Publications

March 2020
Article

Which Early Withdrawal Penalty Attracts the Most Deposits to a Commitment Savings Account?

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, Christopher Harris, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian and Jung Sakong

Previous research has shown that some people voluntarily use commitment contracts that restrict their own choice sets. We study how people divide money between two accounts: a liquid account that permits unrestricted withdrawals and a commitment account that is... View Details

Keywords: Quasi-hyperbolic Discounting; Present Bias; Sophistication; Naiveté; Commitment; Flexibility; Savings; Contract Design; Defined Contribution Retirement Plan; 401 (K); IRA; Saving; Behavior; Contracts; Design; Interest Rates

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August 2012 (Revised September 2013)
Case

EnerNOC: DemandSMART

By: Michael W. Toffel, Kira Fabrizio and Stephanie van Sice

EnerNOC is an energy company with an innovative business model: it serves as an intermediary between electric utilities and electricity users. It contracts with electricity users willing to reduce demand during periods of peak energy demand, and sells this as excess... View Details

Keywords: Production Planning; Productivity; Environmental Protection; Energy; Environment; Business Government Relations; Laws And Regulation; Business Model; Environmental Sustainability; Innovation and Invention; Opportunities; Risk and Uncertainty; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Supply Chain Management; Production; Energy Conservation; Energy Industry

27 Jul 2020
Working Paper Summaries

The Evolution of CEO Compensation in Venture Capital-Backed Startups

Keywords: by Michael Ewens, Ramana Nanda, and Christopher Stanton

14 Sep 2012
Working Paper Summaries

What Do Managers Do? Exploring Persistent Performance Differences among Seemingly Similar Enterprises

An abstract is unavailable at this time. View Details

Keywords: by Robert Gibbons & Rebecca Henderson

June 2003 (Revised March 2008)
Case

Schering-Plough and Genome Therapeutics: Discovering an Asthma Gene

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Marc Aquino

Personalized medicine requires the identification of mutated genes. Schering-Plough's search for the one related to asthma requires finding families with the disease. Examines the industry that helps conduct such research, including contract research organizations. View Details

Keywords: Health Disorders; Research and Development; Genetics; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry

November 2005 (Revised December 2016)
Case

Bally Total Fitness (A): The Rise, 1962–2004

By: John R. Wells, Elizabeth A. Raabe and Gabriel Ellsworth

From a single, modest club in 1962, Bally Total Fitness had grown to become—in management’s words—the “largest and only nationwide commercial operator of fitness centers” in the United States in 2004. Bally had faced its share of challenges, but the last couple of... View Details

Keywords: Bally Total Fitness; Fitness; Gyms; Health Clubs; Chain; Securities And Exchange Commission; Paul Toback; Weight Loss; Exercise; Contracts; Personal Training; Retention; Accounting; Accounting Audits; Accrual Accounting; Finance; Advertising; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; For-Profit Firms; Customers; Customer Satisfaction; Public Equity; Financing and Loans; Revenue; Revenue Recognition; Geographic Scope; Multinational Firms and Management; Health; Nutrition; Business History; Lawsuits and Litigation; Management; Business or Company Management; Goals and Objectives; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing; Operations; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Public Ownership; Problems and Challenges; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business Strategy; Competition; Corporate Strategy; Expansion; Segmentation; Trends; Cost Management; Profit; Growth and Development; Leadership Style; Five Forces Framework; Private Ownership; Opportunities; Motivation and Incentives; Competitive Strategy; Health Industry; United States; Illinois; Chicago

21 Sep 2017
HBS Seminar

Nicholas Argyres, Washington University in St Louis

September 1990 (Revised December 1990)
Case

Kaiser Steel Corporation, 1972

By: Timothy A. Luehrman and William Schiano

Addresses corporate restructuring. Asks students to consider how Kaiser should respond to strong competition from imported steel. Focuses particularly on labor relations in the U.S. steel industry and the feedback from contract negotiations and wage settlements into... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Decisions; Investment; Contracts; Negotiation; Labor and Management Relations; Competition; Steel Industry; United States

