Publications

03 Sep 2017
News

A welfarist role for non-welfarist rules

April 2014 (Revised February 2015)
Case

Saudi Arabia: Finding Stability after the Arab Spring

By: Richard H.K. Vietor and Hilary White

In 2015, King Salman of Saudi Arabia was juggling several balls as the kingdom's new monarch. At home, there were pressures for liberalization, from women and youth, and pressures for more conservative religious observance and policy from the Muslim "ulema." His... View Details

Keywords: Economy; Policy; Balance and Stability; Change; Saudi Arabia

11 Sep 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Financing Constraints and Entrepreneurship

Keywords: by William R. Kerr & Ramana Nanda

19 Aug 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Optimal Taxation in Theory and Practice

Keywords: by N. Gregory Mankiw, Matthew Weinzierl & Danny Yagan

November – December 2011
Article

Modeling a Paradigm Shift: From Producer Innovation to User and Open Collaborative Innovation

By: Carliss Baldwin and Eric von Hippel

In this paper, we assess the economic viability of innovation by producers relative to two increasingly important alternative models: innovations by single-user individuals or firms and open collaborative innovation. We analyze the design costs and architectures and... View Details

Keywords: Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Design; Cost; Communication; Competition; Economy; Research; Policy; Practice

December 2003 (Revised April 2005)
Case

Birth of Modern Macroeconomic Policy, The: Sweden and the Great Depression

By: Julio J. Rotemberg and Lisa Lewis

By early 1937, a debate over the proper conduct of monetary policy raged in Sweden. Sweden's response to the Great Depression was unique. It had, in particular, embraced a revolutionary goal for monetary policy when it abandoned the gold standard in 1931. View Details

Keywords: History; Money; Policy; Financial Crisis; Macroeconomics; Sweden

April 2007 (Revised March 2008)
Case

Dr. Iqbal Survé at Sekunjalo Investment Group (A)

By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Stecker

Dr. Iqbal Surve, a self-described "medical doctor, philanthropist, and social entrepreneur," was born in 1963 and grew up in poverty, like virtually all non-white South Africans during apartheid. During the 1970s and 1980s, he served in leadership positions in the ANC,... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Social Entrepreneurship; Investment; Leadership; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Partners and Partnerships; South Africa

06 Sep 2007
Working Paper Summaries

The Excess Burden of Government Indecision

Keywords: by Francisco J. Gomes, Laurence J. Kotlikoff & Luis M. Viceira

May 2006 (Revised November 2006)
Case

IKEA's Global Sourcing Challenge: Indian Rugs and Child Labor (A)

By: Christopher A. Bartlett, Vincent Marie Dessain and Anders Sjoman

Traces the history of IKEA's response to a TV report that its Indian carpet suppliers were using child labor. Describes IKEA's growth, including the importance of a sourcing strategy based on its close relationships with suppliers in developing countries. Details the... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Moral Sensibility; Policy; Employment; Contracts; Supply Chain Management; Organizational Culture; Natural Environment; Non-Governmental Organizations; Social Issues

Dante Roscini holds the Professor of Management Practice Chair endowed by the MBA Class of 1952 at Harvard Business School. He joined the faculty in 2008 after a two-decades-long career in finance. He currently teaches the course Business, Government, and the... View Details

February 2013
Article

Digitization, Innovation, and Copyright: What Is the Agenda?

By: Shane Greenstein, Josh Lerner and Scott Stern

This essay discusses the need for research on the consequences of digitization, as well as the impact of alternative policies governing the creation and use of digital information. This agenda focuses on the development of research to investigate the economics of... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Research; Copyright; Information Management; Innovation and Invention

October 2021 (Revised February 2022)
Case

Green Hydrogen in Chile

By: Tarun Khanna, Jenyfeer Martínez Buitrago and Mariana Cal

In 2020, the Chilean government wants to promote green hydrogen, a technology with high potential to help mitigate climate change. President Sebastián Piñera, aware of the country's advantages to produce green hydrogen competitively, asks Energy Minister Juan Carlos... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Decision Making; Alternative Energy; Renewable Energy; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology; Financial Instruments; Energy Policy; Government Administration; Strategy; Government and Politics; Social Issues; Energy Industry; Latin America; South America; Chile

Jan W. Rivkin is a Professor in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. In the past, he has served as Faculty Chair of the MBA Program, Senior Associate Dean for Research, and head of the Strategy Unit. His research, course development, and teaching focus on... View Details

Keywords: airline; computer; internet; music; transportation

May 2024
Article

Selfish Corporations

By: Emanuele Colonnelli, Niels Gormsen and Timothy McQuade

We study how perceptions of corporate responsibility influence policy preferences and the effectiveness of corporate communication when agents have imperfect memory recall. Using a new large-scale survey of U.S. citizens on their support for corporate bailouts, we... View Details

Keywords: Public Opinion; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Policy

Forest L. Reinhardt is the John D. Black Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and HBS’s Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Promotions and Tenure.

Professor Reinhardt is interested in the relationships between market and nonmarket... View Details

Keywords: agribusiness; agriculture; beverage; biotechnology; chemical; energy; federal government; food; food processing; forest products; nonprofit industry; oil ＆ gas; paper; petroleum; tourism; transportation

2017
Working Paper

A Welfarist Role for Nonwelfarist Rules: An Example with Envy

By: Matthew Weinzierl

I propose and formalize an argument for why economists working in the welfarist normative tradition should include nonwelfarist principles in how they judge economic policy. The key idea behind this argument is that the world is too complex, and our ability to model it... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Policy; Economics

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Research Summary

Competition and Collusion in Ocean Shipping

The liner shipping industry has been dominated by cartels since the late 19th century. Rich Sicotte's research builds on his 1997 Ph.D. thesis and employs analytical tools of industrial organization and economic history. He is examining the sources of variation in... View Details

2017
Working Paper

Knowledge Flows within Multinationals—Estimating Relative Influence of Headquarters and Host Context Using a Gravity Model

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Mike Horia Teodorescu and Tarun Khanna

From the perspective of a multinational subsidiary, we employ the classic gravity equation in economics to model and compare knowledge flows to the subsidiary from the MNC headquarters and from the host country context. We also generalize traditional economics gravity... View Details

Keywords: Multinationals; Knowledge Flows; Cosine Similarity; Gravity Model; Multinational Firms and Management; Knowledge Dissemination; Business Headquarters; Immigration