Publications

2017
Working Paper

Innovation, Reallocation and Growth

By: Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit, Harun Alp, Nicholas Bloom and William R. Kerr

We build a model of firm-level innovation, productivity growth, and reallocation featuring endogenous entry and exit. A new and central economic force is the selection between high- and low-type firms, which differ in terms of their innovative capacity. We estimate the... View Details

Keywords: Entry; Growth; Industrial Policy; Innovation; R＆D; Reallocation; Selection; Business Ventures; Resource Allocation; Performance Productivity; Policy; Research and Development; Innovation and Invention; Growth and Development; United States

28 Feb 2012
First Look

First Look: Feb. 28

reforms, we find that an increase in female representation in local government induces a large and significant rise in documented crimes against women in India. Our evidence suggests that this increase is good news, driven primarily by... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

October 2011 (Revised November 2011)
Case

Verengo Solar Plus!

By: William A. Sahlman, Joseph B. Lassiter III and Liz Kind

In the three years since Bishop and Button purchased Verengo in a leveraged buyout (LBO), the company had gone through dramatic changes. Initially a residential windows and insulation firm, after the economic recession of 2008 the company switched gears and began... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Private Equity; Growth Management; Restructuring; Renewable Energy; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Corporate Finance; Product Development; Energy Industry; California

03 Jun 2014
First Look

First Look: June 3

of Entrepreneurship and Innovation By: Chatterji, Aaron, Edward Glaeser, and William R. Kerr Abstract—This chapter reviews recent academic work on the spatial concentration of entrepreneurship and innovation in the United States. We... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

15 Aug 2006
First Look

First Look: August 15, 2006

compared to their Mexican counterparts. In Mexico, foreign companies, which had access to financial markets abroad, also had lower average connections with banks. I conclude by arguing that even though the Brazil, Mexico and the United... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

21 Jun 2011
First Look

First Look: June 21

characterizes the financial world. They also overlook the role of natural selection. To be sure, natural selection in the financial world is not exactly analogous to the processes first described by Darwin and elaborated on View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

22 Aug 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, August 23

opportunities to practice their skills in time frames connected to actual buying processes. They can do so by using the same technologies that are “disrupting” their customer-contact activities: videos and mobile apps that reps can view... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Article

On Derivatives Markets and Social Welfare: A Theory of Empty Voting and Hidden Ownership

By: Jordan M. Barry, John William Hatfield and Scott Duke Kominers

In the past twenty-five years, derivatives markets have grown exponentially. Large, modern derivatives markets increasingly enable investors to hold economic interests in corporations without owning voting rights, and vice versa. This leads to both empty... View Details

Keywords: Voting; Corporate Disclosure; Financial Markets; Ownership

April 2004
Tutorial

Yield Curves and Bond Ratings Tutorial

By: William E. Fruhan Jr.

To preview this online product, Authorized Faculty can call our customer service department at 1-800-545-7685 or 617-783-7600. This online tutorial explains what drives the shape of the yield curve for traded debt securities. Also describes the metrics used by rating... View Details

Keywords: Bonds; Investment Return; Financial Services Industry

2021
Article

Venture Capital Booms and Startup Financing

By: William Janeway, Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

We review the growing literature on the relationship between venture capital booms and startup financing, focusing on three broad areas: First, we discuss the drivers of large inflows into the venture capital asset class, particularly in recent years—which are related... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Business Startups; Innovation and Invention; Policy

03 Mar 2008
First Look

First Look: March 4, 2008

and largely unregulated securities market was William Duer, who ultimately became a major player on the Street. As it turned out, however, Duer's financial dealings proved unsustainable, and his financial collapse helped to bring the... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

17 Apr 2012
First Look

First Look: April 17

Participants assigned to recall a purchase made for someone else reported feeling significantly happier immediately after this recollection; most importantly, the happier participants felt, the more likely they were to choose to spend a windfall on someone else in the... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

May 2022 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Third Point in 2020: Growth Is Where the Value Is?

By: Robin Greenwood, James Williams and Denise Han

In early May 2020, Daniel Loeb’s team at Third Point was evaluating a potential growth opportunity in the Walt Disney Company and whether investor activism might play a role. Battered by the effects of COVID-19, the company’s stock had initially tumbled to $86 and then... View Details

Keywords: Growth; Equity; Disney; Value; COVID-19 Pandemic; Economics; Strategy; Growth and Development; Investment Return; Opportunities; Business and Stakeholder Relations; North America

March 2015
Case

Discover Capital

By: William Sahlman, Robert White and Stephanie Puzio

"Discover Capital" provides an in-depth look at a first time search fund run by the tenacious Kelly Quann Bianucci. It provides background information about search funds and follows Kelly as she successfully raises her over-subscribed fund and begins the search... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Entrepreneurs; Entrepreneurship; Buyout; Loans; Acquisitions

2013
Article

Immigration and Employer Transitions for STEM Workers

By: Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr

We analyze the career trajectories of STEM workers and firm-level hiring of immigrants using the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) database of the US Census Bureau. We find STEM career adjustments during periods of abnormally high immigration into the... View Details

Keywords: Nationality; Employment; Immigration

04 Dec 2012
First Look

First Look: December 4

case:http://hbr.org/search/913701-PDF-ENG Convertible Notes in Angel Financing Ramana Nanda and William R. KerrHarvard Business School Note 813-017 This note introduces convertible notes in angel financing. It begins View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

2021
Working Paper

Winner Takes All? Tech Clusters, Population Centers, and the Spatial Transformation of U.S. Invention

By: Brad Chattergoon and William R. Kerr

U.S. invention has become increasingly concentrated around major tech centers since the 1970s, with implications for how much cities across the country share in concomitant local benefits. Is invention becoming a winner-takes-all race? We explore the rising spatial... View Details

Keywords: Invention; Innovation; Artificial Intelligence; Clusters; Agglomeration; Innovation and Invention; Patents; Applications and Software; Industry Clusters; United States

January 2021
Article

Chain Stability in Trading Networks

By: John William Hatfield, Scott Duke Kominers, Alexandru Nichifor, Michael Ostrovsky and Alexander Westkamp

We show that in general trading networks with bilateral contracts, a suitably adapted chain stability concept (Ostrovsky, 2008) is equivalent to stability (Hatfield and Kominers, 2012; Hatfield et al., 2013) if all agents' preferences are fully substitutable and... View Details

Keywords: Matching; Trading Networks; Chain Stability; Stability; Competitive Equilibria; Full Substitutability; Laws Of Aggregate Supply And Demand; Contracts; Market Design; Balance and Stability

January 2008 (Revised October 2015)
Case

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited: A Global Company's China Strategy

By: William C. Kirby, Michael Shih-Ta Chen and Keith Wong

After fifty-five years in the semiconductor industry, Morris Chang, founder and Chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), was seeing a change. After four decades of regular double-digit growth the industry was still growing-but now at a much slower... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Globalized Firms and Management; Market Entry and Exit; Business and Government Relations; Expansion; Semiconductor Industry; Shanghai; Taiwan