Publications

October 2002 (Revised February 2006)
Case

Codex Alimentarius and Food Labeling

By: Ray A. Goldberg and Hal Hogan

Codex Alimentarius is a set of international food standards devised by the Codex Commission, a body within the United Nations jointly sponsored by the FAO and WHO. The purpose of the standards is to harmonize global trade in food products and agricultural commodities,... View Details

Keywords: Standards; Trade; Agreements and Arrangements; Food; Agribusiness; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Globalization; Health; Food and Beverage Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry

06 Jul 2009
Research & Ideas

Conducting Layoffs: ’Necessary Evils’ at Work

In this uncertain economic climate, downsizing and layoffs are a sadly frequent occurrence. Although bad news is always painful to deliver and to hear, the process of conducting "necessary... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

Nov 2015
Audio

Prospects for Shared Prosperity: Findings from the 2015 Alumni Survey on U.S. Competitiveness

America’s leading companies are thriving, but the prosperity they are producing is not being shared broadly among U.S. citizens. Jan W. Rivkin presents the results of effort to gauge HBS alumni opinions on two topics: View Details

September 2011
Case

AXA Private Equity: The Diana Investment

By: Michael J. Roberts and William A. Sahlman

The case focuses on an investment made by AXA Private Equity, a French manufacturer of food ingredients. The investment is made at the height of the financial markets, and financed with significant debt. Soon thereafter, the financial crisis impacted the company's... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Ethics; Investment; Financial Crisis

Article

Inflation and Taxes in a Growing Economy with Debt and Equity

By: M. Feldstein, Jerry R. Green and Eytan Sheshinski

Our tax system was designed for an economy with little or no inflation. The current paper shows that inflation causes capricious changes in the effective rate of tax on capital income and therefore in the real net rate of return that savers receive. This is not only a... View Details

Keywords: Taxation; Inflation and Deflation; Economy

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29 Jun 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Trade Credit and Taxes

Keywords: by Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley & James R. Hines

March 2021 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Ayn Rand: Changing the World

By: Robert Simons and Max Saffer

This case traces the life of Ayn Rand from Russia to Hollywood to New York City. The case describes how Rand fled communist Russia and, in reaction to the deprivations she experienced under communism, developed a philosophy idealizing free will and personal... View Details

Keywords: Writing; Values and Beliefs; Economic Systems; Society; Mission and Purpose; Success; Work-Life Balance; Ethics; Personal Development and Career; Publishing Industry

July 2008 (Revised December 2009)
Case

Infosys' Relationship Scorecard: Measuring Transformational Partnerships

By: Francisco de Asis Martinez-Jerez, Robert S. Kaplan and Katherine Miller

This case analyzes Infosys' innovative approach to measuring performance in client relations. Infosys' strategy is evolving to build transformational partnerships from its original position as an outsourcer of end-to-end IT projects. A transformational partner helps... View Details

Keywords: Partners and Partnerships; Performance Evaluation; Attorney and Client Relationships; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Balanced Scorecard; Competitive Strategy; Commercialization; Competitive Advantage; Economic Growth; Growth and Development Strategy; Consulting Industry; Information Technology Industry; India

2021
Working Paper

Property Rights and Urban Form

By: Simeon Djankov, Edward L. Glaeser, Valeria Perotti and Andrei Shleifer

How do the different elements in the standard bundle of property rights, including those of possession and transfer, influence the shape of cities? This paper incorporates insecure property rights into a standard model of urban land prices and density, and makes... View Details

Keywords: Property; Rights; City; Development Economics; Global Range

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13 Jul 2012
Working Paper Summaries

De Gustibus non est Taxandum: Theory and Evidence on Preference Heterogeneity and Redistribution

Keywords: by Benjamin Lockwood & Matthew Weinzierl

October 2009
Article

Managing Risk in the New World

By: Robert S. Kaplan, Anette Mikes, Robert Simons, Peter Tufano and Michael Hofmann Jr.

Five experts gathered recently to discuss the future of enterprise risk management: Kaplan, the Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School, who with his colleague David Norton developed the balanced scorecard; Mikes, an assistant professor at HBS who studies... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Financial Crisis; Capital Structure; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Risk Management

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05 Oct 2015
Research & Ideas

What Companies Should Not Do in the Next Banking Crisis

question in a new paper, titled Survive Another Day: Using Changes in the Composition of Investments to Measure the Cost of Credit Constraints (forthcoming in the Review of... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Banking

15 Aug 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Legislating Stock Prices

Keywords: by Lauren Cohen, Karl Diether & Christopher Malloy; Financial Services

May 1992 (Revised February 1994)
Case

North American Free Trade Agreement: Free For Whom?

Mexico, the United States, and Canada have negotiated a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that would create the largest free trade zone in the world. The union would build on the three-year-old Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Canada.... View Details

Keywords: Agreements and Arrangements; Trade; Canada; United States; Mexico

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01 Mar 2011
News

Faculty Books

navigate your company’s complex political environment); and manage a team (forge a high-performing “we” out of all the “I”s who report to you). The Comingled Code: Open Source and Economic Development by... View Details

Keywords: Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services

November 2021 (Revised May 2022)
Case

West Virginia: Finding the Right Path Forward

By: Matthew C. Weinzierl, Christine Keung and Reggie Smith

Once at the center of the American economy, the state of West Virginia had seen decades of decline as its coal industry fell on hard times. With beautiful but challenging topography, a proud but shrinking population, and a new scourge of the opioid epidemic, the... View Details

Keywords: Population Health; Geographic Location; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Problems and Challenges; Social Issues; West Virginia

May 2022
Supplement

Third Point in 2020: Growth Is Where the Value Is? (B)

By: Robin Greenwood and Denise Han

In early May 2020, Daniel Loeb’s team at Third Point was evaluating a potential growth opportunity in the Walt Disney Company and whether investor activism might play a role. Battered by the effects of COVID-19, the company’s stock had initially tumbled to $86 and then... View Details

Keywords: Growth; Equity; Disney; Value; Economics; Finance; Investment; Strategy; Management; Investment Activism; Investment Return; Growth and Development; North America

2024
Working Paper

Corporate Debt, Boom-Bust Cycles, and Financial Crises

By: Victoria Ivashina, Sebnem Kalemli-Özcan, Luc Laeven and Karsten Müller

Using a new dataset on sectoral credit exposures covering financial and non-financial sectors in 115 economies over the period 1940–2014, we document the following evidence that corporate debt plays a key role in explaining boom-bust cycles, financial crises, and slow... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Economic Growth; Economic Sectors; Borrowing and Debt; Credit

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2018
Working Paper

Show or Tell? Improving Agent Decision Making in a Tanzanian Mobile Money Field Experiment

By: Jason Acimovic, Chris Parker, David F. Drake and Karthik Balasubramanian

When workers make operational decisions, the firm's global knowledge and the workers’ domain-specific knowledge complement each other. Oftentimes workers have the final decision-making power. Two key decisions a firm makes when designing systems to support these... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Decision Making; Training; Performance Improvement; Money; Mobile Technology; Developing Countries and Economies; Financial Services Industry