carlsson, Jem Hudson and Haviland Sheldahl-Thomason

Set in the year 2004, when Rwanda commemorated the 10th anniversary of a genocide that had claimed the lives of over 10% of its population. Focuses on the formulation of an economic strategy to rebuild the economy and its institutions after the devastation. Rwanda, one... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Developing Countries and Economies; Policy; Government Administration; Crisis Management; Strategy; Rwanda

February 2014
Article

National Institutions and Subnational Development in Africa

By: Stelios Michalopoulos and Elias Papaioannou

We investigate the role of national institutions on subnational African development in a novel framework that accounts both for local geography and cultural-genetic traits. We exploit the fact that the political boundaries in the eve of African independence partitioned... View Details

Keywords: Ethnicity; Development Economics; Local Range; Government and Politics; Africa

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September 2005
Article

History, Institutions and Economic Performance: the Legacy of Colonial Land Tenure Systems in India

By: Abhijit Banerjee and Lakshmi Iyer

Keywords: History; Property; Performance; India

Article

Pre-colonial Ethnic Institutions and Contemporary African Development

By: Stelios Michalopoulos and Elias Papaioannou

We investigate the role of deeply rooted pre-colonial ethnic institutions in shaping comparative regional development within African countries. We combine information on the spatial distribution of ethnicities before colonization with regional variation in contemporary... View Details

Keywords: Ethnicity; Development Economics; Local Range; Government and Politics; Africa

2018
Chapter

Between Economic Planning and Market Competition: International Law and Economics in the U.S.

By: Laura Phillips Sawyer

The impact of institutional economics in shaping the American regulatory tradition has largely been dismissed as an incoherent attack on the neoclassical economic paradigm. This essay briefly reconstructs the interwar institutionalist movement, exploring the... View Details

Keywords: Economics; History; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business and Government Relations; United States

September 1985 (Revised May 2007)
Case

Nixon's New Economic Policy: 1971

Contains brief introductory material for the body of the case, which is Nixon's August 15, 1971, speech announcing the suspension of the convertibility of gold and wage-price controls. The case will allow discussion of the problems of the Bretton Woods system, the... View Details

Keywords: Policy; Economics; United States

18 Oct 2017
Research & Ideas

How Economic Clusters Drive Globalization

(Photo source: iStock) Economic cluster theory has been used to describe the growth of many industries, including the automotive business around Detroit, high tech in Silicon Valley, and digital media in Seoul. These regions benefit by a... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Agriculture & Agribusiness

07 Aug 2018
Working Paper Summaries

Economic Integration and Democracy: An Empirical Investigation

Keywords: by Giacomo Magistretti and Marco Tabellini

May 2021 (Revised November 2024)
Case

Colombia: An Economic Premium to Peace?

By: Richard Vietor

Colombia, once the fastest growing country in Latin America, continues to struggle with productivity. Both labor productivity and total factor productivity have been low for the past decade, despite economic growth of 4.7% annually. Many factors contribute, which... View Details

16 May 2000
Research & Ideas

The Simple Economics of Open Source

Tirole, an economist at the University of Toulouse and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In their new working paper, "The Simple Economics of Open Source," Lerner and Tirole make the case... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Technology

October 2007 (Revised May 2008)
Case

Transforming Korea Inc: Financial Crisis and Institutional Reform

By: Laura Alfaro and Renee Kim

South Korea, as one of the Asian "tiger" economies, transformed itself into the world's 11th largest economy and major exporter by 1996, emerging from being one of the lowest income countries in the region back in the 1960s. Yet one year later in 1997, Korea was swept... View Details

Keywords: Development Economics; Financial Crisis; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business and Government Relations; South Korea

2011
Working Paper

The Institutional Logic of Great Global Firms

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Theories of the firm have been dominated by a legacy of ideas from early industrialization that pose zero-sum opposition between capital and labor (or capital and nearly everything else), differentiating the economy from society and often posing irreconcilable... View Details

Keywords: Economy; Capital; Globalized Firms and Management; Labor; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Practice; Conflict of Interests; Social Issues; Theory

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November – December 1998
Article

Clusters and the New Economics of Competition

By: Michael E. Porter

This article explains how clusters foster high levels of productivity and innovation and lays out the implications for competitive strategy and economic policy. Economic geography in an era of global competition poses a paradox. In theory, location should no longer be... View Details

Keywords: Economics; United States

March 2011
Article

Institutional Demand Pressure and the Cost of Corporate Loans

By: Victoria Ivashina and Zheng Sun

Between 2001 and 2007, annual institutional funding in highly leveraged loans went up from $32 billion to $426 billion, accounting for nearly 70% of the jump in total syndicated loan issuance over the same period. Did the inflow of institutional funding in the... View Details

Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Financial Crisis; Credit; Debt Securities; Financing and Loans; Interest Rates; Investment

SSRN

09 Jan 2014
Research & Ideas

The Entrepreneurs Who Invented Economic Forecasting

entrepreneurs developed index numbers, leading indicators, and new economic charts, and even founded important institutions like the National Bureau of Economic Research. The... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

April 2020 (Revised August 2021)
Case

Singapore: 'Facing Challenges Together'

By: Richard H.K. Vietor

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

11 Aug 2014
HBS Case

The Business of Behavioral Economics

You've done everything—endured diets, purged your freezer of Ben & Jerry's, and educated yourself on fat, sugar, and calories. Yet, you can't manage to lose weight. What's wrong with you? According to standard economic theory, which... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Food & Beverage; Health

Research Summary

The Institutional Foundations of Lending: Indirect Regulation and State-Building

The Institutional Foundations of Lending: Indirect Regulation and State-Building makes two main theoretical contributions to the scholarship on credit markets and institutional development. First, the book demonstrates that opportunistic lenders can take... View Details

November 2005 (Revised January 2006)
Case

Commercialization at the Garvan Institute for Medical Research (A)

A large and successful not-for-profit medical research institute must decide strategy to commercialize its discoveries. In the process, it must balance multiple conflicting demands from its stakeholders. View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Public Sector; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Nonprofit Organizations; Conflict and Resolution; Commercialization; Balance and Stability; Health Industry