Publications

08 Apr 2025
HBS Seminar

Dan Bartels, University of Chicago

13 Aug 2007
Research & Ideas

The Dark Side of Trust

It's called TrapGuard—a special kind of floor drain developed by a Georgia company that prevents sewer gases from entering homes. On the great spectrum of innovative products, it's probably not keeping company with the iPod or Segway scooter. But Harvard Business... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Service

May 2023
Technical Note

Dynamic Pricing: Timing is Everything

By: Elie Ofek

This note provides a comprehensive exposition to the topic of dynamic pricing (whereby the fee customers are charged is time-dependent). It covers the motivation for firms to engage in dynamic pricing, provides a typology of the main formats dynamic pricing can take,... View Details

Keywords: Dynamic Pricing; Price

2022
Working Paper

Values as Luxury Goods and Political Polarization

By: Benjamin Enke, Mattias Polborn and Alex A Wu

Motivated by novel survey evidence, this paper develops a theory of political behavior in which values are a luxury good: the relative weight voters place on values rather than material considerations increases in income. The model predicts (i) voters who are... View Details

Keywords: Political Polarization; Government and Politics; Moral Sensibility; Luxury; Values and Beliefs; Voting

Read Now

June 2017
Article

Options Compensation as a Commitment Mechanism in Oligopoly Competition

By: Jun Ishii and David Hao Zhang

We analyze how CEO stock options compensation can be used as a commitment device in oligopolistic competition. We develop a two-stage model where shareholders choose managerial compensation to commit their managers to being aggressive in equilibrium. Our results may... View Details

Keywords: CEO Compensation; Ceo Risk-taking; Strategic Delegation; Stock Options; Executive Compensation

Find at Harvard

22 Mar 2022
News

Freedom within a Framework

April 2012 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Dovernet

By: Robert Simons and Natalie Kindred

This case illustrates the implications of using stringent performance measurement systems to create performance pressure, motivate employee achievement, and sharpen a firm's competitiveness. It opens by describing the downsides of the ruthlessly competitive culture at... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Information Technology; Competitive Advantage; Decision Choices and Conditions; Organizational Culture; Performance Evaluation; Compensation and Benefits; Web Services Industry; Information Technology Industry; Vancouver

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

30 Jul 2009
News

Chatter about a new global currency is overblown

03 Oct 2016
Working Paper Summaries

The Skills Gap and the Near-Far Problem in Executive Education and Leadership Development

Keywords: by Das Narayandas and Mihnea Moldoveanu; Education

September 2022 (Revised January 2025)
Case

The Pokémon Company: Evolving into an Everlasting Brand

By: Tomomichi Amano and Masaki Nomura

Super Bowl 50, the fiftieth annual championship game of the American National Football League played in February 2016, featured 52 commercials, and brands spent more than six million dollars each for a 30-second commercial slot. Surprisingly, the commercial that... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Growth and Development Strategy; Video Game Industry; Japan

June 2012
Article

Consequence-Cause Matching: Looking to the Consequences of Events to Infer Their Causes

By: Robyn A. LeBoeuf and Michael I. Norton

We show that people non-normatively infer event causes from event consequences. For example, people inferred that a product failure (computer crash) had a large cause (widespread computer virus) if it had a large consequence (job loss), but that the identical failure... View Details

Keywords: Causal Inference; Product; Forecasting and Prediction; Motivation and Incentives; Failure

November 1987 (Revised January 1988)
Case

Groen: A Dover Industries Company

By: Francis Aguilar

Describes the challenges facing the president of an old-line foodservice and food processing equipment manufacturing company as it attempted to accelerate sales and profit growth through the introduction of innovative products. The introduction of a "revolutionary"... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Labor and Management Relations; Machinery and Machining; Management Style; Management Teams; Performance Efficiency; Technological Innovation; Product Development; Organizational Culture

03 Aug 2022
News

Can the Chips and Science Act Help the Us Avoid More Shortages?

2024
Working Paper

The Real Effects of Bankruptcy Forum Shopping

By: Samuel Antill and Aymeric Bellon

Many non-Delaware firms strategically file for bankruptcy in Delaware. Should this "forum shopping" be allowed? This question has motivated six congressional bill proposals over decades of policy debate. Using a novel natural experiment and Census-Bureau microdata, we... View Details

Keywords: Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Government Legislation; Policy; Geographic Location; Delaware

SSRN

November 1990 (Revised February 1991)
Case

Commonwealth Blood Transfusion Service

For the first time, the Commonwealth Blood Transfusion Service (CBTS) has to determine product costs for the output of its plasma fractionation center. The motivation for determining product costs is political in nature. Therefore, the CBTS has to find a way to report... View Details

Keywords: Product; Cost; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry