Publications

SSRN

December 2004 (Revised October 2017)
Background Note

Subscriber Models

By: Mihir Desai, Robin Greenwood, Scott Mayfield and Lucy White

Introduces the subscriber model as an alternative valuation framework for firms whose revenues can be traced to repeated transactions with customers. View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Corporate Finance

January 2002 (Revised December 2002)
Background Note

A Note on the Value of Information in an Entrepreneurial Venture

By: Paul W. Marshall

Uses a decision analysis framework to analyze the value of gaming information before making a full investment in an entrepreneurial venture. View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Entrepreneurship; Investment; Framework; Business or Company Management

2008
Working Paper

On Best-Response Bidding in GSP Auctions

By: Matthew Cary, Aparna Das, Benjamin Edelman, Ioannis Giotis, Kurtis Heimerl, Anna R. Karlin, Claire Mathieu and Michael Schwarz

How should players bid in keyword auctions such as those used by Google, Yahoo! and MSN? We model ad auctions as a dynamic game of incomplete information, so we can study the convergence and robustness properties of various strategies. In particular, we consider... View Details

Keywords: Online Advertising; Auctions; Bids and Bidding; Game Theory; Mathematical Methods; Competitive Strategy

Teaching Interest

How to Talk Gooder in Business and Life

By: Alison Wood Brooks

This is an Elective Curriculum course for HBS MBA students. People must converse effectively to achieve success in every aspect of business and life – from pitching ideas to giving feedback, brainstorming and making strategic decisions, from interviewing to firing.... View Details

Keywords: Conversation; Strategic Decisions; Interactions

Article

Vertical Merger, Collusion, and Disruptive Buyers

By: Volker Nocke and Lucy White

In a repeated game setting of a vertically related industry, we study the collusive effects of vertical mergers. We show that any vertical merger facilitates upstream collusion, no matter how large (in terms of capacity or size of product portfolio) the integrated... View Details

Keywords: Stock Options; Disruptive Innovation; Five Forces Framework; United States

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Fall 2011
Article

Leveraging Tribal Sovereignty for Economic Opportunity: A Strategic Negotiations Perspective

By: Gavin Clarkson and James K. Sebenius

Indian tribes and U.S. states often find themselves at the bargaining table, often negotiating "compacts" to govern gaming operations on tribal lands. The operational success of the Pequot gaming operation in Connecticut, Foxwoods, and the substantial revenue shared... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Ethnicity; Negotiation Tactics; Race; Social Issues; Relationships; Government and Politics; Economics; United States

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2024
Article

Neyman Meets Causal Machine Learning: Experimental Evaluation of Individualized Treatment Rules

By: Michael Lingzhi Li and Kosuke Imai

A century ago, Neyman showed how to evaluate the efficacy of treatment using a randomized experiment under a minimal set of assumptions. This classical repeated sampling framework serves as a basis of routine experimental analyses conducted by today’s scientists across... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Research

Research Summary

The Power of Paradox: Some Recent Developments in Interactive Epistemology

This survey describes a central paradox of game theory, viz. the Paradox of Backward Induction (BI). The paradox is that the BI outcome is often said to follow from basic game-theoretic principles--specifically, from the assumption that the players are rational. Yet,... View Details

June 2002 (Revised July 2002)
Background Note

Government Games: Understanding the Role of Government In Business Strategy

Lays out a framework for understanding the impact of government on business strategy. Distinguishes between two major types of "games" that businesses play that involve government: value net games and public interest games. Highlights the multiple roles that government... View Details

Keywords: Business Strategy; Business and Government Relations

Web

Accelerating the Careers of Diverse Rising Stars

The Advent Leadership Academy was a unique 13-week custom program designed to equip a diverse cohort of 40 talented leaders from across Advent's portfolio companies with the skills and frameworks they needed to advance their career... View Details

05 Mar 2012
Research & Ideas

Is JC Penney’s Makeover the Future of Retailing?

game when Penney offers 'pretty good' prices every day?" Aside from pricing changes, all retail stores are under intense pressure to create item assortments that cannot be found elsewhere. "We complain that every department store is the... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard; Retail

09 Dec 2020
Video

New Founder Series: Go-To-Market Strategy

April 2003 (Revised December 2003)
Background Note

Analyzing Complex Negotiations

Develops a framework linking structural diagnosis and strategy design in complicated (complex and ambiguous) negotiations. To develop good strategies, negotiators must rigorously diagnose the structure of their negotiating situations. Equivalently, strategy follows... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Negotiation Process; Complexity

12 Mar 2006
Research & Ideas

New Research Explores Multi-Sided Markets

Xbox, make their profits from game developers through royalties and incur losses on the sale of consoles to users by pricing them below cost. The key reason is that two-sided platforms must solve a chicken-and-egg problem. For example,... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Technology

28 May 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Monopolistic Competition Between Differentiated Products With Demand For More Than One Variety

Keywords: by Andrei Hagiu; Video Game; Video Game

December 2022
Article

Shaping Nascent Industries: Innovation Strategy and Regulatory Uncertainty in Personal Genomics

By: Cheng Gao and Rory McDonald

In nascent industries—whose new technologies are often poorly understood by regulators—contending with regulatory uncertainty can be crucial to organizational survival and growth. Prior research on nonmarket strategy has largely focused on established firms in mature... View Details

Keywords: Technological Change; Innovation; Qualitative Methods; New Categories; Entrepreneurship; Technological Innovation; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Risk and Uncertainty; Strategy

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