Research Summary

Dissertation Summary

From a contractual viewpoint, the employment relations observed in the early 1960s in large unionized manufacturing firms in the U.S. and Japan represented two contrasting cases. Employment relations in the U.S. were based largely on explicit, elaborate, and... View Details

Article

Testing Substitutability

By: John William Hatfield, Nicole Immorlica and Scott Duke Kominers

We provide an algorithm for testing the substitutability of a length-N preference relation over a set of contracts X in time O(|X|3⋅N3). Access to the preference relation is essential for this result: We show that a substitutability-testing algorithm with access only... View Details

Keywords: Substitutability; Matching; Communication Complexity; Preference Elicitation; Marketplace Matching; Communication; Mathematical Methods; Economics

01 Nov 2022
Research & Ideas

A Penny for Your Thoughts? For Big-Picture Ideas, the Right Pay Structure Matters

relation to the worker’s job. That is, employees with fixed-rate contracts were more likely to propose broad-scope innovations, even when the changes would not benefit them personally. It’s costly to think... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis

Winter 2013
Article

Corporate Governance Reform and Executive Incentives: Implications for Investments and Risk-Taking

By: Daniel Cohen, Aiyesha Dey and Thomas Lys

We investigate the mechanism through which the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) was associated with changes in corporate investment strategies. We document that the passage of the governance regulations in SOX was followed by a significant decline in pay‐performance... View Details

June 2000 (Revised February 2003)
Case

Must Zee TV

By: Bharat N. Anand and Tarun Khanna

Explores issues related to (1) the vertical boundaries of the firm in an emerging-economy context, especially the effects of lack of intellectual property rights and lack of contract enforcement on both industry structure and boundaries of the firm; and (2) the extent... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Strategy; Multinational Firms and Management; Developing Countries and Economies; Copyright; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

September 2019 (Revised February 2022)
Supplement

Glenn Defense Marine Asia (B)

By: Susanna Gallani, Anja Anliker, Luke Hodges and Amram Migdal

This case describes the growth of Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA) under the leadership of Leonard Glenn Francis. GDMA provided ship husbanding and logistical support services to the United States Navy when Navy ships visited various ports in Southeast Asia. The case... View Details

September 2019 (Revised February 2022)
Case

Glenn Defense Marine Asia (A)

By: Susanna Gallani, Anja Anliker, Luke Hodges and Amram Migdal

This case describes the growth of Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA) under the leadership of Leonard Glenn Francis. GDMA provided ship husbanding and logistical support services to the United States Navy when Navy ships visited various ports in Southeast Asia. The case... View Details

12 May 2009
First Look

First Look: May 12, 2009

U.S. manufacturing industries from the Economic Census. We then relate coagglomeration levels to the degree to which industry pairs share goods, labor, or ideas. To reduce reverse causality, where co-location drives input-output linkages... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Article

The Influence of Ownership on Accounting Information Expenditures

This paper analyzes the association between ownership, top management incentives, and expenditures on accounting information. We argue that organizations with privately appointed boards of directors such as for-profit and non-governmental nonprofit organizations use... View Details

Keywords: Governance; Motivation and Incentives; Accounting; Health Care and Treatment; Ownership; Health Industry

Research Summary

Performance Measurement and Incentive Alignment

Professor Kulp is interested in how organizations use information to enhance firm performance. The manner in which an organization gathers, analyzes, and uses performance information as part of its internal governance system affects organizational success. Professor... View Details

May 1996
Background Note

The GM's Operational Challenge: Managing Through People

By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Ashish Nanda

Highlights and explores how a general manager adds value to the firm at the operational level by managing through people. Discusses how assumptions about human motivation influence the employment contract that the general manager implicitly enters into with the workers... View Details

Keywords: Employee Relationship Management; Selection and Staffing; Contracts; Managerial Roles; Operations; Problems and Challenges; Labor and Management Relations; Motivation and Incentives; Value