Publications

2011
Chapter

An Exploration of the Japanese Slowdown during the 1990s

By: Diego A. Comin

Why was the 1990s a lost decade for Japan? How is it possible that the Japanese economy stagnated for a decade if none of the shocks that arguably hit the economy seemed to have persisted for much more than three years or so? In this paper I show that the endogenous... View Details

Keywords: Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Performance Productivity; Mathematical Methods; Research and Development; Technology Adoption; Japan

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13 Mar 2025
HBS Seminar

Sonny Tambe, Wharton

Research Summary

Overview

Professor McDonald studies how firms successfully navigate new markets. He examines how widely accepted strategic prescriptions can actually undermine managers’ attempts to develop a viable business model or stake out a defining new market position, and considers the... View Details

18 Nov 2016
Conference Presentation

Rawlsian Fairness for Machine Learning

By: Matthew Joseph, Michael J. Kearns, Jamie Morgenstern, Seth Neel and Aaron Leon Roth

Motivated by concerns that automated decision-making procedures can unintentionally lead to discriminatory behavior, we study a technical definition of fairness modeled after John Rawls' notion of "fair equality of opportunity". In the context of a simple model of... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning; Algorithms; Fairness; Decision Making; Mathematical Methods

2021
Article

Designing, Not Checking, for Policy Robustness: An Example with Optimal Taxation

By: Benjamin B. Lockwood, Afras Sial and Matthew C. Weinzierl

Economists typically check the robustness of their results by comparing them across plausible ranges of parameter values and model structures. A preferable approach to robustness—for the purposes of policymaking and evaluation—is to design policy that takes these... View Details

Keywords: Optimal Taxation; Income Tax; Social Welfare; Elasticity; Income; Taxation; Policy

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Summer 2017
Article

Measuring Consumer Preferences for Video Content Provision via Cord-Cutting Behavior

By: Jeffrey Prince and Shane Greenstein

The television industry is undergoing a generational shift in structure; however, many demand-side determinants are still not well understood. We model how consumers choose video content provision among over-the-air (OTA), paid subscription to cable or satellite, and... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Service Delivery; Consumer Behavior; Television Entertainment; Service Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry

2010
Book

Government and Markets: Toward a New Theory of Regulation

By: Edward J. Balleisen and David A. Moss

After two generations of emphasis on governmental inefficiency and the need for deregulation, we now see growing interest in the possibility of constructive governance, alongside public calls for new, smarter regulation. Yet there is a real danger that regulatory... View Details

Keywords: Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Government and Politics; Markets; Business and Government Relations; Research

28 Jul 2008
Research & Ideas

Making the Decision to Franchise (or not)

customer-facing operating environment affects organizational design choices such as control systems, incentives, performance measurement, and ownership structures," explains Campbell. "Even firms that have very standardized business View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail

February 2023
Case

Roblox: Virtual Commerce in the Metaverse

By: Ayelet Israeli and Nicole Tempest Keller

In 2022, Roblox had 58.8 million daily active users, including over half of all children and teens under the age of 16 in the United States. Roblox, a free-to-use “co-experience platform”, allowed users to come together in immersive 3D experiences to socialize, work,... View Details

Educators

June 1983
Article

A Comparison of Tournaments and Contracts

By: Jerry R. Green and Nancy Stokey

Tournaments, reward structures based on rank order, are compared with individual contracts in a model with one risk-neutral principal and many risk-averse agents. Each agent's output is a stochastic function of his effort level plus an additive shock term that is... View Details

Keywords: Tournaments; Contracts

June 2022 (Revised October 2022)
Background Note

Digital Commerce and Delivery: Preparing Food and Retail Value Chains for a 50-50 World

By: William R. Kerr, Daniel O'Connor, Paige Boehmcke and Will Ensor

Increasing digitalization of grocery retail and quick commerce reveals insights about managing complex supply chains at scale and shifting revenue streams from product sales to data monetization. How are the roles of retailers changing? What happens if marginal cost... View Details

Keywords: Grocery Delivery; Grocery; Digitalization; Fulfillment; Delivery; Supply Chain; Disruption; Food; Supply Chain Management; Market Design; Trends; Value Creation; Goods and Commodities; Customer Value and Value Chain; Digital Transformation; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States; China

Educators

June 2007
Article

Efficient Kidney Exchange: Coincidence of Wants in a Structured Market

By: A. E. Roth, Tayfun Sonmez and M. Utku Unver

Patients needing kidney transplants may have donors who cannot donate to them because of blood or tissue incompatibility. Incompatible patient-donor pairs can exchange donor kidneys with other pairs only when there is a "double coincidence of wants." Developing... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Structure; Size; Emotions; Human Needs; Health Care and Treatment; Health Testing and Trials; Infrastructure; Supply Chain Management; Fairness; Performance Improvement; Health Industry

January 2024
Article

Investing with the Government: A Field Experiment in China

By: Emanuele Colonnelli, Bo Li and Ernest Liu

We study the demand for government participation in China’s venture capital and private equity market. We conduct a large-scale, non-deceptive field experiment in collaboration with the leading industry service provider, through which we survey both capital investors... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Private Equity; Business and Government Relations; Entrepreneurship; China

July–August 2024
Article

The Middle Path to Innovation

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Duke Rohlen, Ben Creo and Will Kynes

Too many companies are failing to innovate. One reason, say the authors, is the polarized approach companies take to innovation. At one end of the spectrum, corporate R&D efforts tend to focus on product refreshes and incremental line upgrades that generate modest... View Details

Keywords: Innovation Strategy; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

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2019
Working Paper

Optimal Interventions for Increasing Healthy Food Consumption Among Low Income Households

By: Retsef Levi, Elisabeth Paulson and Georgia Perakis

The federal government currently spends over $100 billion per year on policies aimed to increase fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption among low income households. These include price-, nutrition education-, and access-related interventions. Currently, the government... View Details

Keywords: Bi-level Optimization; Optimal Subsidies; Public Policy; Food Policy; Central Planner; Government Administration; Poverty; Food; Nutrition

SSRN

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Article

Medium-term Business Cycles

By: Diego Comin and Mark Gertler

Over the postwar period, many industrialized countries have experienced significant medium-frequency oscillations between periods of robust growth versus relative stagnation. Conventional business cycle filters, however, tend to sweep these oscillations into the trend.... View Details

Keywords: Business Cycles; Fluctuation; Information Technology; Research and Development; Resource Allocation; Framework; Trends; Performance Efficiency; Performance Productivity