Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(4,064)
- Faculty Publications (651)
- April 2005
- Article
Partisan Social Happiness
By: Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch
We use a new approach to study questions in political economy that relies on data on the subjective well-being of a large sample of people living in the OECD over the period 1975-1992. Controlling for the personal characteristics of the respondents, year and country... View Details
- March 2005 (Revised June 2006)
- Case
Sun Microsystems, Inc.: Web Services Strategy
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Fernando Suarez
Microsoft and IBM have excluded Sun Microsystems from the board of the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I), an industry consortium that will shape the evolution of Web services standards. Sun managers must decide whether to join WS-I as a contributing... View Details
- 2005
- Working Paper
Macro for Managers
By: David A. Moss
This note attempts to provide a conceptual overview of macroeconomics. Designed for managers and students of management, it emphasizes fundamental ideas and relationships, rather than mathematical models and formulas. The note identifies—and is structured around—three... View Details
- 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
- September 2004 (Revised October 2004)
- Case
Pat Anderson
By: Leslie A. Perlow and Daisy Wademan
Patten Bank's pending sale jeopardizes Pat Anderson's prospect of receiving an expected year-end bonus. What to do now? This problem follows several earlier conflicts that Anderson has confronted during the past four-and-one-half years spent working as an analyst and... View Details
- September 2004
- Article
Decomposing the Persistence of International Equity Flows
By: Kenneth A. Froot and J. Tjornhom Donohue
- September 2004
- Article
Rational Overoptimism (and Other Biases)
Rational agents with differing priors tend to be overoptimistic about their chances of success. In particular, an agent who tries to choose the action that is most likely to succeed, is more likely to choose an action of which he overestimated, rather than... View Details
- April 2004 (Revised September 2007)
- Case
Accounting Fraud at WorldCom
By: Robert S. Kaplan and David Kiron
The principal players in WorldCom's accounting fraud included CFO Scott Sullivan, the General Accounting and Internal Audit departments, external auditor Arthur Andersen, and the board of directors. The case provides sufficient detail to allow for a full discussion of... View Details
- January 2004
- Background Note
Why Developers Don't Understand Why Consumers Don't Buy
Looks at the psychological biases developers bring to the new product development process. Identifies three reasons why developers may do a poor job of identifying the demand for an innovative, new concept or product: (1) the self-selection bias, (2) differing initial... View Details
- January 2004
- Article
Managing Price Expectations through Product Overlap
By: John T. Gourville and Youngme Moon
- November 2003 (Revised February 2011)
- Case
Sanford C. Bernstein: The Fork in the Road (A)
By: Boris Groysberg and Anahita Hashemi
Soon after the death of the firm's legendary founder, the individuals then serving as chairman and as president--Lewis A. Sanders and Roger Hertog, respectively--talked about the future of their firm. Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., a private investment firm, had grown... View Details
- November 2003 (Revised January 2005)
- Case
San Francisco Giants
By: William A. Sahlman and Elizabeth Kind
Larry Baer, executive vice-president and COO, was eager to improve profitability for the San Francisco Giants baseball team. Over the last few years, the Giants have had a number of successes. They successfully built the first privately financed ball park in over 30... View Details
- July 2003 (Revised October 2018)
- Case
Starbucks: Delivering Customer Service
By: Youngme Moon and John Quelch
Starbucks, the dominant specialty-coffee brand in North America, must respond to recent market research indicating that the company is not meeting customer expectations in terms of service. To increase customer satisfaction, the company is debating a plan that would... View Details
- summer 2003
- Article
Patents, Invalidity, and the Strategic Transmission of Enabling Information
By: James J. Anton and Dennis A. Yao
The patent system encourages innovation and knowledge disclosure by providing exclusivity to inventors. Exclusivity is limited, however, because a substantial fraction of patents have some probability of being ruled invalid when challenged in court. The possibility of... View Details
- June 2003
- Article
Waning of Stereotypic Perceptions in Small Groups: Identity Negotiation and Erosion of Gender Expectations of Women.
By: William B. Swann Jr., Virginia S.Y. Kwan, Jeffrey T. Polzer and Laurie P. Milton
- April 2003
- Article
The Role of Wages and Auditing during a Crackdown on Corruption in the City of Buenos Aires
By: Rafael Di Tella and Ernesto Schargrodsky
We study the prices paid for basic inputs during a crackdown on corruption in the public hospitals of the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, during 1996 97. We find a well-defined, negative effect on the measures used to capture corruption. Prices paid by hospitals for... View Details
- December 2002
- Article
The Persistence of Emerging Market Equity Flows
By: K. A. Froot and J. Donohue
- October 2002 (Revised February 2011)
- Case
Union Corrugating Company (A)
By: Paul W. Marshall and Julia Stevens
Lauri Union graduates from Harvard Business School and takes over her family's steel-corrugated roofing and siding manufacturing firm, which her mother has most recently run. The industry is mature, entry barriers to competitors are low, and the company is over 50... View Details