Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(167)
- Faculty Publications (43)
- 2020
- Working Paper
Capital Regulation and Product Market Outcomes
By: Ishita Sen and David Humphry
We present evidence of product market adjustments and asset reorganizations from the largest ever shift in risk regulation in a developed insurance market. Using proprietary data on insurance risk exposures from the Bank of England, we develop a measure of regulatory... View Details
- September 2018
- Article
Asset Price Dynamics in Partially Segmented Markets
By: Robin Greenwood, Samuel G. Hanson and Gordon Y. Liao
We develop a model in which capital moves quickly within an asset class but slowly between asset classes. While most investors specialize in a single asset class, a handful of generalists can gradually reallocate capital across markets. Upon the arrival... View Details
- March 2018
- Module Note
Module Note for Instructors: Responsibilities to Society
By: Nien-hê Hsieh
This note outlines a framework to help managers discern and deliver on their responsibilities to society that has been taught in the “Responsibilities to Society” module in Leadership and Corporate Accountability (LCA), a semester-long, first-year required course for... View Details
- April 2017
- Article
The Responsibilities and Role of Business in Relation to Society: Back to Basics?
By: Nien-he Hsieh
In this address, I outline a back-to-basics approach to specifying the responsibilities and role of business in relation to society. Three “basics” comprise the approach. The first is arguing that basic principles of ordinary morality, such as a duty not to harm,... View Details
- 2018
- Working Paper
Bank Risk-Taking and the Real Economy: Evidence from the Housing Boom and Its Aftermath
By: Antonio Falato, Giovanni Favara and David Scharfstein
We present evidence that pressure to maximize short-term stock prices and earnings leads banks to increase risk. We start by showing that banks increase risk when they transition from private to public ownership through a public listing or an acquisition. The increase... View Details
- Article
High School Curriculum and Financial Outcomes: The Impact of Mandated Personal Finance and Mathematics Courses
By: Shawn Cole, Anna Paulson and Gauri Kartini Shastry
Financial literacy and cognitive capabilities are convincingly linked to the quality of financial decision-making. Yet, there is little evidence that education intended to improve financial decision-making is successful. Using plausibly exogenous variation in exposure... View Details
- 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
- March 2015 (Revised March 2016)
- Background Note
Note: Industry Self-Regulation: Sustaining the Commons in the 21st Century?
By: Rebecca Henderson, Amram Migdal and Tony He
Industry self-regulation has, in general, a lousy track record. Many studies have shown that it is often ineffective unless backed by the power of the state, and that in some cases it serves rather to forestall government intervention or to reduce competition than as... View Details
- Article
Contingent Match Incentives Increase Donations
By: Lalin Anik, Michael I. Norton and Dan Ariely
We propose a new means by which non-profits can induce donors to give today and commit to giving in the future: contingent match incentives, in which matching is made contingent on the percentage of others who give (e.g., "if X% of others give, we will match all... View Details
- Article
Seeking the Roots of Entrepreneurship: Insights from Behavioral Economics
By: Thomas Astebro, Holger Herz, Ramana Nanda and Roberto A. Weber
There is a growing body of evidence that many entrepreneurs seem to enter and persist in entrepreneurship despite earning low risk-adjusted returns. This has lead to attempts to provide explanations—using both standard economic theory and behavioral economics—for why... View Details
- Article
Liability Structure in Small-Scale Finance
By: Fenella Carpena, Shawn Cole, Jeremy Shapiro and Bilal Zia
Microfinance, the provision of small individual and business loans, has experienced dramatic growth, reaching over 150 million borrowers worldwide. Much of the success of microfinance has been attributed to attempts to overcome the challenges of information asymmetries... View Details
- 2013
- Working Paper
Inequality and Decision Making: Imagining a New Line of Inquiry
By: David Moss, Anant Thaker and Howard Rudnick
The substantial increase in inequality in the United States over the past three decades has provoked considerable debate, with some analysts characterizing rising inequality as among the greatest threats facing the nation and others dismissing it as little more than a... View Details
- 2014
- Working Paper
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
- April 2011
- Article
Institutional Tax Clienteles and Payout Policy
By: Mihir Desai and Li Jin
This paper employs heterogeneity in institutional shareholder tax characteristics to identify the relation between firm payout policy and tax incentives. Analysis of a panel of firms matched with the tax characteristics of the clients of their institutional... View Details
- February 2010
- Article
The Optimal Taxation of Height: A Case Study of Utilitarian Income Redistribution
By: N. Gregory Mankiw and Matthew C. Weinzierl
Should the income tax include a credit for short taxpayers and a surcharge for tall ones? The standard Utilitarian framework for tax analysis answers this question in the affirmative. Moreover, a plausible parameterization using data on height and wages implies a... View Details
- November 2009 (Revised May 2017)
- Case
Miracle Life, Inc.
By: Lauren Cohen and Christopher Malloy
Miracle Life is a firm with a unique setup and organizational structure. Specifically, it is a network marketing firm, also known as multi-level marketing (MLM) firm, which utilizes a large distributor base and depends on this individual distributor base to sell its... View Details
- October 2007
- Article
The Effectiveness of Pre-Release Advertising for Motion Pictures: An Empirical Investigation Using a Simulated Market
By: Anita Elberse and Bharat N. Anand
One of the most visible and publicized trends in the movie industry is the escalation in movie advertising expenditures over time. Yet, the returns to movie advertising are poorly understood. The main reason is that disentangling the causal effect of advertising on... View Details
- Article
Gross National Happiness As an Answer to the Easterlin Paradox?
By: Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch
The Easterlin Paradox refers to the fact that happiness data are typically stationary in spite of considerable increases in income. This amounts to a rejection of the hypothesis that current income is the only argument in the utility function. We find that the... View Details
- 1997
- Dictionary Entry
Incommensurable Values
By: Nien-he Hsieh
Values, such as liberty and equality, are sometimes said to be incommensurable in the sense that their value cannot be reduced to a common measure. The possibility of value incommensurability is thought to raise deep questions about practical reason and rational choice... View Details
- March 1989 (Revised October 1994)
- Case
Philip Morris Companies and Kraft, Inc.
Gives students the opportunity to explore the effect of substantial free cash flow on corporate acquisition and operating strategies. Students are also given the opportunity to extract information from the common stock prices of the participating firms. A variety of... View Details