Publications

Research Summary

Ruling the Waves: Business and Politics along the Technological Frontier

By: Debora L. Spar

There are certain periods of time when technological innovation pushes at the frontiers of government and law; when technology undermines state authority and opens massive loopholes for entreneneurs to exploit. During these critical junctures, rules disappear and... View Details

09 Feb 2017

All Hail Partisan Politics

March 2013
Article

Bridging the Gap? Government Subsidized Lending and Access to Capital

By: Josh Lerner and Kristle Romero-Cortes

The consequences of providing public funds to financial institutions remain controversial. We examine the Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) Fund's impact on credit union activity, using hitherto little studied U.S. Treasury data. The CDFI Fund grants... View Details

Keywords: Financing and Loans; Credit; Government and Politics; Financial Institutions; United States

17 Sep 2007
Conference Presentation

Clear and Present Danger: The Failure of Political Institutions and New-venture Survival

By: Shon R. Hiatt and Wesley Sine

Keywords: Government and Politics; Failure

Article

Distance and Political Boundaries: Estimating Border Effects under Inequality Constraints

By: Fernando Borraz, Alberto Cavallo, Roberto Rigobon and Leandro Zipitria

The border effects literature finds that political boundaries have a large impact on relative prices across locations. In this paper we show that the standard empirical specification suffers from selection bias, and propose a new methodology based on binned-quantile... View Details

Keywords: Border Effects; Prices

Keywords: Janelle Nanos; Executive, Legislative, and Other General Government Support; Executive, Legislative, and Other General Government Support; Executive, Legislative, and Other General Government Support; Executive, Legislative, and Other General Government Support

01 Mar 2015
News

Research Brief: Political Capital

partisan message. “It proactively persuades them to go out and vote,” Chung explains. So how would a bit of reshuffling of funds have affected US politics over the last decade? Chung View Details

25 Sep 2017
News

CEO, Harvard prof: “US politics rigged”

March 2020
Article

Governance Through Shame and Aspiration: Index Creation and Corporate Behavior

By: Akash Chattopadhyay, Matthew D. Shaffer and Charles C.Y. Wang

After decades of deprioritizing shareholders' economic interests and low corporate profitability, Japan introduced the JPX-Nikkei400 in 2014. The index highlighted the country's "best-run" companies by annually selecting the 400 most profitable of its large and liquid... View Details

Keywords: JPX-Nikkei 400 Index; Status Incentives; Return On Equity; Capital Efficiency; Social Norms; Index Inclusion; Reputation Incentives; Motivation and Incentives; Corporate Governance; Behavior; Investment Return; Status and Position; Japan

2014
Working Paper

Opting Out of Good Governance

By: C. Fritz Foley, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Jonathan Greenstein and Eric Zwick

Cross-listing on a U.S. exchange does not bond foreign firms to follow the corporate governance rules of that exchange. Hand-collected data show that 80% of cross-listed firms opt out of at least one exchange governance rule, instead committing to observe the rules of... View Details

Keywords: Financial Markets; Globalization; Corporate Governance

16 Jan 2008
Working Paper Summaries

The Political Economy of “Natural” Disasters

Keywords: by Charles Cohen & Eric D. Werker

October 1991 (Revised December 1992)
Background Note

Note on Corporate Governance Systems: The United States, Japan, and Germany

By: W. Carl Kester and Robert W. Lightfoot

Describes and compares the corporate governance systems commonly found in the United States, Japan, and Germany. View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; United States; Japan; Germany

Educators

2021
Article

Everyday Illiberalism: How Hungarian Subnational Politics Propel Single-Party Dominance

By: Laura Jakli and Matthew Stenberg

While numerous studies consider the roles that media consolidation, court-packing, and economic crises have played in Hungary's democratic decline since 2010, none have considered the subnational mechanisms driving illiberalism. This study examines the types of... View Details

Keywords: Democracy; Government and Politics; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Hungary

Bob Eccles and George Serafeim Harvard Business School on their investigation into the King Code of Governance and how it has impacted the way corporates do business in South Africa. View Details

January 2000 (Revised November 2001)
Case

Mavesa (A): Business Strategy Amid Economic and Political Turmoil

Examines Mavesa's response to external liberalization in 1989. The consumer packaged goods firm, which had been extensively vertically integrated, completely revamps its business strategy in the 1990s. View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Economy; Business Strategy; Government and Politics

We systematically document governance centralization in decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and study its drivers and economic implications. Using multiple data sources and granular on-chain transactional data, we compare our findings to those in... View Details

2017
Chapter

Government and Organizations: Transforming Institutions Using Behavioral Insights

By: Abigail Dalton and Max Bazerman

18 Aug 2010
Working Paper Summaries

The Role of Organizational Scope and Governance in Strengthening Private Monitoring

Keywords: by Lamar Pierce & Michael W. Toffel

October 2021
Article

Board Design and Governance Failures at Peer Firms

By: Shelby Gai, J. Yo-Jud Cheng and Andy Wu

Our study introduces board committees as a crucial determinant of board actions. We examine how directors who structurally link different board committees—referred to as multi-committee directors (MCDs)—explain why some board actions are merely symbolic while others... View Details

Keywords: Board Committees; Board Monitoring; New Director Nomination; Peer Financial Restatements; Governing and Advisory Boards; Corporate Governance; Performance Effectiveness