Publications

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Fellowships - Business History

Business School. The fellowship enables established scholars from around the world whose primary interest is the business and economic history of the United States to spend time in residence at Harvard... View Details

2018
Book

Markets, Morals, Politics: Jealousy of Trade and the History of Political Thought

By: Béla Kapossy, Isaac Nakhimovsky, Sophus A. Reinert and Richard Whatmore

When Istvan Hont died in 2013, the world lost a giant of intellectual history. A leader of the Cambridge School of Political Thought, Hont argued passionately for a global-historical approach to political ideas. To better understand the development of liberalism, he... View Details

Keywords: Morals; Politics; Istvan Hont; Jealousy Of Trade; Enlightenment; Economic Nationalism; Markets; Moral Sensibility; Government and Politics; Trade; History

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Events - Business History

“The Great Depression, Black Nationalist Organizing, and Radical Economics in Detroit” Nov 7 07 Nov 2022 Business History Seminar Diana Kim (Georgetown), "A Most Durable Inequality: Caste and Untouchable... View Details

2008
Book

The Oxford Handbook of Business History

By: G. Jones and Jonathan Zeitlin

The Handbook of Business History contains 25 original chapters from around the world to present a comprehensive, critical and interdisciplinary examination of current research in business history. The Handbook reveals business history as a wide-ranging and... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Research; Economics; Government and Politics

March 2006 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Rwanda: National Economic Transformation

By: Michael E. Porter, Kaia Miller, Michael McCreless, Kjell Carlsson, Jem Hudson and Haviland Sheldahl-Thomason

Set in the year 2004, when Rwanda commemorated the 10th anniversary of a genocide that had claimed the lives of over 10% of its population. Focuses on the formulation of an economic strategy to rebuild the economy and its institutions after the devastation. Rwanda, one... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Developing Countries and Economies; Policy; Government Administration; Crisis Management; Strategy; Rwanda

Educators

1984
Book

Prophets of Regulation: Charles Francis Adams, Louis D. Brandeis, James M. Landis, Alfred E. Kahn

By: T. K. McCraw

Keywords: Economic History; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms

July 2006
Article

Bringing History (Back) into International Business

By: G. Jones and Tarun Khanna

We argue that the field of international business should evolve its rhetoric from the relatively uncontroversial idea that 'history matters' to exploring how it matters. We discuss four conceptual channels through which history matters, illustrating each with a major... View Details

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About - Business History

About History has played a vital role at Harvard Business School since the School’s founding. The School’s first Dean, Edwin F. Gay, was an economic historian. In “The Rhythm of History” (1923), Gay wrote,... View Details

09 Jan 2014
Research & Ideas

The Entrepreneurs Who Invented Economic Forecasting

chronicles a host of academics, businessmen and, yes, charlatans who ultimately failed to foresee the biggest economic event of the twentieth century: The Great Depression. In an e-mail interview, Friedman, director of the HBS Business... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

2018
Book

New Perspectives on the History of Political Economy

By: Robert Fredona and Sophus A. Reinert

This volume offers a snapshot of the resurgent historiography of political economy in the wake of the ongoing global financial crisis and suggests fruitful new agendas for research on the political-economic nexus as it has developed in the Western world since the end... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Government and Politics; History

March 2004 (Revised April 2006)
Case

St. Louis: Inner-City Economic Development

By: Michael E. Porter, Anne S. Habiby and Joanne Lasala

Describes the history and challenges of the economically distressed inner city areas of St. Louis, a major U.S. metropolitan area. Profiles regional and inner city economics and describes a new effort by community leaders to develop and implement a strategy to... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Leading Change; Urban Development; Problems and Challenges; Public Administration Industry; Saint Louis

Educators

May 2020
Article

Ancient Origins of the Global Variation in Economic Preferences

By: Anke Becker, Benjamin Enke and Armin Falk

This paper shows that contemporary population-level heterogeneity in risk aversion, time preference, altruism, positive reciprocity, negative reciprocity, and trust partly traces back to the structure of the migration patterns of our very early ancestors. To document... View Details

Keywords: Migration Patterns; Behavioral Economics; Preferences; Microeconomics; Demography; Decision Making; Risk and Uncertainty; History; Global Range

Register to Read

15 May 2019
Research Event

The Unconventional Capitalism That Shapes Business History

Lalocracio In thinking about the current contested state of global capitalism, and what to do about it, much can be learned from the debates I heard at the recent Harvard Business School conference, Seeking the Unconventional in Forging View Details

Keywords: by Geoffrey G. Jones; Education

January 2002 (Revised March 2002)
Case

Note on Economic Sanctions on Cuba

Describes the history of U.S. sanctions on Cuba and discusses the political and economic controversies surrounding the U.S. policy. View Details

Keywords: International Relations; Trade; Cuba; United States

2017
Working Paper

Business and Sustainability: New Business History Perspectives

By: Ann-Kristin Bergquist

This working paper provides a long-term business history perspective on environmental sustainability. For a long time, the central issues addressed in the discipline of business history concerned how business enterprises innovated and created wealth, as well as... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Business History; Perspective

SSRN

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History of Excellence - Doctoral

History Of Excellence History Of Excellence Part of Harvard University’s tradition of intellectual excellence Harvard Business School’s doctoral programs are an integral part of Harvard University’s... View Details

1994
Book

The Power of Commerce: Economy and Governance in the First British Empire

By: Nancy F. Koehn

Keywords: Economic History; Economy; Governance; United Kingdom