Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(6,934)
- Faculty Publications (1,632)
- 2018
- Working Paper
Taxation and Innovation in the 20th Century
By: Ufuk Akcigit, John Grigsby, Tom Nicholas and Stefanie Stantcheva
This paper studies the effect of corporate and personal taxes on innovation in the United States over the 20th century. We use three new datasets: a panel of the universe of inventors who patent since 1920; a dataset of the employment, location, and patents of firms... View Details
- Third Quarter 2018
- Article
Why and How Investors Use ESG Information: Evidence from a Global Survey
By: Amir Amel-Zadeh and George Serafeim
Using survey data from a sample of senior investment professionals from mainstream (i.e., not SRI funds) investment organizations, we provide insights into why and how investors use reported environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information. Relevance to... View Details
- August 2018 (Revised April 2019)
- Case
Fair Value Accounting at Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (A)
By: Jonas Heese, Suraj Srinivasan, Francois Brochet and Christine Johnson
In May 2018, Berkshire Hathaway announced an unprecedented loss of more than $1 billion for the first quarter of 2018. Warren Buffett blamed this loss on the new accounting rules for equity securities which he criticized. In the case ‘Fair Value Accounting at Berkshire... View Details
- August 2018 (Revised July 2020)
- Case
Revenue Recognition at HBP
By: Paul Healy and Siko Sikochi
In early 2014, Paul Bills, CFO of Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), sat down with David Wan, the company’s CEO, to discuss budget preparations for the coming year. Bills noted that the performance of Corporate Learning, one of HBP’s three business units, would be... View Details
- August 2018 (Revised June 2025)
- Case
Facebook—Can Ethics Scale in the Digital Age?
By: George A. Riedel and Carin-Isabel Knoop
Since its founding in 2004, Facebook has built a phenomenally successful business at global scale to become the fifth most valuable public company in the world. The revelation of Cambridge Analytica events in March 2018, where 78 million users' information was leaked... View Details
- August 2018
- Case
Tapping Growth at Lord Hobo Brewing Company
By: Ethan Rouen and Susanna Gallani
Lord Hobo Brewing Company accounts for its inventory process as it prepares to create its first set of professional financial statements for investors. View Details
- June 2018
- Background Note
Introduction to Life Settlements
By: Alexander Braun, Lauren H. Cohen, Christopher J. Malloy and Jiahua Xu
Life insurance is an asset owned by the majority of American adults (61%). Note that this 61% penetration rate is essentially at parity with home ownership (64%) and higher than that of 401(k) retirement account ownership (53%). Life settlements, or life insurance... View Details
- 2018
- Simulation
Financial Analysis Simulation: Data Detective
By: Suraj Srinivasan and V.G. Narayanan
In this simulation, students learn to identify typical industry characteristics revealed in financial data. Equipped with an interactive and flexible set of tools, students analyze disguised financials and—using their knowledge of operational practices and reasoning... View Details
- Article
Integrated Strategy: Residual Market and Exchange Imperfections as the Foundation of Sustainable Competitive Advantage
By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Dennis Yao
Market imperfections are central to understanding the mechanisms that permit firms to capture value. Many of these imperfections are competed away when firms struggle to attain and defend competitive advantages, making markets more efficient in the process. The... View Details
- June 2018
- Article
Personal and Social Usage: The Origins of Active Customers and Ways to Keep Them Engaged
By: Clarence Lee, Elie Ofek and Thomas Steenburgh
We study how digital service firms can develop an active customer base, focusing on two questions. First, how does the way that customers use the service postadoption to meet their own needs (personal usage) and to interact with one another (social usage) vary across... View Details
- June 2018
- Article
Will a Five-Minute Discussion Change Your Mind? A Countrywide Experiment on Voter Choice in France
By: Vincent Pons
This paper provides the first estimate of the effect of door-to-door canvassing on actual electoral outcomes, via a countrywide experiment embedded in François Hollande's campaign in the 2012 French presidential election. While existing experiments randomized... View Details
- May 2018 (Revised July 2018)
- Case
EY China (A): Strengthening Presence in a Critical Market
By: Ashish Nanda, Das Narayandas and Lisa Rohrer
Soon after being named regional managing partner for Ernst & Young (EY) China in September 2009, Albert Ng reflects on the enormity of challenges facing EY China. Despite EY Global's commitment to the China practice, EY China’s growth agenda has been reversed, post... View Details
- May 2018 (Revised July 2018)
- Supplement
EY China (B): An Emerging Giant
By: Ashish Nanda, Das Narayandas and Lisa Rohrer
The case outlines how regional managing partner (RMP) Albert Ng steered Ernst & Young (EY) China through a period of significant growth from 2009, when it was the smallest of the Big Four firms in China, to 2017, by when it had become the second largest firm. Partners... View Details
- May 2018 (Revised October 2020)
- Supplement
La Ribera Health Department (B): Epilogue
By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Emer Moloney and Daniela Beyersdorfer
The La Ribera case studies depict an innovative low cost/high quality privately financed hospital model struggling to achieve alignment with the Six Factors. It is reimbursed by the public sector in a Spanish environment whose Consumers, Structure, and Public Policy... View Details
- May 2018
- Article
Effects of an Information Sharing System on Employee Creativity, Engagement, and Performance
By: Shelley Xin Li and Tatiana Sandino
Many service organizations rely on information sharing systems to boost employee creativity to meet customer needs. We conducted a field experiment in a retail chain, based on a registered report accepted by Journal of Accounting Research, to test whether an... View Details
- May 2018
- Article
Managing the Family Firm: Evidence from CEOs at Work
By: Oriana Bandiera, Renata Lemos, Andrea Prat and Raffaella Sadun
We present evidence on the labor supply of CEOs and on whether family and professional CEOs differ on this dimension. We do so through a new survey instrument that allows us to codify CEOs’ diaries in a detailed and comparable fashion and to build a bottom-up measure... View Details
- Article
Performance Effects of Setting a High Reference Point for Peer‐Performance Comparison
By: Henry Eyring and V.G. Narayanan
We conduct a field experiment, based on a registered report accepted by the Journal of Accounting Research, to test performance effects of setting a high reference point for peer‐performance comparison. Relative to providing the median as a reference point for... View Details
- May 2018
- Article
Selection and Market Reallocation: Productivity Gains from Multinational Production
By: Laura Alfaro and Maggie X. Chen
Assessing the productivity gains from multinational production has been a vital topic of economic research and policy debate. Positive aggregate productivity gains are often attributed to within-firm productivity improvement; however, an alternative, less emphasized... View Details
- April 2018 (Revised December 2018)
- Case
The Whistleblower at International Game Technology
By: Aiyesha Dey, Jonas Heese and James Weber
Robert Mayhem, a senior manager at International Game Technology, had filed a whistleblower report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission alleging that the company had misstatements in its financial reports. Mayhem’s report involved IGT’s practice of... View Details
- April 2018 (Revised July 2023)
- Technical Note
Whistleblower Legislation in the Context of Financial Reporting
By: Aiyesha Dey, Jonas Heese and James Weber
This note provides an overview of U.S. federal legislation relating to whistleblowing, Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank (including the Office of the Whistleblower), and the False Claims Act. View Details