Publications

23 Apr 2014
HBS Case

Are Electronic Cigarettes a Public Good or Health Hazard?

consequences, Quelch hopes he can motivate MBA students to think more deeply about the public health impacts of business decisions, as well as getting MPH students to think about the business forces that shape View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Food & Beverage; Advertising

2010
Chapter

Colonial Land Tenure, Electoral Competition, and Public Goods in India

By: Abhijit Banerjee and Lakshmi Iyer

Keywords: History; Public Sector; Political Elections; India

Article

Public Goods and Posterity: An Empirical Test of Intergenerational Altruism

By: Arthur C. Brooks

November 2023
Case

The Commons Project in Rwanda—Building Digital Infrastructure for the Global Public Good

By: Álvaro Rodríguez Arregui and Tom Quinn

In September 2022, The Commons Project Foundation (TCP) CEO Zhenya Lindgardt and her team met on a Zoom call to discuss building tools to help Rwandans manage their health data. They believed that helping Africa build digital infrastructure would improve much-needed... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Capital; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Health Care and Treatment; Information Management; Adaptation; Information Infrastructure; Information Technology Industry; Rwanda; United States

Educators

Purchase

2008
Working Paper

Colonial Land Tenure, Electoral Competition and Public Goods in India

By: Abhijit Banerjee and Lakshmi Iyer

2016
Article

Learning By Contributing: Gaining Competitive Advantage Through Contributing to Public Goods

By: Frank Nagle

1979
Article

An Incentive Compatible Planning Procedure for Public Good Production: A Corrigendum

By: Jerry R. Green and Jean-Jacques Laffont

2008
Chapter

Public Action for Public Goods: Theory and Evidence

By: Abhijit Banerjee, Lakshmi Iyer and Rohini Somanathan

This chapter focuses on the relationship between public action and access to public goods. It begins by developing a simple model of collective action which is intended to capture the various mechanisms that are discussed in the theoretical literature on collective... View Details

Keywords: Policy; Quality; Groups and Teams; Human Needs; Poverty; Welfare or Wellbeing; Public Administration Industry

April 2, 2018
Article

The Right Way for Companies to Publicize Their Social Responsibility Efforts

By: Mark R. Kramer

It’s a common complaint. Companies keep trying to show the world that they are socially conscious and keep losing the battle. Anheuser-Busch and Hyundai even devoted this year’s Super Bowl ads to lauding their philanthropic efforts with decidedly mixed responses.... View Details

Keywords: Public Relations; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Communication Strategy

Register to Read

Fall 2021
Article

The Problem of Social Benefit

By: Frank Nagle

Economists have obsessed over the question of negative externalities, but market arrangements can also generate positive externalities. We should consider how to harness them for public good. View Details

Keywords: Externalities; Public Good; Economics; Social Issues

28 Apr 2016
News

Is good health good for business?

01 Jun 2016
Working Paper Summaries

Motivating Effort in Contributing to Public Goods Inside Organizations: Field Experimental Evidence

Keywords: by Andrea Blasco, Olivia S. Jung, Karim R. Lakhani, and Michael E. Menietti

Article

Characterization of Satisfactory Mechanisms for the Revelation of Preferences for Public Goods

By: Jerry R. Green and Jean-Jacques Laffont

Social decision mechanisms that admit dominant strategies and result in Pareto optima are characterized by the class of mechanisms proposed by Groves. The concept of decision mechanisms is generalized and the characterization is shown to extend to these cases. View Details

Keywords: Decision Mechanisms; Game Theory; Economics