Optimal Mechanism Design - Publications - Faculty & Research - Harvard Business School

Filter Results: (1,134)

Filter Results: (1,134)

Show Results For

← Page 4 of 1,134 Results →

19 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

Designing Cities for a Sustainable Future

On a June day in Manhattan with temperatures heading into the 90s, a straphanger named Mike is taking his customary subway ride to work. People are grumbling about the heat, but hey, it's summer, it's supposed to be hot, and besides, "Whaddya gonna do?" New Yorkers... View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons; Construction; Real Estate

2010
Working Paper

The Job Market for New Economists: A Market Design Perspective

By: Peter A. Coles, John Cawley, Phillip B. Levine, Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth and John J. Siegfried

This paper provides an overview of the market for new Ph.D. economists. It describes the role of the American Economic Association (AEA) in the market and focuses in particular on two mechanisms adopted in recent years at the suggestion of our committee. First, job... View Details

Keywords: Cost Management; Information; Surveys; Jobs and Positions; Job Interviews; Job Search; Emerging Markets; Digital Platforms; Service Operations; Internet and the Web

January 2019 (Revised February 2020)
Case

Roush Performance: How to Design a Sales Force Compensation Plan

By: Doug J. Chung

Roush Performance manufactured and marketed factory-modified performance vehicles and high-end aftermarket automotive performance parts. Since its inception, Roush Performance had focused on building its engineering technology competency and diversifying its product... View Details

Keywords: Sales Force Management; Motivation; Compensation; Salary; Commissions; Bonuses; Quotas; Salesforce Management; Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives

16 Jan 2020
News

5 Ways Office Design Helps Your Company Navigate Change

Article

Strategy-Proofness of Worker-Optimal Matching with Continuously Transferable Utility

By: Ravi Jagadeesan, Scott Duke Kominers and Ross Rheingans-Yoo

We give a direct proof of one-sided strategy-proofness for worker-firm matching under continuously transferable utility. A new “Lone Wolf” theorem (Jagadeesan et al., 2017) for settings with transferable utility allows us to adapt the method of proving one-sided... View Details

Keywords: Matching; Strategy-proofness; Lone Wolf Theorem; Rural Hospitals Theorem; Mechanism Design; Marketplace Matching

2016
Working Paper

Market Design for Altruistic Supply: Evidence from the Lab

By: Robert Slonim and Carmen Wang

Volunteer supply is widespread. Yet without a price, inefficiencies occur due to suppliers’ inability to coordinate with each other and with demand. In these contexts, we propose a market clearinghouse mechanism that improves efficiency if supply is altruistically... View Details

Keywords: Laboratory Experiments; Volunteering; Public Goods Provision; Market Design; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Economics

Article

Informal Family Insurance and the Design of the Welfare State

By: Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch

We study unemployment benefit provision when the family also provides social insurance. In the benchmark case, more generous State transfers crowd out family risk-sharing one-for-one. An extension gives the State an advantage in enforcing transfers through taxes... View Details

Keywords: Insurance; Design; Welfare

Find at Harvard

2017
Working Paper

Minimizing Justified Envy in School Choice: The Design of New Orleans' OneApp

By: Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Yeon-Koo Che, Parag A. Pathak, Alvin E. Roth and Oliver Tercieux

In 2012, New Orleans Recovery School District (RSD) became the first U.S. district to unify charter and traditional public school admissions in a single-offer assignment mechanism known as OneApp. The RSD also became the first district to use a mechanism based on Top... View Details

Keywords: Education; Decision Choices and Conditions; Marketplace Matching; Mathematical Methods; Design

March 2025 (Revised June 2025)
Case

Designing the Future of Work: Atlassian's Distributed Work Practices

By: Ashley Whillans and Gabriel Rondón Ichikawa

In early 2020, the software company Atlassian made a bold commitment: employees could work from anywhere—forever. While many tech peers reversed course on remote work, Atlassian worked to optimize their fully distributed model across 13 countries. This case follows... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Working Conditions; Management Practices and Processes; Product Development; Organizational Culture; Business Strategy; Employees; Technology Industry

