Publications

Educators

December 16, 2019
Article

Why Your Startup Won't Last

By: Ranjay Gulati and Vasundhara Sawhney

Why do some startups that have crossed the threshold of “product-market fit” and have a viable business model still fail? This article begins by exploring the argument that most startups need more professionalization to thrive. Founders resist putting in place... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Organizational Structure; Growth and Development Strategy

January 2010 (Revised October 2011)
Case

The Congressional Oversight Panel's Valuation of the TARP Warrants (A)

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

The Congressional Oversight Panel wants to value the warrants issued to the government in connection with the TARP investments of 2008, in order to increase the transparency of options repurchases. The case describes the methodology used to value the warrants. Students... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Asset Pricing; Financial Instruments; Investment; Business and Government Relations; Mathematical Methods; Valuation; Banking Industry; Public Administration Industry; United States

Educators

26 Oct 2017
HBS Seminar

Michael Jacobides, London School of Business

February 2016 (Revised February 2020)
Teaching Note

Oberoi Hotels: Train Whistle in the Tiger Reserve

By: Ryan W. Buell and Ananth Raman

Celebrated as one of the world's premiere luxury hotel brands, Oberoi Hotels attracts and serves some of the most quality sensitive guests in the world. The case considers the challenge of how an organization with a standardized service model can repeatedly delight... View Details

Keywords: Service Quality; Service Management; Service Quality Competition; Customer Management; Customer Service Excellence; Employee Empowerment; Employee Engagement; Employee Training; Hospitality; Hotel Industry; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Customer Satisfaction; Employees; Training; Quality; Accommodations Industry; India

Article

Optimal Capital-Gains Taxation under Limited Information

By: Jerry R. Green and Eytan Sheshinski

Taxation of capital gains at realization may distort individuals' decisions regarding holding or selling during an asset's lifetime. This creates the problem of designing a tax structure for capital gains so as to induce efficient patterns of holding and selling.... View Details

Keywords: Capital Gains; Optimal Taxation; Taxation

August 2014 (Revised August 2015)
Supplement

Opening the Valve: From Software to Hardware (B)

By: Ethan Bernstein, Francesca Gino and Bradley Staats

Valve, one of the world's top video game software companies, has also become an iconic example of an organization with virtually no hierarchy. A 400-person organization, Valve's unique organizational form (described in detail in the case and accompanying employee... View Details

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

December 2023
Article

What Can Stockouts Tell Us About Inflation? Evidence from Online Micro Data

By: Alberto Cavallo and Oleksiy Kryvtsov

We use a detailed micro dataset on product availability and stockouts to construct a direct high-frequency measure of consumer product shortages during the 2020-2022 pandemic. We document a widespread multi-fold rise in stockouts in nearly all sectors early in the... View Details

Keywords: Prices; Stockouts; Inventories; Supply Disruptions; COVID-19 Pandemic; Supply Chain; Product; Demand and Consumers

2007
Other Unpublished Work

Implementing Technology

By: Diego Comin and Bart Hobijn

We introduce a tractable model of endogenous growth in which the returns to innovation are determined by the technology adoption decisions of the users of new technologies. Technology adoption involves an implementation investment that determines the initial... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Investment; Investment Return; Innovation and Invention; Growth and Development Strategy; Performance Productivity; Technology Adoption

05 Oct 2009
Research & Ideas

The Vanguard Corporation

communities like leeches. The time is ripe for a new corporate model, driven by a new type of business leader, where creating business value also means creating value for society. Surprisingly, Kanter finds models for these so-called... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

2020
Working Paper

Party-State Capitalism in China

By: Margaret Pearson, Meg Rithmire and Kellee Tsai

The “state capitalism” model, in which the state retains a dominant role as owner or investor-shareholder amidst the presence of markets and private firms, has received increasing attention, with China cited as the main exemplar. Yet as models evolve, so has China’s... View Details

Keywords: Capitalism; State Capitalism; Economic Systems; China

March 2002 (Revised July 2004)
Case

RWE and the Proposal for a German Electricity Regulator

In April 2001, Dietmar Kuhnt, CEO of the German energy giant RWE, had to make a decision that would affect his company's future. Profits in the electricity sector depended heavily on regulatory rules that influenced industry structure and pricing. RWE had emerged... View Details

Keywords: Energy Generation; Governance Compliance; Business Strategy; Energy Industry; Germany

Educators

Research Summary

Optimal Contracts under Inequity Aversion with Voluntary Enforcement (with Tilman Borgers)

We analyze contract structure and efficiency in a Moral Hazard model with possibly fairminded agent and principal when the contract is not automatically enforced but this is a voluntary choice by the contracting parties independently. We find that no penalizing... View Details

28 Nov 2023
Book

Economic Growth Draws Companies to Asia. Can They Handle Its Authoritarian Regimes?

interviews, and several original datasets to first elaborate two ideal typical models of state-business relations under authoritarianism, and second, explains why relations appear closer to one pattern or another. “Business elites can... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

11 Jan 2007
Working Paper Summaries

A Perceptions Framework for Categorizing Inventory Policies in Single-stage Inventory Systems

Keywords: by Noel Watson

12 Jan 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Modularity for Value Appropriation--How to Draw the Boundaries of Intellectual Property

Keywords: by Carliss Y. Baldwin & Joachim Henkel

May 1991
Article

Presidential Commitment and the Veto

By: Daniel E. Ingberman and Dennis Yao

A president's power to veto is widely recognized as an important weapon in the struggle with Congress over legislation. In this paper we investigate the effectiveness of the veto weapon with a simple model of presidential powers that incorporates informal institutional... View Details

Keywords: Government Legislation; Laws and Statutes; Financial Markets; Value; Taxation; Conflict and Resolution; Research; Performance Effectiveness; Legal Services Industry

Find at Harvard

April 2015
Article

Money Creation and the Shadow Banking System

By: Adi Sunderam

Many explanations for the rapid growth of the shadow banking system in the mid-2000s focus on money demand. This paper asks whether the short-term liabilities of the shadow banking system behave like money. We first present a simple model where households demand money... View Details

Keywords: Financial Instruments; Banks and Banking

2007
Working Paper

Optimal Reserve Management and Sovereign Debt

By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk

Most models currently used to determine optimal foreign reserve holdings take the level of international debt as given. However, given the sovereign's willingness-to-pay incentive problems, reserve accumulation may reduce sustainable debt levels. In addition, assuming... View Details

Keywords: Sovereign Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Financial Liquidity; International Finance; Emerging Markets; Mathematical Methods