Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(3,687)
- Faculty Publications (655)
- July 2008
- Article
Crime and Punishment in the 'American Dream'
By: Rafael Di Tella and Juan Dubra
We observe that countries where belief in the "American dream" (i.e., effort pays) prevails also set harsher punishment for criminals. We know that beliefs are also correlated with several features of the economic system (taxation, social insurance, etc). Our objective... View Details
- May 2008
- Article
Real and Accrual-Based Earnings Management in the Pre- and Post-Sarbanes Oxley Periods
By: Daniel Cohen, Aiyesha Dey and Thomas Lys
We document that accrual‐based earnings management increased steadily from 1987 until the passage of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX) in 2002, followed by a significant decline after the passage of SOX. Conversely, the level of real earnings management activities declined... View Details
- May 2008
- Article
Coerced Confessions: Self-Policing in the Shadow of the Regulator
By: Jodi L. Short and Michael W. Toffel
As part of a recent trend toward more cooperative relations between regulators and industry, novel government programs are encouraging firms to monitor their own regulatory compliance and voluntarily report their own violations. In this study, we examine how regulatory... View Details
- 2008
- Report
Survey Questionnaire on Environmental Management Practices: Summary of Results by Industry and Practices
By: Magali Delmas and Michael W. Toffel
This document provides a summary of the results of a survey on Environmental Management Practices (EMP) conducted by the University of California at Santa Barbara during October and November 2003. The survey was sent to 3255 facilities in 8 industrial sectors: pulp,... View Details
- April 2008
- Article
The Survey of Industrial R&D—Patent Database Link Project
By: William R. Kerr and Shihe Fu
This paper details the construction of a firm-year panel dataset combining the NBER Patent Dataset with the Survey of Industrial R&D conducted by the Census Bureau and National Science Foundation. The dataset constitutes a platform that offers an unprecedented view of... View Details
- March 2008
- Background Note
Marketing Input and Innovation Strategy
By: Elie Ofek
This note develops a framework for considering the challenges of incorporating marketing input when setting innovation strategy. The framework lays out the possible innovation opportunities a firm can entertain and describes how the customer knowledge gained from... View Details
- March – April 2008
- Article
Interorganizational Trust, Governance Choice, and Exchange Performance
By: Ranjay Gulati and Jackson Nickerson
This paper looks at when and how preexisting interorganizational trust influences the choice of governance and in turn the performance of exchange relationships. We theorize that preexisting interorganizational trust complements the choice of governance mode (make,... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Where Does It Go? Spending by the Financially Constrained
By: Shawn A. Cole, John Thompson and Peter Tufano
In this paper, we analyze the spending decisions of over 1.5 million Americans who vary in their degree of revealed credit constraints. Specifically, we analyze how these Americans spend their income tax refunds, using transaction-level data from a stored-value card... View Details
- 2008
- Article
Diversification of Chinese Companies: An International Comparison
By: Joseph P.H. Fan, Jun Huang, Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Troy D. Smith and Mengxin Zhao
The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic comparison of the level of business diversification in China and eight other large economies for the 2001-2005 period. The reasons why publicly listed Chinese firms are more diversified than companies elsewhere are... View Details
- January 2008
- Article
Entrepreneurship and Urban Success: Toward a Policy Consensus
By: Zoltan J. Acs, Edward L. Glaeser, Robert E. Litan, Lee Fleming, Stephan J. Goetz, William R. Kerr, Steven Klepper, Stuart S. Rosenthal, Olav Sorenson and William C. Strange
Like all politics, all entrepreneurship is local. Individuals launch firms and, if successful, expand their enterprises to other locations. But new firms must start somewhere, even if their businesses are conducted largely or exclusively on the Internet. Likewise,... View Details
- January – February 2008
- Article
Managing the Impact of Employee Turnover on Performance: The Role of Process Conformance
By: Zeynep Ton and Robert S. Huckman
We examine the impact of employee turnover on operating performance in settings that require high levels of knowledge exploitation. Using 48 months of turnover data from U.S. stores of a major retail chain, we find that, on average, employee turnover is associated with... View Details
- November 2007 (Revised April 2022)
- Case
Control Data Corporation and the Urban Crisis
By: Tom Nicholas and Laura Gaie Singleton
Control Data Corporation is considering its response to the assassination of renowned civil rights activist Martin Luther King. Four months prior, William Norris, president of the Minneapolis-based computer firm had already committed to building a plant in a low-income... View Details
- November 2007
- Article
Solve the Succession Crisis by Growing Inside-Outside Leaders
By: Joseph L. Bower
This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice along with suggestions for further reading. In his interviews and data analysis, Harvard Business School professor Bower found... View Details
- Article
Gross National Happiness As an Answer to the Easterlin Paradox?
By: Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch
The Easterlin Paradox refers to the fact that happiness data are typically stationary in spite of considerable increases in income. This amounts to a rejection of the hypothesis that current income is the only argument in the utility function. We find that the... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Intra-Industry Foreign Direct Investment
By: Laura Alfaro and Andrew Charlton
We use a new firm level data set that establishes the location, ownership, and activity of 650,000 multinational subsidiaries -- close to a comprehensive picture of global multinational activity. A number of patterns emerge from the data. Most foreign direct investment... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Intra-Industry Foreign Direct Investment
By: Laura Alfaro and Andrew Charlton
We use a new firm level data set that establishes the location, ownership, and activity of 650,000 multinational subsidiaries—close to a comprehensive picture of global multinational activity. A number of patterns emerge from the data. Most foreign direct investment... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Team Familiarity, Role Experience, and Performance: Evidence from Indian Software Services
By: Robert S. Huckman, Bradley R. Staats and David M. Upton
Much of the literature on team learning views experience as a unidimensional concept captured by the cumulative production volume of, or the number of projects completed by, a team. Implicit in this approach is the assumption that teams are stable in their membership... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
The Impact of Shareholder Activism on Financial Reporting and Compensation: The Case of Employee Stock Options Expensing
By: Fabrizio Ferri and Tatiana Sandino
In this paper we examine the economic consequences of over 150 shareholder proposals to expense employee stock options (ESO) submitted during the proxy seasons of 2003 and 2004–the first case where the SEC has allowed an accounting matter to be subject to an advisory... View Details
- August 2007 (Revised November 2010)
- Case
Grand Central Publishing
By: Anita Elberse
In April 2007, Grand Central's publisher Jamie Raab and editor Karen Kosztolnyik were involved in a frantic bidding war for a proposed book on the life of cat Dewey, billed as the feline answer to the best-selling "Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst... View Details
- August 2007 (Revised June 2020)
- Case
Trouble with a Bubble
By: Tom Nicholas
Examines technology, firm performance, and the stock market during the 1929 Great Crash and the Great Depression of the 1930s. The 1920s was an extraordinary period of technological progress marked by a strong run-up in stock market prices. Firms invested heavily in... View Details