Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,139)
- Faculty Publications (561)
- November 2004
- Article
Unemployment Benefits As a Substitute for a Conservative Central Banker
By: Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch
In the many years since their introduction, positive theories of inflation have rarely been tested. This paper documents a negative relationship between inflation and the welfare state (proxied by the parameters of the unemployment benefit program) that is to be... View Details
- October 2004
- Article
Are Politicians Really Paid Like Bureaucrats?
By: Rafael Di Tella and Raymond Fisman
We provide the first empirical analysis of gubernatorial pay. Using U.S. data for 1950-90, we document substantial variation in the wages of politicians, both across states and overtime. Gubernatorial wages respond to changes in state income per capita and taxes. We... View Details
- September 2004
- Article
Estimating the Market Risk Premium
- May 2004 (Revised April 2006)
- Case
Ultra: The Quest for Leadership (A)
By: Dwight B. Crane and Ricardo Reisen de Pinho
Ultra is one of a small group of competing Brazilian petrochemical companies, each of which buys raw material and is a minority owner of Copene, a "cracking" company that provides ethylene and other materials. Because of an industry restructuring, an auction of shares... View Details
- March 2004 (Revised April 2005)
- Case
Midwest Office Products
By: Robert S. Kaplan
Presents an easy introduction to time-driven activity-based costing (ABC) that allows students to build a simple ABC model of order profitability. Midwest's time-driven ABC approach is based on two categories of parameter estimates. The first is the cost per hour of... View Details
- March 2004 (Revised May 2005)
- Case
Shurgard Self-Storage: Expansion to Europe
By: Richard G. Hamermesh and Indra Reinbergs
Shurgard, a U.S.-based firm that rents storage facilities to consumers and small businesses, is considering financing options for rapid expansion of its European operations. Five years after entering Europe, Shurgard Europe has opened 17 facilities in Belgium, France,... View Details
- March 2004
- Article
Do Police Reduce Crime? Estimates Using the Allocation of Police Forces after a Terrorist Attack
By: Rafael Di Tella and Ernesto Schargrodsky
An important challenge in the crime literature is to isolate causal effects of police on crime. Following a terrorist attack on the main Jewish center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in July 1994, all Jewish institutions received police protection. Thus, this hideous event... View Details
- 2004
- Working Paper
Judging Fund Managers by the Company They Keep
By: Randolph Cohen, Joshua Coval and Luboš Pástor
We develop a performance evaluation approach in which a fund manager's skill is judged by the extent to which his investment decisions resemble the decisions of managers with distinguished performance records. The proposed performance measures are estimated more... View Details
- December 2003
- Case
Fox Bids for the NFL-1993
By: Bharat N. Anand and Catherine M. Conneely
The Fox television network, launched in 1987 by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. was in a precarious position in 1993. Although it had met its business plan targets, its ratings in the recently concluded November "sweeps" were indifferent, several of its newly launched... View Details
- November 2003 (Revised June 2004)
- Background Note
China's Telecommunications Sector
By: Richard L. Nolan and Stephen P. Bradley
In mid-2003, China was the fastest-growing telecom market. Telecom subscribers are estimated at 472 million. With the size and growth of telecom, China is a hot spot for new telecom and IT technologies. Furthermore, China's sheer market power provides a strong position... View Details
- January 2003 (Revised June 2005)
- Case
Multinationals as Engines of Growth?
Reviews the issues surrounding estimating the impact over time of multinationals on host economies. Uses a series of short historical case studies, including the role of United Fruit in the "banana" republics of Central America, oil and banking in Iran before the... View Details
- October 2002 (Revised October 2005)
- Case
United Parcel Service's IPO
By: Paul M. Healy, Brett Laschinger and Ajay Shroff
Examines the valuation of United Parcel Service (UPS) at the time of its IPO in mid-1999. Offers students the opportunity to assess UPS's current performance relative to its major competitor, Federal Express (FedEx), and to judge whether that performance is... View Details
- July 2002
- Article
Estimating and Controlling Workplace Risk: An Approach for Occupational Hygiene and Safety Professionals
By: Michael W. Toffel and Lawrence Birkner
- April 2002 (Revised October 2003)
- Case
Pension Plan of Bethlehem Steel, 2001, The
By: Peter Tufano
Bethlehem Steel's 2001 bankruptcy filing inspires an employee's daughter to evaluate her father's pension plan, weeks after September 11's tragedies exacerbated a weakening U.S. economy and just months before her father planned to retire. Battered equity markets and... View Details
- April 2002
- Case
In vivo to in vitro to in silico: Coping with Tidal Waves of Data at Biogen
By: Juan Enriquez-Cabot, Gary P. Pisano and Gaye Bok
Biogen is a successful biotech company facing a critical juncture. CEO John Mullen ponders how technological changes introduced into the research function will shape larger corporate decisions. This world in which biotechnology companies operated had changed... View Details
- September 2001 (Revised January 2002)
- Case
The American Medical Association-Sunbeam Deal (C): Denouement
By: Ashish Nanda and Kimberly A. Haddad
On September 5, 1997, the American Medical Association(AMA) withdrew from a contract with Sunbeam Corporation, the maker of small home appliances. Sunbeam sued the AMA to pay for the damages or to comply with the contract. The fracas led to the dismissal of three top... View Details
- August 2001 (Revised February 2005)
- Case
Dakota Office Products
By: Robert S. Kaplan
The senior management team of Dakota, an office products distributor, is concerned about the company's first loss in history. Explores the role for activity based costing and customer profitability measurement in a distribution company. Dakota's customers are... View Details
- June 2001 (Revised September 2011)
- Case
PepsiCo's Bid for Quaker Oats (A)
By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and Leonid P Sudakov
Throughout 1999, PepsiCo closely tracked several potential strategic acquisitions. In the fall of 2000, it appeared that the right moment for an equity-financed acquisition had arrived. At this time, PepsiCo management decided to initiate confidential discussions with... View Details
- 2001
- Working Paper
Using a Terrorist Attack to Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime
By: Rafael Di Tella and Ernesto Schargrodsky