Publications

13 Jul 2009
Research & Ideas

Diagnosing the Public Health Care Alternative

the monopoly power of Medicare and Medicaid enable them to underpay providers by an estimated $90 billion, sums made up by private insurers. But if the market were entirely composed of public insurers, who... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Health

2018
Chapter

Why Do So Many Chinese Students Come to the United States?

By: William C. Kirby

Many books offer information about China, but few make sense of what is truly at stake. The questions addressed in this unique volume provide a window onto the challenges China faces today and the uncertainties its meteoric ascent on the global horizon has provoked.... View Details

Keywords: Asia; China; Emerging Country; Students; Education; Higher Education; Globalization; International Relations; History; Society; Education Industry; Asia; China; United States

18 Aug 2014
Research & Ideas

Have a Better Idea To Improve Health Care?

Several months ago, Harvard's Forum on Health Care Innovation surveyed industry executives, policy makers, academics, and doctors about the state of health care in the United States. Their report card was not encouraging. Only 14 percent... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

Spring 2021
Article

Whose Job Is It Anyway? Co-Ethnic Hiring in New U.S. Ventures

By: Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr

We explore co-ethnic hiring among new ventures using U.S. administrative data. Co-ethnic hiring is ubiquitous among immigrant groups, averaging about 22.5% and ranging from <2% to >40%. Co-ethnic hiring grows with the size of the local ethnic workforce, greater... View Details

Keywords: Hiring; Job Creation; E-Verify; Immigration; Selection and Staffing; Ethnicity; Entrepreneurship

2022
Chapter

Lessons Learned from Support to Business during COVID-19

By: Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, Benjamin Iverson and Adi Sunderam

The authors survey the new federal subsidies and loans provided to businesses in the first year of the pandemic—including the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program, and aid targeted at specific industries such as airlines... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Small Business; Government Legislation; Policy

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17 Sep 2020
Research & Ideas

Many Small-Business Employees May Be Close to Losing Health Insurance

faculty members Leemore S. Dafny, Zoë B. Cullen, Christopher T. Stanton, and doctoral student Yin Wei Soon. Their paper was published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine’s Catalyst. “Absent additional relief—and soon—providers... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Health

September 2015
Case

GovDelivery

By: Mitchell Weiss

Is government the biggest, worst customer in the world? And is that a reason for venture investors to back companies that sell to government or to stay away? It had been seven years since Scott Burns joined his friend Zach Stabenow to get a company called GovDocs off... View Details

Keywords: GovDelivery; Public Entrepreneurship; B2G; Business-to-Government; Scott Burns; Entrepreneurship; Government Administration; Venture Capital; Information Technology Industry; Public Administration Industry; Web Services Industry; Minnesota; United States

July–August 2014
Article

Obamacare Rules Pose Challenges for S Corp Owners

By: Josh Baron, Steve Salley and Judith L. Walsh

The article offers information financial impacts of tax by the U.S. Affordable Care Act (ACA) applied in January 2013 on family business shareholders and owners of S Corp. It discusses suggestions in tax planning to equalize tax burden including establishing family... View Details

Keywords: Ownership Type; Family Ownership; Compensation and Benefits; Taxation; Government Legislation

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August 2017
Article

Should Governments Invest More in Nudging?

By: Shlomo Benartzi, John Beshears, Katherine L. Milkman, Cass R. Sunstein, Richard H. Thaler, Maya Shankar, Will Tucker-Ray, William J. Congdon and Steven Galing

Governments are increasingly adopting behavioral science techniques for changing individual behavior in pursuit of policy objectives. The types of “nudge” interventions that governments are now adopting alter people’s decisions without coercion or significant changes... View Details

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2010
Article

The Strategic Use of Brand Biographies

By: Jill Avery, Neeru Paharia, Anat Keinan and Juliet Schor

We introduce the concept of a brand biography to describe an emerging trend in branding in which firms author a dynamic, historical account of the events that have shaped the brand over time. Using a particular type of brand biography, "the underdog," we empirically... View Details

17 Nov 2016
News

Wired for Innovation

Horizon Wind Energy. “It was a very small business, but we got lucky with land positions and were able to build it to pretty good scale,” notes Skelly, who served as the company’s chief development officer. “When it got too big for the... View Details

Keywords: Deborah Blagg; Electric Power Generation, Transmission, Distribution; Electric Power Generation, Transmission, Distribution

2009
Working Paper

Watch What I Do, Not What I Say: The Unintended Consequences of the Homeland Investment Act

By: Dhammika Dharmapala, C. Fritz Foley and Kristin J. Forbes

This paper analyzes the impact on firm behavior of the Homeland Investment Act of 2004, which provided a one-time tax holiday for the repatriation of foreign earnings by U.S. multinationals. The analysis controls for endogeneity and omitted variable bias by using... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Multinational Firms and Management; Government Legislation; Taxation; Business and Shareholder Relations; Behavior; United States

December 9, 2020
Article

Give Employees Cash to Purchase Their Own Insurance

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Barak D. Richman

Employers’ and employees’ health care costs continue to skyrocket. A solution is to allow employers to give employees pre-tax cash to purchase their own health insurance. This move, enabled by a newly enacted federal rule, would put competitive pressure on insurers,... View Details

Keywords: Health Insurance; Health Care and Treatment; Insurance; Employees; Government Legislation

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18 Jan 2021
Book

How Thinking Like a Startup Helps Governments Solve More Problems

chapters how entrepreneurs both inside and outside of government can tackle problems by viewing them as opportunities, trying new ideas, scaling them up, and improving public life. “I’m not saying we should... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

23 Jun 2016
Op-Ed

Brexit: Should Britain Stay or Go?

wider political implications that concern me most. Brexit will put a real border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, for example, and that will pose a threat... View Details

Keywords: by Geoffrey G. Jones & Dante Roscini

15 Nov 2012
Research & Ideas

Funding the Design of Livable Cities

Compounding the challenge of supporting this population shift, governments from developing to industrialized countries are limited in their capacity and political will to devise solutions to accommodate... View Details

Keywords: by Lisa Chase; Construction; Real Estate; Energy; Utilities

March 2012
Article

Reviving Entrepreneurship

By: Josh Lerner and William Sahlman

New enterprises don't exist in a vacuum: They rise or fall depending on myriad contextual factors, all of them interrelated, and all of them affected by government policy. U.S. lawmakers must carefully consider the effects of interventions in at least 12 areas, ranging... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Government and Politics; Policy; Economy; Public Administration Industry; United States

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February 2022
Case

CityScore: Big Data Comes to Boston

By: Boris Groysberg and Sarah L. Abbott

In 2016, Martin “Marty” Walsh, the Mayor of Boston, introduced CityScore, a data dashboard that measured the city’s progress across a range of metrics. The dashboard was updated daily and publicly available. The mayor frequently discussed the CityScore targets in... View Details

Keywords: Analytics and Data Science; Government Administration; Leadership; Transformation; City; Measurement and Metrics; Public Administration Industry; Boston; United States

August 2019 (Revised February 2020)
Case

New Hope Liuhe: Building an Integrated Agri-Food Business

By: Forest L. Reinhardt, Shu Lin, Natalie Kindred and Nancy Hua Dai

In October 2018, LIU Chang (Angela), chairman of Beijing-based New Hope Liuhe (NHL), was considering the strategy of the firm. With $9 billion in sales and a presence in nearly 20 countries, NHL was China’s largest animal feed producer and a major pork and poultry... View Details