Publications

May 2010 (Revised September 2013)
Case

Friend Bank: The Time for Hope

By: Clayton S. Rose and Aldo Sesia

In 2010, Friend Bank was entering the fifth year of Hope Harris Johnson's ambitious 20-year growth plan to transform her family's one branch community bank into an institution with a substantial presence in southeastern Alabama. Harris Johnson was pleased, so far, with... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Financial Crisis; Banks and Banking; Growth and Development Strategy; Risk Management; Family Ownership; Competitive Advantage; Banking Industry; Alabama

October 2020 (Revised March 2022)
Case

Automercados Plaza's: Surviving Venezuela's Hyperinflation

By: Alberto Cavallo, Mariana Cal and Carla Larangeira

Under the rule of presidents Hugo Chávez and Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela experienced one of the worst economic and political meltdowns in modern history, culminating with a massive hyperinflation. Remarkably, during this dramatic times Automercados Plaza's had grown to... View Details

Keywords: Hyperinflation; Populism; Inflation and Deflation; Macroeconomics; Management; Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business and Government Relations; Retail Industry; South America; Venezuela

June 1991 (Revised March 1995)
Background Note

Coming of the Railroads

Makes possible a discussion of the growth of the railroads in the nineteenth century and the impact of that growth on the American economy. View Details

Keywords: Rail Transportation; Macroeconomics; Rail Industry; United States

24 Mar 2015
First Look

First Look: March 24

features. First, financiers engage in the costly but potentially profitable process of innovation: they can invent better methods for screening entrepreneurs. Second, every screening process becomes less effective as technology advances. The model predicts that... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

April 2010 (Revised April 2010)
Case

Mercadona

This case presents the predicament of a company trying to do right by its customers and its employees as the economic crisis of 2008 hits home. Fifteen years earlier, this Spanish supermarket chain had adopted its own version of total quality management, called the... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Compensation and Benefits; Employee Relationship Management; Service Operations; Business Processes; Retail Industry; Spain

04 Jun 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Accountability and Inequality in Single-Party Regimes: A Comparative Analysis of Vietnam and China

Keywords: by Regina Abrami, Edmund Malesky & Yu Zheng

11 Feb 2014
News

The Trouble with Sunspots

11 Jun 2013
First Look

First Look: June 11

Publisher's link: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/13-068_42cdee88-4440-43f0-a719-c00ef875c7fe.pdf 2006 Journal of Economic Perspectives The Growth of Finance By: Greenwood, Robin, and David S.... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

25 Jan 2010
Research & Ideas

A Macroeconomic View of the Current Economy

on how the economic system works and what history teaches us, business readers might turn to A Concise Guide to Macroeconomics: What Managers, Executives, and Students Need to Know, by Harvard Business School professor David A. Moss, who... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

July 19, 2021
Article

Do Most Family Businesses Really Fail by the Third Generation?

By: Josh Baron and Rob Lachenauer

Perhaps the most commonly-cited statistic about family businesses is their failure rates. Most articles or speeches about family businesses start with some version of the “three-generation rule,” which suggests that most don’t survive beyond three generations. But that... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Success; Perception

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16 Dec 2014
News

The Power of Market Creation

21 Dec 2010
News

Harvard Business School Faculty on 2010's Biggest Business Developments

January 2002 (Revised March 2006)
Background Note

Democracy

By: Rawi E. Abdelal

Surveys scholarship on democracy and democratization. Describes the relationship between democracy and the environment of business, including capitalist economic institutions, economic growth, economic reform, and international relations. View Details

Keywords: Economic Systems; Situation or Environment; Business and Government Relations; Economic Growth; International Relations; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms

12 May 2014
News

China’s Strategic Challenge

07 Mar 2016
HBS Seminar

Scott Stern, MIT Sloan School of Management

September 2003
Case

Valuing a Cross-Border LBO: Bidding on the Yell Group

By: Mihir A. Desai, Paolo Notarnicola and Mark Veblen

A team of private equity investors must value the leveraged buyout of a Yellow Pages business that operated in both the United States and the United Kingdom. In the process, they must wrestle with issues of how to conduct cross-border valuations and how to value a... View Details

Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Cash Flow; Private Equity; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Valuation