Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(333)
- Faculty Publications (123)
- Article
The Re-Industrialization of the United States?
By: Willy C. Shih
Talk of "re-industrialization" in the United States has been supported by a seeming resurgence in manufacturing, but this is driven more by the end of labor arbitrage and increasing coordination costs of offshore manufacturing. Aggressive restructurings and significant... View Details
Keywords: U.S. Competitiveness; Re-industrialization; Re-shoring; Operations; Production; Supply and Industry; Supply Chain; Supply Chain Management; Geographic Location; Geography; Globalization; Globalized Economies and Regions; Globalized Firms and Management; Globalized Markets and Industries; Labor; Manufacturing Industry; Auto Industry; Electronics Industry; Industrial Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States; China; European Union
- 2015
- Working Paper
Entrepreneurship and Urban Growth: An Empirical Assessment with Historical Mines
By: Edward L. Glaeser, Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr
We study entrepreneurship and growth through the lens of U.S. cities. Initial entrepreneurship correlates strongly with urban employment growth, but endogeneity bedevils interpretation. Chinitz (1961) hypothesized that coal mines near cities led to specialization in... View Details
- June 2012
- Class Lecture
Why You're Not Buying Venezuelan Chocolate: The Provenance Paradox
By: Rohit Deshpandé
A product's country of origin establishes its authenticity. This is the provenance paradox. Consumers associate certain geographies with the best products: French wine, Italian sports cars, Swiss watches. Competing products from other countries - especially developing... View Details
Keywords: Global Business; Branding; Strategic Planning; Strategic Positioning; Emergent Countries; Consumer Perception; Developing Markets; Brands and Branding; Geographic Location; Globalized Markets and Industries; Perception; Emerging Markets; Product Positioning; Global Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; Venezuela
- 2012
- Book
Banks as Multinationals
By: G. Jones
This is a revised edition of a comparative, international study which looks at the history of multinational banks. Researchers from the United States, Japan, Europe, and Australia survey the evolution of multinational banks over time and suggest a conceptual framework... View Details
- 2012
- Working Paper
'Power from Sunshine': A Business History of Solar Energy
By: Geoffrey Jones and Loubna Bouamane
This working paper provides a longitudinal perspective on the business history of solar energy between the nineteenth century and the present day. It covers early attempts to develop solar energy, the use of passive solar in architecture before World War 2, and the... View Details
- March 2012
- Article
Does America Really Need Manufacturing?
By: Gary P. Pisano and Willy C. Shih
Too many U.S. companies base decisions about where to locate production largely on narrow financial criteria. They don't consider whether keeping manufacturing at home makes more sense strategically or take into account the impact it might have on their ability to... View Details
- December 2011
- Article
Did R&D Firms Used to Patent? Evidence from the First Innovation Surveys
By: Tom Nicholas
Matching 2,777 R&D firms in surveys conducted by the National Research Council between 1921 and 1938 with U.S. patents reveals that 59 percent of all firms and 88 percent of publicly-traded firms patented. These shares are much higher than those observed for modern R&D... View Details
- 2011
- Working Paper
Management Practices Across Firms and Countries
By: Nicholas Bloom, Christos Genakos, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
For the last decade we have been using double-blind survey techniques and randomized sampling to construct management data on over 10,000 organizations across 20 countries. On average, we find that in manufacturing, American, Japanese, and German firms are the best... View Details
- December 2011 (Revised May 2014)
- Case
ReSource Pro
By: Lynda M. Applegate, William R. Kerr, Elisabeth Koll and David Lane
Matt Bruno, founder and general manager of ReSource Pro, left his job working for a New York City-based insurance program shortly after the World Trade Center bombing and arrived in China. Initially he planned to teach English, but soon the entrepreneurial spirit of... View Details
- 2011
- Working Paper
The Organization of Firms Across Countries
By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
We argue that social capital as proxied by trust increases aggregate productivity by affecting the organization of firms. To do this we collect new data on the decentralization of investment, hiring, production, and sales decisions from Corporate Headquarters to local... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Agglomerative Forces and Cluster Shapes
By: William R. Kerr and Scott Duke Kominers
We model spatial clusters of similar firms. Our model highlights how agglomerative forces lead to localized, individual connections among firms, while interaction costs generate a defined distance over which attraction forces operate. Overlapping firm interactions... View Details
- June 2010 (Revised December 2013)
- Case
Hang Lung Properties and the Chengdu Decision (A)
By: John D. Macomber, Michael Shih-Ta Chen and Keith Chi-Ho Wong
A residential real estate developer competes in a heated auction for a prime retail development site in the interior of China during the 2009 boom. Total project cost might be in excess of $1 billion U.S. for over 4,000,000 square feet of building. Hang Lung Properties... View Details
- June 2010 (Revised December 2013)
- Supplement
Hang Lung Properties and the Chengdu Decision (B)
By: John D. Macomber, Michael Shih-Ta Chen and Keith Chi-Ho Wong
Second phase of auction for a prime retail development parcel in Chengdu, China. Competition forces the firm to revisit all of its land purchase criteria. Hang Lung Properties is known for rigorous due diligence, for discipline in buying property, and for good... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Surviving the Global Financial Crisis: Foreign Direct Investment and Establishment Performance
By: Laura Alfaro and Maggie Chen
We examine in this paper the differential response of establishments to the global financial crisis, with particular emphasis on the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) in determining micro economic performance. Using a new worldwide dataset that reports the... View Details
- May 2010
- Article
Does Product Market Competition Lead Firms to Decentralize?
By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
There is a widespread sense that over the last two decades firms have been decentralizing decisions to employees further down the managerial hierarchy. Economists have developed a range of theories to account for delegation, but there is less empirical evidence,... View Details
Keywords: Product; Markets; Competition; Business Ventures; Geographic Location; Employees; Research; Programs; Decisions
- March 2010
- Article
The Role of Independent Invention in U.S. Technological Development, 1880-1930
By: Tom Nicholas
Why did independent inventors account for over half of US patents by 1930 and more than three times the number granted to R&D firms? Using new data on patents and historical patent citations, I show that independents supplied high quality innovations to a... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Local R&D Strategies and Multi-location Firms: The Role of Internal Linkages
By: Juan Alcacer and Minyuan Zhao
This study looks at the role of firms' internal linkages in highly competitive technology clusters, where much of the world's R&D takes place. The leading players in these clusters are multi-location firms that organize and integrate knowledge across sites worldwide.... View Details
- January 8, 2010
- Other Article
Multinational Firms, Agglomeration, and Global Networks
By: Laura Alfaro and Maggie Chen
Agglomeration effects are important but difficult to measure. This column uses a new database with precise geographical information to investigate the locational interdependence of multinational firms. Knowledge spillovers and capital- and labour-market externalities... View Details
- January 2010
- Article
Buy Local? The Geography of Successful Venture Capital Expansion
By: Henry Chen, Paul A. Gompers, Anna Kovner and Josh Lerner
We document geographic concentration by both venture capital firms and venture capital-financed companies in three metropolitan areas: San Francisco, Boston, and New York. We find that venture capital firms locate in regions with high success rates of venture... View Details
- Article
Recent Advances in the Empirics of Organizational Economics
By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
We present a survey of recent contributions in empirical organizational economics, focusing on management practices and decentralization. Productivity dispersion between firms and countries has motivated the improved measurement of firm organization across industries... View Details
Keywords: Economics; Management Practices and Processes; Performance Productivity; Geographic Location; Motivation and Incentives; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Competition; Human Capital; Markets; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Multinational Firms and Management; India; Brazil; United States