Insurance And Reinsurance - Publications - Faculty & Research

11 May 2016
Research & Ideas

Fix This! Why is it so Painful to Buy a New Car?

monthly fees or a deeply discounted full price determined by how much you actually drive the vehicle. The dealership would maintain it (motivating dealers to be proactive about maintenance and manufacturers to build in high quality), but... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Auto

22 Aug 2022
Research & Ideas

Can Amazon Remake Health Care?

First, the supply chain in health care is a mess. There are so many intermediaries selling to other people, and Amazon has done extremely well by streamlining the supply chain. So they must be thinking that the current View Details

Keywords: by Christina Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette; Health

01 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

How To Make Restructuring Work for Your Company

hospital business and a health insurance business, management decided to split the businesses apart through a corporate spin-off because it realized the businesses were strategically incompatible—the... View Details

Keywords: by Stuart C. Gilson

Research Summary

The Panama Canal

The Big Ditch is the first quantitative economic history of the Panama Canal and its effect on Panama, the United States, and the world economy. It makes three general arguments. First, that the Panama Canal was very important to... View Details

28 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

Supply Chain Risk: Deal With It

Back in the early 1990s, managers of U.S. companies were justifiably proud of the well-oiled machines they'd made of their supply chains. Over the previous fifteen to twenty years, they'd wrung costs from the mechanisms and processes by... View Details

Keywords: by David Stauffer

31 Jan 2018
Research & Ideas

American Idle: Workers Spend Too Much Time Waiting for Something to Do

Brodsky. “With idle time, the organization is often hurt by it, and it’s not enjoyable for employees either.” Involuntary idle time can have a variety of causes, including built-in excess capacity, in which a company intentionally... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

23 Nov 2020
Research & Ideas

COVID Was Supposed to Increase Bankruptcies. Instead, They've Gone Down.

very surprising to a lot of people. And I think it raises a lot of questions,” says Kluender, who studies the causes of financial distress among American households and how government, private insurance,... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

21 May 2012
Research & Ideas

OSHA Inspections: Protecting Employees or Killing Jobs?

With an election looming and the economy continuing to struggle, the effectiveness of government regulation has become a political football. While advocates hold regulations up as necessary to protect public health View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

2024
Working Paper

Does Private Equity Have Any Business Being in the Health Care Business?

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Zirui Song

Private Equity (“PE”) has come under increased scrutiny by the press, academics, and policymakers, as well as the public, for its investments in health care delivery. This scrutiny has been exacerbated by recent high profile hospital bankruptcies following PE... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Government Administration; Acquisition; Health Industry

Citation

SSRN

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Teaching Interest

Decision Making Under Uncertainty

By: David E. Bell

Many of the decisions we face are made complicated by having uncertain consequences: how should I set my inventory when I don’t know what demand will be, should I refinance my mortgage when rates might go lower, how big a bet shall I make in a new business, and so... View Details

07 Jul 2011
What Do You Think?

So We Adapt. What’s the Downside?

many things are interconnected, it is harder and harder to explain why things, including success, happen. He asks why success in fact is no insurance against subsequent failure, as all writers about... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

11 Oct 2006
What Do You Think?

How Do We Respond to the “Dependency Ratio” Dilemma?

a discussion on Accounting for Social Insurance (PV): http://www.fasab.gov/pdffiles/si_newsrelease.pdf Of course, dependency ratios are not reduced without other economic and social effects. For example, to... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

26 Oct 2022
Research & Ideas

How Paid Promos Take the Shine Off YouTube Stars (and Tips for Better Influencer Marketing)

suggests that the effect translates to an average of $10,000 over an average six-year-career influencer. “If consumers aren’t perceiving social influencers as trustworthy and authentic, much of their marketing effort might not lead to a... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin; Technology; Media & Broadcasting

15 Mar 2017
Lessons from the Classroom

More Than 900 Examples of How Climate Change Affects Business

This word cloud is composed of blog posts by more than 900 students describing how individual organizations are likely to be affected by climate change. Image by Patrick Clapp Last fall, first-year MBA students at Harvard Business School received a new assignment in... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Green Technology

29 Nov 2017
Research & Ideas

How to Succeed in Business (According to a 15th Century Trade Merchant)

write-off debt Extending credit was as much a necessity for trade in Cotrugli’s time as it is today, but charging interest was illegal; instead, debts were compensated through commissions or insurance premiums that skirted the definition... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

03 Mar 2003
Research & Ideas

Top Ten Legal Mistakes Made by Entrepreneurs

intelligent choices of where they think their markets are, and how much money to spend at an early stage in order to insure that the brand is available in those markets. #4: Disclosing inventions without a... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

11 Feb 2020
Sharpening Your Skills

10 Rules Entrepreneurs Need to Know Before Adopting AI

results in the beginning. Underestimates can happen as well if AI is solving a constrained problem like back-office automation or insurance claims. Helping customers understand which problems can and cannot... View Details

Keywords: by Rocio Wu

24 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

The Yelp Factor: Are Consumer Reviews Good for Business?

Because of this, Airbnb offers not only a review system but also insurance to pay for incidents resulting from unreliable guests, authentication to make sure that guests and hosts are who they say they are,... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Food & Beverage

30 Aug 2004
Research & Ideas

Real Estate: The Most Imperfect Asset

Peru, or seven years to open a bakery in Egypt? He attributes much of this to the fact that most of the world lacks a tradition of property rights (which is consistent with the imperfections matrix mentioned above), as well as courts and... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston; Construction; Real Estate

24 Aug 2020
Research & Ideas

How Much Will Remote Work Continue After the Pandemic?

reported. “There can be important barriers to switching to remote work, even if an employer allows it.” For example, the finance and insurance industry, which the index predicted would have a high capacity... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

Publications