Publications

20 Mar 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Catering to Characteristics

Keywords: by Robin Greenwood & Samuel Hanson; Technology

Research Summary

Optimal Reserve Management and Sovereign Debt (with Fabio Kanczuk)

By: Laura Alfaro

Most models currently used to determine optimal foreign reserve holdings take the level of international debt as given. Some of the implications of this analysis, however, may not be generalized once one considers the joint decision to hold debt and reserves by a... View Details

2021
Article

Don't Get It or Don't Spread It: Comparing Self-interested versus Prosocial Motivations for COVID-19 Prevention Behaviors

By: Jillian J. Jordan, Erez Yoeli and David Rand

COVID-19 prevention behaviors may be seen as self-interested or prosocial. Using American samples from MTurk and Prolific (total n = 6,850), we investigated which framing is more effective—and motivation is stronger—for fostering prevention behavior intentions. We... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Prevention; Prosocial Motivation; Health Pandemics; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives

December 2023
Article

Discerning Saints: Moralization of Intrinsic Motivation and Selective Prosociality at Work

By: Mijeong Kwon, Julia Lee Cunningham and Jon M. Jachimowicz

Intrinsic motivation has received widespread attention as a predictor of positive work outcomes, including employees’ prosocial behavior. In the current research, we offer a more nuanced view by proposing that intrinsic motivation does not uniformly increase prosocial... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Moral Sensibility; Employees

Purchase

March 2025
Article

Do Public Financial Statements Influence Private Equity and Venture Capital Financing?

By: Brian K. Baik, Natalie Berfeld and Rodrigo S. Verdi

We study whether private firm public financial statements influence the probability of raising venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) financing. In particular, we propose that private firms’ public financial statements can help the VC/PE search process by... View Details

Keywords: Business Economics; Search Costs; Accounting; Venture Capital; Governance; Private Equity; Financial Statements

SSRN

2024
Working Paper

The Seeds of Ideology: Historical Immigration and Political Preferences in the United States

By: Paola Giuliano and Marco Tabellini

We study the long run effects of immigration on American political ideology. Exploiting cross-county variation in the presence of European immigrants between 1900 and 1930, we establish a novel result: historical European immigration is associated with stronger... View Details

Keywords: Political Ideology; Preferences For Redistribution; Cultural Transmission; Immigration; History; Values and Beliefs; Welfare; United States

SSRN

June 2019
Case

ClearLife: From Prospect to Platform

By: Alexander Braun, Lauren Cohen, Mauro Elvedi and Jiahua Xu

ClearLife’s first product was a trading and analytics platform for participants in the U.S. life settlement market, the secondary market for life insurance. ClearLife played a key role in facilitating transactions and devising a common language for expressing value and... View Details

Keywords: Digital Platforms; Insurance; Entrepreneurship; Expansion; Diversification; Strategy

Educators

Purchase

September – October 2007
Article

Trading Patterns and Excess Comovement of Stock Returns

By: Robin Greenwood and Nathan Sosner

n April 2000, 30 stocks were replaced in the Nikkei 225 Index. The unusually broad index redefinition allowed for a study of the effects of index-linked trading on the excess comovement of stock returns. A large increase occurred in the correlation of trading volume of... View Details

Keywords: Stocks; Investment Return; Market Transactions; Mathematical Methods

19 Oct 2018
News

7 projects win Harvard Global Institute grants

20 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

Getting the Marketing Mix Right

to the effectiveness of their marketing instruments” Thomas J. Steenburgh, an associate professor in the Marketing Unit at Harvard Business School, has developed a new analytical tool that more accurately measures the effectiveness of... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

2014
Chapter

Technology, Innovation and Economic Growth in Britain Since 1870

By: Tom Nicholas

This chapter examines technological change in Britain over the last 140 years. It analyzes the effects of patent laws and innovation prizes that were designed to promote technical progress. It explores the challenge associated with the changing organizational structure... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Organizational Change and Adaptation; History; Economic Growth; Change; Innovation and Invention; Great Britain

October 2014
Article

Do Analysts Add Value When They Most Can? Evidence from Corporate Spinoffs

By: Emilie Feldman, Stuart C. Gilson and Belen Villalonga

This paper investigates how securities analysts help investors understand the value of diversification. By studying the research that analysts produce about companies that have announced corporate spinoffs, we gain unique insights into how analysts portray diversified... View Details

Keywords: Analysts; Spin-offs; Diversification Discount; Information Asymmetry; Value Creation; Business Subsidiaries; Diversification; Corporate Strategy; Investment

March 2024
Article

Do Safety Management System Standards Indicate Safer Operations? Evidence from the OHSAS 18001 Occupational Health and Safety Standard

By: Kala Viswanathan, Matthew S. Johnson and Michael W. Toffel

Problem definition: Given the enormous disruptions and costs of occupational injuries, companies and buyers are increasingly looking to voluntary occupational health and safety standards to improve worker safety. Yet because these standards only require... View Details

Keywords: Occupational Health; Occupational Safety; Program Evaluation; Safety Performance; Injuries; OHSAS 18001; ISO 45001; Working Conditions; Safety; Standards

February 2020
Article

Effects of a Tournament Incentive Plan Incorporating Managerial Discretion in a Geographically Dispersed Organization

By: Carolyn Deller and Tatiana Sandino

Using retail chain data, we study the effects of a tournament incentive plan based primarily on objective performance, but incorporating managerial discretion in the selection of winners. In principle, such plans could motivate employees to perform both at a high... View Details

Keywords: Tournaments; Subjectivity; Motivation and Incentives; Fairness; Performance Improvement; Geographic Location

November–December 2014
Article

Fairness and Efficiency in Multiportfolio Optimization

By: Dan A. Iancu and Nikolaos Trichakis

We deal with the problem faced by a portfolio manager in charge of multiple accounts. We argue that because of market impact costs, this setting differs in several subtle ways from the classical (single account) case, with the key distinction being that the performance... View Details

This study explores the consequences and origins of between-ethnicity economic inequality across countries. First, combining satellite images of nighttime luminosity with the historical homelands of ethnolinguistic groups we construct measures of ethnic inequality... View Details

Joseph B. Lassiter

Joe is the Senator John Heinz Professor of Management Practice in Environmental Management, Retired. He focuses on one of the world’s most pressing problems: developing clean, secure and carbon-neutral supplies of reliable, low-cost energy all around the world. He... View Details

Keywords: green technology; high technology; internet; oil ＆ gas; private equity (LBO funds); utilities; software; energy

Spring 2021
Article

Corporate Resilience and Response During COVID-19

By: Alex Cheema-Fox, Bridget LaPerla, George Serafeim and Hui (Stacie) Wang

The coronavirus pandemic caused a sharp market decline while raising heterogeneous responses across companies related to their employees, supply chain, and repurposing of operations to provide needed products and services. We study whether during the 2020 COVID-19... View Details

SSRN