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- February 2023 (Revised October 2023)
- Case
Amazon and the Future of Organized Labor
By: Reshmaan Hussam, Trevor Fetter and Grace Liu
From their peak in the 1950s, private-sector labor unions in the United States declined rapidly in membership and influence, decade after decade. But growing inequality—especially visible during the COVID-19 pandemic—sparked new interest in labor and organizing.... View Details
- January 2023
- Case
EKI Energy Services: One Billion Carbon Credits
By: George Serafeim
Within nine months from the time of its Initial Public Offering (IPO) in April of 2021, EKI Energy Services (EKI) shares had increased by more than 8,000%. Equally explosive was the growth of the company’s revenues and Earnings Before Interest, Taxes and Depreciation... View Details
- December 2022
- Technical Note
Risks and Opportunities from the Transition to a Low Carbon Economy: A Business Analysis Framework
By: George Serafeim
The transition to a low carbon economy introduces many risks and opportunities for businesses. Risks emerge from regulatory actions, such as carbon taxes and cap and trade systems, technological innovation that develop alternatives for customers making existing... View Details
Keywords: Risk Assessment; Opportunities; Environmental Sustainability; Carbon Footprint; Risk Management; Competitive Dynamics; Business Analysis; Climate Change; Accounting; Finance; Valuation; Business and Shareholder Relations; Technological Innovation; Transition; Product Positioning; Renewable Energy; Analysis
- June 2022
- Case
Business Implications from Regulating Carbon Emissions in the EU
By: George Serafeim and Benjamin Maletta
In the beginning of the 21st century, the European Union (the EU) had led the global fight against climate change with a wide array of policy measures. The EU’s primary approach to climate policy had been taxation via the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU... View Details
- 2022
- Chapter
Prioritarianism and Optimal Taxation
By: Matti Tuomala and Matthew Weinzierl
Prioritarianism has been at the center of the formal approach to optimal tax theory since its modern starting point in Mirrlees (1971), but most theorists’ use of it is motivated by tractability rather than explicit normative reasoning. We characterize analytically and... View Details
Keywords: Prioritarianism; Optimal Taxation; Utilitarianism; Redistribution; Inverse-optimum; Taxation; Theory; Policy
- February 2022
- Article
Taxation and Innovation in the 20th Century
By: Ufuk Akcigit, John Grigsby, Tom Nicholas and Stefanie Stantcheva
This paper studies the effect of corporate and personal taxes on innovation in the United States over the twentieth century. We build a panel of the universe of inventors who patent since 1920, and a historical state-level corporate tax database with corporate tax... View Details
- 2022
- Chapter
Fiscal Development under Colonial and Sovereign Rule
By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg
This chapter explores differences in the making of a ‘modern’ fiscal state under colonial and sovereign rule. Focusing on African and Asian colonies (1820–1970) and their respective European metropoles, it argues that while the introduction of ‘modern’... View Details
Keywords: Fiscal Modernization; Colonial Rule; Economic History; Sovereign Finance; History; Taxation; Africa; Asia
- 2021
- Working Paper
The Incidence of the Corporate Income Tax Is Irrelevant for Its (Benefit-Based) Justification
Robust support for corporate income taxation is a puzzle for standard tax theory because the tax’s incidence is uncertain and unreliable. We propose a resolution: if the corporate tax is seen as a benefit-based tax, its normative appeal depends on the correspondence... View Details
- November 2021
- Article
A Salient Sugar Tax Decreases Sugary Drink Buying
By: Grant E. Donnelly, Paige Guge, Ryan Howell and Leslie John
Many governments have introduced sugary drink excise taxes to reduce purchasing and consumption of such drinks; however, they do not typically stipulate how such taxes should be communicated at point-of-purchase. Historical, field, and experimental data entailing over... View Details
Keywords: Decision-making; Open Data; Open Materials; Preregistered; Health; Policy; Taxation; Consumer Behavior; Decision Making
- October 2021
- Case
Financial Reporting at Mattel
By: Aiyesha Dey, Trung Nguyen, Marshal Herrmann and Julia Kelley
In September 2020, Diana Ferguson was nearing her first Audit Committee meeting as the newly appointed Audit Committee chair of Mattel, Inc. Mattel was just recovering from an accounting scandal which had revealed the company’s poor internal controls and weak board... View Details
Keywords: Accounting; Accounting Audits; Financial Reporting; Financial Statements; Governance; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Disclosure; Corporate Governance; Governance Compliance; Governance Controls; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Governing and Advisory Boards; Lawsuits and Litigation; Business and Shareholder Relations; Consumer Products Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Financial Services Industry; North and Central America; United States; California
- August 2021
- Case
Livongo: Scaling a Purpose-Driven Organization in Healthcare
By: Ranjay Gulati, Aseem Shukla and Reva Nohria
When seasoned entrepreneur Glen Tullman founded the chronic health care startup Livongo in 2014, it was personal. His son lived with diabetes, and Tullman knew firsthand how taxing it could be to manage such an unrelenting disease. Livongo set out to empower people... View Details
- August 13, 2021
- Other Article
New Child Tax Credit Should Be a Call to Action for Banks
By: Bob Neuhaus, Daniel Schneider and Peter Tufano
- August 2, 2021
- Other Article
Missing Voices in the Child Tax Credit Frenzy—Parents
By: Peter Tufano and Daniel Schneider
- July 2021
- Case
Amazon HQ2
By: James K. Sebenius and Ben Cook
Amazon’s failed bid for a second headquarters location (“HQ2”) in Long Island City, New York offers many lessons for negotiators looking to avoid similar high-profile defeats in strategically important deals. The company’s project – which promised to bring billions of... View Details
- July 2021
- Article
Invisible Inequality Leads to Punishing the Poor and Rewarding the Rich
By: Oliver P. Hauser, Gordon T. Kraft-Todd, David Rand, Martin A. Nowak and Michael I. Norton
Four experiments examine how the lack of awareness of inequality affects behaviour towards the rich and poor. In Experiment 1, participants who became aware that wealthy individuals donated a smaller percentage of their income switched from rewarding the wealthy to... View Details
Keywords: Income Transparency; Income; Wealth; Equality and Inequality; Knowledge; Behavior; Outcome or Result; Society; Policy
- June 15, 2021
- Article
Cutting the Gordian Knot of Employee Health Care Benefits and Costs: A Corporate Model Built on Employee Choice
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Barak D. Richman
President Joe Biden’s promise to give every American access to affordable health insurance is well-intentioned, but his plan’s policy elements—a public option, a permanent expanded tax credit—require congressional approval and would expend significant political and... View Details
- 2021
- Article
Designing, Not Checking, for Policy Robustness: An Example with Optimal Taxation
By: Benjamin B. Lockwood, Afras Sial and Matthew C. Weinzierl
Economists typically check the robustness of their results by comparing them across plausible ranges of parameter values and model structures. A preferable approach to robustness—for the purposes of policymaking and evaluation—is to design policy that takes these... View Details
- April 2021
- Supplement
Phillips 66 and the Washington State Carbon Tax (B)
By: Rebecca Henderson and Mariana Oseguera
- 2021
- Book
Global Goliaths: Multinational Corporations in the 21st Century Economy
By: C. Fritz Foley, James R. Hines Jr. and David Wessel
Globalization and multinational corporations have long seemed partners in the enterprise of economic growth: globalization-led prosperity was the goal, and giant corporations spanning the globe would help achieve it. In recent years, however, the notion that all... View Details
- March 2021
- Case
Phillips 66 and the Washington State Carbon Tax
By: Rebecca Henderson, Mariana Oseguera and Christopher Musser