Publications

SSRN

October 2015
Article

Agglomerative Forces and Cluster Shapes

By: William R. Kerr and Scott Duke Kominers

We model spatial clusters of similar firms. Our model highlights how agglomerative forces lead to localized, individual connections among firms, while interaction costs generate a defined distance over which attraction forces operate. Overlapping firm interactions... View Details

Keywords: Agglomeration; Clusters; Industrial Organization; Silicon Valley; Technology Flows; Patents; Networks; Information Technology; Industry Clusters; Entrepreneurship; California

July 2007 (Revised November 2009)
Case

World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF)

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Jordan Mitchell

Nearly all environmental organizations have a similar aim: to stop the degradation of the natural environment. However, the strategies which environmental organizations choose to employ are sometimes starkly different. Compares the models of two dissimilar... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Business and Community Relations; Business and Government Relations; Environmental Sustainability; Non-Governmental Organizations; Business Strategy

July 2007 (Revised November 2009)
Case

Greenpeace

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Jordan Mitchell

Nearly all environmental organizations have a similar aim: to stop the degradation of the natural environment. However, the strategies which environmental organizations choose to employ are sometimes starkly different. Compares the models of two dissimilar... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Business and Community Relations; Business and Government Relations; Environmental Sustainability; Non-Governmental Organizations; Business Strategy

October 2002
Article

Differences of Opinion and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns

By: Karl B. Diether, Christopher J. Malloy and Anna Scherbina

We provide evidence that stocks with higher dispersion in analysts' earnings forecasts earn lower future returns than otherwise similar stocks. This effect is most pronounced in small stocks, and stocks that have performed poorly over the past year. Interpreting... View Details

Keywords: Stocks; Forecasting and Prediction; Price; Valuation; Investment Return

20 Sep 2017
News

Lessons from Yelp’s Empirical Approach to Diversity

October 2022
Exercise

Shanty Real Estate: Confidential Information for iBuyer 2

By: Michael Luca, Jesse M. Shapiro and Nathan Sun

Shanty is a simulation in which students inhabit the role of either a traditional home buyer or an iBuyer, both bidding on the same condo. The traditional home buyer has access to a “comp sheet” of similar properties that have recently sold, and has done a walkthrough.... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Decision Making; Market Timing; Measurement and Metrics

2019
Working Paper

Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 10 Variations on the Theme of Flow Production

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

The purpose of this chapter is to explore how technologies and organizations engaged in flow production evolve over time. To allow for an apples-to-apples comparison, I examine organizations using essentially the same physical technologies, making similar products, and... View Details

Keywords: Flow Production; Ford; General Motors; Competitiveness; Information Technology; Organizational Design; Production; Auto Industry

August 2018 (Revised April 2019)
Case

Chateau Winery (A): Unsupervised Learning

By: Srikant M. Datar and Caitlin N. Bowler

This case follows Bill Booth, marketing manager of a regional wine distributor, as he applies unsupervised learning on data about his customers’ purchases to better understand their preferences. Specifically, he uses the K-means clustering technique to identify groups... View Details

Keywords: Clustering; Data Science; Analytics and Data Science; Customers; Marketing; Analysis

2019
Working Paper

Do Banks Have an Edge?

By: Juliane Begenau and Erik Stafford

Overall, no! We show that the level and time series variation in cash flows for most bank activities are well matched by capital market portfolios with similar interest rate and credit risk to what banks report to hold. Ignoring operating expenses, bank loans earn high... View Details

Keywords: Banks; Market Efficiency; Bank Capital; Bank Debt; CAPM; Banking; Bank Deposits; Bank Funding Advantage; Leverage; Maturity Transformation; Replicating Portfolio; Efficiency; Banks and Banking; Capital Markets; Performance Evaluation; Performance Efficiency; Banking Industry; United States

SSRN

2014
Working Paper

Poverty and Crime: Evidence from Rainfall and Trade Shocks in India

By: Lakshmi Iyer and Petia Topalova

Does poverty lead to crime? We shed light on this question using two independent and exogenous shocks to household income in rural India: the dramatic reduction in import tariffs in the early 1990s and rainfall variations. We find that trade shocks, previously shown to... View Details

Keywords: Rainfall; Weather; Crime; Trade Liberalization; India; Crime and Corruption; Poverty; India

SSRN

March 2010 (Revised October 2011)
Case

Highland District County Hospital: Gastroenterology Care in Sweden

By: Michael E. Porter, Jennifer F Baron and Martin Rejler

Sweden's Highland District County Hospital, similar to a community hospital in the US, undertook a major restructuring to integrate care delivery for medical conditions served by the Department of Medicine. Each subspecialty within the Department would form a single,... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Sweden

2008
Working Paper

Can the Virtuous Mouse and the Wealthy Elephant Live Happily Ever After?

By: James E. Austin and Herman B. Leonard

What happens when small iconic socially-oriented businesses are acquired by large corporations? Such mergers create significant opportunities for creating both business value and substantially expanded social value, but also pose unusually difficult challenges because... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Management Style; Agreements and Arrangements; Social Enterprise; Social Issues

This paper studies the impact of platform-owner entry threat on complementors in platform-based markets. We examine how app developers on the Android mobile platform adjust innovation efforts (rate and direction) and value-capture strategies in response to the threat... View Details

17 Aug 2019
News

Two worthy books trace the history of tech through Silicon Valley, leaving Seattle’s story still to be told

06 Dec 2006
Op-Ed

India Needs to Encourage Trade with China

Jiabao last year during a similar visit. But $19 billion is hardly anything to write home about, even if one were to discount the fact that much of what India exports to China is low-value-added commodities (notably iron ore). I asked... View Details

Keywords: by Tarun Khanna

19 Dec 2011
Research & Ideas

Climbing the Great Wall of Trust

In recent conversations with US executives doing business in China, Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Roy Y.J. Chua heard about a new trend. In an East Asian version of cutting deals on the golf course, Chinese executives often take partners to teahouses to... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

September 2021 (Revised December 2021)
Case

Spire, the CubeSat Revolution, and the Government as a Space Data Customer

By: Matthew Weinzierl, Mehak Sarang and Brendan L. Rosseau

This case outlines the rise of Spire Global, a young space company using CubeSats to provide weather data and weather prediction services. In addition to tracing the evolution of a space startup from novel idea to publicly-traded company, the case also examines the... View Details

Keywords: Space; Government Contracting; Remote Sensing; Satellites; Business Startups; Public Sector; Cost vs Benefits; Competition; Weather; Forecasting and Prediction

Article

Understanding Psychological Safety in Healthcare and Education Organizations: A Comparative Perspective

By: Amy C. Edmondson, Monica Higgins, Sara J. Singer and Jennie Weiner

Psychological safety plays a vital role in helping people overcome barriers to learning and change in interpersonally challenging work environments. This article focuses on two such contexts—health care and education. The authors theorize differences in psychological... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare Organizations; Organizations; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry