Publications

July 2002 (Revised December 2002)
Case

Phase Two: The Pharmaceutical Industry Responds to AIDS

By: Debora L. Spar

Describes how major pharmaceutical firms changed their strategy and pricing policies in the years 2000 to 2002 to respond to the growing AIDS epidemic in Africa. View Details

Keywords: International Finance; Health Pandemics; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Pharmaceutical Industry; Africa

Educators

November 2020 (Revised January 2021)
Supplement

Bridge International Academies in 2020: Battling Headwinds to Solve Africa's Education Problems

By: Caroline M. Elkins, Tarun Khanna and Joyce J. Kim

By 2020, Bridge International Academies and its "school in a box" model had achieved great scale. By leveraging digital technology and public-private partnerships, they had reached one million children across Africa and India through hundreds of schools. However, the... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship In Africa; Entrepreneurship In Emerging Markets; Bottom Of The Pyramid; Education In Africa; Scale; Partnerships; Education; Entrepreneurship; Emerging Markets; Health Pandemics; Problems and Challenges; Education Industry; Africa

10 Aug 2020
Research & Ideas

COVID's Surprising Toll on Careers of Women Scientists

Unequal effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientists. That gap is becoming increasingly apparent across professions worldwide, for all kinds of working women as the coronavirus continues to wreak havoc in the United States and around... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Health; Health; Health

March 12, 2021
Article

Market Design to Accelerate COVID-19 Vaccine Supply

By: Juan Camilo Castillo, Amrita Ahuja, Susan Athey, Arthur Baker, Eric Budish, Tasneem Chipty, Rachel Glennerster, Scott Duke Kominers, Michael Kremer, Greg Larson, Jean Lee, Canice Prendergast, Christopher M. Snyder, Alex Tabarrok, Brandon Joel Tan and Witold Wiecek

Build more capacity, and stretch what we already have. View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Vaccine; Health Pandemics; Health Care and Treatment; Market Design; Supply Chain

2020
Working Paper

Paying It Backward and Forward: Expanding Access to Convalescent Plasma Therapy Through Market Design

By: Scott Duke Kominers, Parag A. Pathak, Tayfun Sönmez and M. Utku Ünver

COVID-19 convalescent plasma (CCP) therapy is currently a leading treatment for COVID-19. At present, there is a shortage of CCP relative to demand. We develop and analyze a model of centralized CCP allocation that incorporates both donation and distribution. In order... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Convalescent Plasma; Vouchers; Health Pandemics; Health Care and Treatment; Resource Allocation; Market Design

July 2020
Article

Reframing Value in a Crisis

By: Frank V. Cespedes and David Hoffeld

Reframing is the process of moving buyers from their current perspective(s) to one that motivates a different response. The current crisis makes this capability more important than ever. View Details

Keywords: Sales; Customers; Perspective; Value; Change; Health Pandemics

September 2020
Supplement

Comviva: Exploring New Frontiers (B)

By: Dante Roscini, Mahima Rao-Kachroo and Shreya Ramachandran

After articulating its ambitious growth plans, mobile services provider Mahindra Comviva, active in over 90 countries, is thinking about how to titrate and re-plan its growth strategy given the coronavirus pandemic. Its India headquarters considers its people costs,... View Details

Keywords: Health Pandemics; Growth and Development Strategy; Adaptation; India

May 26, 2021
Article

The Challenge of Rebuilding U.S. Domestic Supply Chains

By: Willy C. Shih, Robert S. Huckman and James Wyner

Massachusetts-based Shawmut scrambled to expand production to meet the soaring demand for N95 masks and hospital gowns during the pandemic. Its experience illustrates a crucial point that policymakers should take to heart: Once a country loses its industrial commons... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain; Health Pandemics; Production; Management; United States

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Article

Predictions, Prophets, and Restarting Your Business

By: Frank V. Cespedes

The first task of crisis management is a reasonably accurate view of the current situation and how it might evolve. There are many predictions about so-called “new normal” as a result of the semi-enforced social distancing necessitated by the coronavirus. But most are... View Details

Keywords: Health Pandemics; Crisis Management; Strategic Planning

18 Jun 2020
News

Perspectives in Health: Thermo Fisher - Developing Diagnostic and Equipment for the Front Lines of COVID

Keywords: Miscellaneous Manufacturing; Manufacturing

21 Apr 2020
News

7 Successful Battle Strategies to Beat COVID-19

18 Jun 2020
News

We Need Better Masks

22 Oct 2020
News

A Q+A with Dash Camp Founder Tabitha Salomon (MBA 2014)

19 Jan 2022
In Practice

7 Trends to Watch in 2022

for consumers. So it’s also likely that NFTs will help (finally!) take crypto mainstream. Scott Duke Kominers is the MBA Class of 1960 Associate Professor of Business Administration. Robert S. Huckman: Flexibility in health care could... View Details

Keywords: by HBS News

22 Feb 2022
News

Finance and the Economic Recovery

Illustration by Michael Austin A pandemic that has caused public health and economic crises also has afforded business leaders the opportunity to better understand and lead through disruptions affecting... View Details

Forthcoming
Article

The Rise of Remote Work: Evidence on Productivity and Preferences from Firm and Worker Surveys

By: Alexander Bartik, Zoë Cullen, Edward L. Glaeser, Michael Luca and Christopher Stanton

Drawing on surveys of small business owners and employees, we present three main findings about the evolution of remote work after the onset of COVID-19. First, uptake of remote work was abrupt and widespread in jobs suitable for telework according to the task-based... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Remote Work; Health Pandemics; Jobs and Positions; Demographics; Surveys

October 6, 2020
Article

Test Your Board's Readiness for the Post-COVID Era

By: Lynn S. Paine

Research suggests that well-run boards take the process of self-evaluation quite seriously, often using a combination of director surveys and personal interviews to assess the functioning and effectiveness of the board, its committees, and its individual members. As... View Details

Keywords: Health Pandemics; Governing and Advisory Boards; Performance Evaluation

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Register to Read

2023
Working Paper

Scapegoating and Discrimination in Times of Crisis: Evidence from Airbnb

By: Michael Luca, Elizaveta Pronkina and Michelangelo Rossi

We present evidence that discrimination against Asian-American Airbnb users sharply increased at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a DiD approach, we find that hosts with distinctively Asian names experienced a 20 percent decline in guests relative to hosts... View Details

Keywords: Discrimination; Behavioral Economics; Market Design; Health Pandemics; Prejudice and Bias; Digital Platforms; Design

2022
Working Paper

Flight to Safety: How Economic Downturns Affect Talent Flows to Startups

By: Shai Bernstein, Richard Townsend and Ting Xu

Using proprietary data from AngelList Talent, we study how individuals’ job search and application behavior changed during the COVID-19 downturn. We find that job seekers shifted their searches toward more established firms and away from early-stage startups, even... View Details

Keywords: Startup Labor Market; Flight To Safety; COVID-19; Recession; Business Startups; Human Capital; Business Cycles; Health Pandemics

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