Publications

2009
Working Paper

Asset Specificity and Vertical Integration: Williamson's Hypothesis Reconsidered

By: Christian Alejandro Ruzzier

A point repeatedly stressed by transaction cost economics is that the more specific the asset, the more likely is vertical integration to be optimal. In spite of the profusion of empirical papers supporting this prediction, recent surveys and casual observation suggest... View Details

Keywords: Assets; Vertical Integration

04 Feb 2016
News

Research Explores Consequences Of Revealing Embarrassing Details

17 Oct 2016
HBS Seminar

Nicholas Bloom, Stanford University

23 Jan 2024
Research & Ideas

How to Keep Employees Productive: Support Caregivers

workers between the ages of 26 and 35 and about 30 percent between the ages of 36 and 45 say that caregiving negatively affected their career. Businesses in the United States incur more than $1 trillion in costs annually due to turnover. Many of these workers want... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

2023
Working Paper

The Political Economy of a 'Miracle Cure': The Case of Nebulized Ibuprofen and Its Diffusion in Argentina

By: Sebastian Calónico, Rafael Di Tella and Juan Cruz Lopez Del Valle

We document the diffusion of nebulized ibuprofen in Argentina as a treatment for COVID-19. As the pandemic spread, this clinically unsupported drug reached thousands of patients, even some seriously ill, despite warnings by the regulator and medical societies. Detailed... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Health Care and Treatment; Health Pandemics; Adoption; Behavior; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Learning

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2020
Working Paper

Prioritarianism and Optimal Taxation

By: Matti Tuomala and Matthew C. Weinzierl

Prioritarianism has been at the center of the formal approach to optimal tax theory since its modern starting point in Mirrlees (1971), but most theorists’ use of it is motivated by tractability rather than explicit normative reasoning. We characterize analytically and... View Details

Keywords: Prioritarianism; Optimal Taxation; Utilitarianism; Redistribution; Inverse-optimum; Taxation; Theory

May 2018
Article

Managing the Family Firm: Evidence from CEOs at Work

By: Oriana Bandiera, Renata Lemos, Andrea Prat and Raffaella Sadun

We present evidence on the labor supply of CEOs and on whether family and professional CEOs differ on this dimension. We do so through a new survey instrument that allows us to codify CEOs’ diaries in a detailed and comparable fashion and to build a bottom-up measure... View Details

Keywords: Performance Productivity; Family Ownership; Management

SSRN

Article

Race/Ethnicity and Patient Confidence to Self-manage Cardiovascular Disease

BACKGROUND: Minority populations bear a disproportionate burden of chronic disease, due to higher disease prevalence and greater morbidity and mortality. Recent research has shown that several factors, including confidence to self-manage care, are associated... View Details

Keywords: Ethnicity; Race; Health Disorders; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

26 Apr 2024
HBS Case

Deion Sanders' Prime Lessons for Leading a Team to Victory

progress. In one survey in August 2023, for example, 73 percent of workers identify micromanagement as the biggest “workplace red flag,” saying it leads to negativity and anxiety in the workplace. “If you think about situational... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman; Sports

2024
Working Paper

Anti-Political-Establishment Citizens: An In-Depth Study from Two Latin American Countries

By: Loreto Cox and Natalia Garbiras-Diaz

Building on citizens’ animosity towards politicians, anti-establishment parties and candidates have achieved significant electoral success. While recent studies examine the supply-side, we know little about what drives citizens’ anti-establishment sentiments and how... View Details

Keywords: Political Parties; Political Instability; Democracy; Elections; Electoral Behavior; Election Outcomes; Ideology; Political Elections; Policy; Governance; Government and Politics; Social Issues; Society; Perception; Crime and Corruption; Latin America; South America; Colombia; Peru

2021
Article

Designing, Not Checking, for Policy Robustness: An Example with Optimal Taxation

By: Benjamin B. Lockwood, Afras Sial and Matthew C. Weinzierl

Economists typically check the robustness of their results by comparing them across plausible ranges of parameter values and model structures. A preferable approach to robustness—for the purposes of policymaking and evaluation—is to design policy that takes these... View Details

Keywords: Optimal Taxation; Income Tax; Social Welfare; Elasticity; Income; Taxation; Policy

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May 2020
Article

Negotiating a Better Future: How Interpersonal Skills Facilitate Inter-Generational Investment

By: Nava Ashraf, Natalie Bau, Corinne Low and Kathleen McGinn

Using a randomized control trial, we examine whether offering adolescent girls nonmaterial resources—specifically, negotiation skills—can improve educational outcomes in a low-income country. In so doing, we provide the first evidence on the effects of an intervention... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation; Competency and Skills; Training; Age; Gender; Education; Investment; Outcome or Result; Developing Countries and Economies

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June 2019
Article

Learning From Mum: Cross-National Evidence Linking Maternal Employment and Adult Children’s Outcomes

By: Kathleen L. McGinn, Mayra Ruiz Castro and Elizabeth Long Lingo

Analyses relying on two international surveys from over 100,000 men and women across 29 countries explore the relationship between maternal employment and adult daughters’ and sons’ employment and domestic outcomes. In the employment sphere, adult daughters, but not... View Details

Keywords: Female Labor Force Participation; Gender Attitudes; Household Labor; Maternal Employment; Social Class; Social Learning Theory; Social Mobility; Employment; Gender; Attitudes; Household; Labor; Learning; Outcome or Result

2017
Chapter

Multinational Activity in Emerging Markets: How and When Does Foreign Direct Investment Promote Growth?

By: Laura Alfaro

Among the prominent economic trends in recent decades is the exponential increase in flows of goods and capital driven by technological progress and a falling number of restrictions. A key driver of this phenomenon has been the cross-border production, foreign... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Activity; Growth; Spillovers; Complementarities; Foreign Direct Investment; Emerging Markets; Growth and Development; Multinational Firms and Management

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2016
Chapter

Evaluating the Effects of Large Scale Health Interventions in Developing Countries: The Zambian Malaria Initiative

By: Nava Ashraf, Gunther Fink and David N. Weil

Since 2003, Zambia has been engaged in a large-scale, centrally coordinated national anti-Malaria campaign, which has become a model in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper aims at quantifying the individual and macro-level benefits of this campaign, which involved mass... View Details

Keywords: Programs; Health Pandemics; Developing Countries and Economies; Zambia

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October 2006 (Revised August 2023)
Background Note

Note on Student Outcomes in U.S. Public Education

By: Stacey M. Childress, Stig Leschly and John J-H Kim

Surveys educational outcomes among public school students in the United States. Educational outcomes are categorized as achievement outcomes (measured primarily by students' performance on standardized test results) and attainment outcomes (measured primarily by... View Details

Keywords: Demographics; Education; Outcome or Result; Public Administration Industry; Education Industry; United States

Educators

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07 May 2019
News

Global Workers Are Ready for Retraining

20 Oct 2016
Working Paper Summaries

Global Talent Flows

Keywords: by Sari Pekkala Kerr, William R. Kerr, Çağllar Özden, and Christopher Parsons

April 2025
Article

Skill Dependencies Uncover Nested Human Capital

By: Moh Hosseinioun, Frank Neffke, Letian Zhang and Hyejin Youn

Modern economies require increasingly diverse and specialized skills, many of which depend on the acquisition of other skills first. Here we analyse US survey data to reveal a nested structure within skill portfolios, where the direction of dependency is inferred... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Human Capital; Personal Development and Career; Equality and Inequality; Analytics and Data Science