Publications

September 26, 2018
Article

Ownership and Power Structure: Together at Last

By: Laura Alfaro, Nicholas Bloom, Paola Conconi, Harald Fadinger, Patrick Legros, Andrew Newman, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

Economists have largely ignored the deep interdependency between integration and delegation. This column describes a new theory of integration and delegation choices aimed at shedding light on how these distinct elements of organizational design interact. Contrary to... View Details

Keywords: Power; Organisational Design; Economics; Ownership; Organizational Design

March 2016
Article

The Role of Investor Gut Feel in Managing Complexity and Extreme Risk

By: Laura Huang

Securing financial resources from investors is a key challenge for many early stage entrepreneurial ventures. Given the inherent uncertainty surrounding a decision to invest in these ventures, prior research has found that experienced investors rely heavily on their... View Details

Keywords: Angel Investors; Gut Feel; Intuition; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Risk and Uncertainty; Complexity; Decision Making

January 2009
Article

FDI, Productivity, and Financial Development

By: Laura Alfaro, Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan and Selin Sayek

This paper examines the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on growth by focusing on the complementarities between FDI inflows and financial markets. In our earlier work, we found that FDI is beneficial for growth only if the host country has well-developed... View Details

Keywords: Human Capital; Income; Performance Productivity; Financial Markets; Foreign Direct Investment; Financial Institutions; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues

10 May 2020
Blog Post

Let’s Hear it For the Moms – The Incredible Balancing Act of Student Mothers

On the first day at HBS, all first-year students meet their sections – a mini 94-student family amidst the larger cohort of 938 students. To get to know one another, we were given a prompt inspired by a bet someone made with Hemingway... View Details

02 Aug 2011
First Look

First Look: August 2

workday events can make or break employees' inner work lives. But it's forward momentum in meaningful work—progress that creates the best inner work lives. Through rigorous analysis of nearly 12,000 diary entries provided by 238 employees... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

22 Mar 2016
First Look

March 22, 2016

forthcoming World Bank Economic Review Productivity Gains from Foreign Direct Investment: Macro and Micro Approaches By: Alfaro, Laura Abstract—This paper discussed the importance of an “integrated approach” to the study of the effects of... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 2022
Article

Health Externalities and Policy: The Role of Social Preferences

By: Laura Alfaro, Ester Faia, Nora Lamersdorf and Farzad Saidi

Social preferences facilitate the internalization of health externalities, for example by reducing mobility during a pandemic. We test this hypothesis using mobility data from 258 cities worldwide alongside experimentally validated measures of social preferences.... View Details

Keywords: Social Preferences; Pandemics; Mobility; Health Externalities; Mitigation Policies; Health Pandemics; Cooperation; Behavior; Policy

February 2004 (Revised March 2010)
Case

Brazil 2003: Inflation Targeting and Debt Dynamics

By: Laura Alfaro, Rafael M. Di Tella and Ingrid Vogel

In October 2002, Brazilians elected a left-wing president, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, for the first time in that country's history. As markets faltered in response, Lula sought to reaffirm his commitment to fiscal discipline, a floating exchange rate, and inflation... View Details

Keywords: Economy; Inflation and Deflation; Money; Borrowing and Debt; Policy; Emerging Markets; Brazil

01 Mar 2010
News

Faculty Research Online

growth dispelled the idea that something about the “nature of India” made rapid growth difficult. Broad-ranging reforms in the mid-1980s and early 1990s deregulated legal barriers to entry into many industries and greatly reduced barriers to trade. Associate Professor... View Details

Keywords: Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services; Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services; Professional Services

March 2007 (Revised March 2010)
Case

Rovna Dan: The Flat Tax in Slovakia

By: Laura Alfaro, Rafael M. Di Tella, Ane Damgaard Jensen and Vincent Marie Dessain

Explores the tax policy choices made by Slovakia and the impact of reforms. Set in 2006, looks at the decision facing new Prime Minister Robert Fico as he faces the public's "reform fatigue." Traces the development of tax and fiscal policies since Slovakia's... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy; Taxation; Labor; Welfare; Slovakia

13 Jul 2010
First Look

First Look: July 13

matching candidates are attractive by reducing the competition among agents on the same side of the market. An agent who sees fewer candidates knows that these candidates also see fewer potential matches, and so are more likely to accept... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Article

A Multicountry Perspective on Gender Differences in Time Use During COVID-19

By: Laura M. Giurge, Ashley V. Whillans and Ayse Yemiscigil (shared authorship)

The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally altered how people spend time, with possible consequences for subjective well-being. Using diverse samples of remote workers from the United States, Canada, Denmark, Brazil, and Spain (n = 31,141), following a preregistered... View Details

Keywords: Time; Subjective Well-being; COVID-19; Health Pandemics; Gender; Time Management; Well-being; Work-Life Balance; Global Range

September 2019
Article

The Self-Presentational Consequences of Upholding One's Stance in Spite of the Evidence

By: Leslie John, Martha Jeong, Francesca Gino and Laura Huang

Five studies explore the self-presentational consequences of refusing to “back down” – that is, upholding a stance despite evidence of its inaccuracy. Using data from an entrepreneurial pitch competition, Study 1 shows that entrepreneurs tend not to back down even... View Details

Keywords: Self-presentation; Belief Perseverance; Judgment; Confidence; Persuasion; Personal Characteristics; Behavior; Perception; Decision Making; Outcome or Result

March 2010 (Revised May 2013)
Case

Chile's Copper Surplus: The Road Not Taken (A)

By: Laura Alfaro, Dante Roscini and Renee Kim

In 2008, Andres Velasco, Chile's Finance Minister, was under mounting criticisms over his fiscal policy. As the world's largest copper producer, Chile was benefiting from the rise in copper prices, which had more than tripled since 2003. Copper revenues translated into... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Economic Growth; Metals and Minerals; Investment Funds; Policy; State Ownership; Wealth; Chile

October 2004
Article

FDI and Economic Growth: The Role of Local Financial Markets

By: Laura Alfaro, Areendam Chanda, Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan and Selin Sayek

The purpose of this paper is to examine the various links among foreign direct investment, financial markets and growth. We model an economy with a continuum of agents indexed by their level of ability. Agents have two choices: they can work for the foreign company in... View Details

Keywords: Foreign Direct Investment; Financial Markets; Economic Growth; Cost; Wealth; Investment Return; Knowledge

December 2019
Case

Gary Vaynerchuk: #GaryVee

By: Laura Huang and Sarah Mehta

Fresh out of a public social media debacle, Gary Vaynerchuk needs to reconsider the approach he takes in leading his digital media agency, VaynerMedia. Founded in 2009 by Gary and his brother AJ, VaynerMedia has grown into an unconventional creative marketing agency.... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Leadership Style; Personal Characteristics; Business Growth and Maturation; Marketing; Social Media

17 Sep 2013
First Look

First Look: September 17

networks historically provided (e.g., information about potential workers, monitoring, and reputation foundations). Publisher's link: http://www.people.hbs.edu/wkerr/Ghani_Kerr_Stanton_MSCI_OdeskDiaspora-8-26-13.pdf September 2013 Frontiers in Perception Science... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 2014
Article

Improving the Quality of Cancer Care in America Through Health Information Technology

By: Thomas W. Feeley, George W. Sledge, Laura Levit and Patricia A. Ganz

A recent report from the Institute of Medicine titled Delivering High-Quality Cancer Care: Charting a New Course for a System in Crisis, identifies improvement in information technology (IT) as essential to improving the quality of cancer care in America. The... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Information Technology Industry; Cancer Care In The U.S.; Health; Technology; Health Industry; North and Central America