Article

Holdout in the Assembly of Complements: A Problem for Market Design

By: Scott Duke Kominers and E. Glen Weyl

Holdout problems prevent private (voluntary and self-financing) assembly of complementary goods—such as land or dispersed spectrum—from many self-interested sellers. While mechanisms that fully respect sellers' property rights cannot alleviate these holdout problems,... View Details

Keywords: Governance; Market Design; Property

Find at Harvard

2013
Dissertation

Designing Freemium: A Model of Consumer Usage, Upgrade, and Referral Dynamics

By: Clarence Lee, Vineet Kumar and Sunil Gupta

Abstract. Over the past decade "freemium" (free + premium) has become the dominant business model among internet start-ups for its ability to acquire and monetize a large install-base with limited marketing resources. Freemium is a hybrid strategy where a firm offers... View Details

Keywords: Discrete-Continuous Choice Dynamic Structural Models; Bayesian Estimation; Word-of-Mouth; Digital Services; Freemium; Entrepreneurship; Business Model; Motivation and Incentives; Marketing Strategy; Internet and the Web; Consumer Behavior; Marketing Reference Programs; Business Startups

April 2014
Article

Awards Unbundled: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment

By: Nava Ashraf, Oriana Bandiera and Scott S. Lee

Organizations often use non-monetary awards to incentivize performance. Awards may affect behavior through several mechanisms: by conferring employer recognition, by enhancing social visibility, and by facilitating social comparison. In a nationwide health worker... View Details

Keywords: Social Comparison; Awards; Optimal Expectactions; Zambia; Status and Position; Performance Expectations; Motivation and Incentives; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; Zambia

Find at Harvard

April 6, 2023
Article

A New NFT Launch Strategy: The Wave Mint

By: Scott Duke Kominers and 1337 Skulls Sers

In an NFT project, the mint—the process by which tokens are initially allocated—largely determines who your community is and how they and the broader market view the project going forward. In this piece, we review a new minting strategy recently introduced by 1337... View Details

Keywords: NFTs; Mechanism Design; Sales Management; Sales Model; Crypto Economy; Non-fungible Tokens; Networks; Product Launch; Auctions; Market Design

2019
Working Paper

Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 8 Rationalizing Flow Processes

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the value structure of flow production processes and to explain why it is necessary to rationalize flow processes using the tools of systematic management. I first explain the problems facing managers of multi-step flow... View Details

Keywords: Flow Processes; Bottlenecks; Systematic Management; Production; Management; Problems and Challenges

Article

Popular Acceptance of Inequality Due to Innate Brute Luck and Support for Classical Benefit-based Taxation

By: Matthew C. Weinzierl

U.S. survey respondents' views on distributive justice differ in two specific, related ways from what is conventionally assumed in modern optimal tax research. When expressing their preferences over allocations in stylized, hypothetical scenarios meant to isolate key... View Details

Keywords: Optimal Taxation; Welfarism; Luck; Benefit-based Taxation; Taxation; Equality and Inequality; Attitudes

Find at Harvard

Research Summary

The Toyota Production System: Rules for Activity, Connection, and Pathway Design and Improvement

Researchers have established that Toyota enjoys advantages in cost, quality, lead time, and flexibility when compared to its competitors in automobile assembly. Differences in generating value have been attributed to differences between the Toyota Production System... View Details

Summer 2014
Article

Designed for Workarounds: A Qualitative Study of the Causes of Operational Failures in Hospitals

By: Anita L. Tucker, W. Scott Heisler and Laura D. Janisse

Frontline care providers in hospitals spend at least 10% of their time working around operational failures, which are situations where information, supplies, or equipment needed for patient care are insufficient. However, little is known about underlying causes of... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain; Health Care and Treatment; Failure; Business Processes; Health Industry

Article

The Relationship Between Workplace Stressors and Mortality and Health Costs in the United States

By: Joel Goh, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Stefanos A. Zenios

Even though epidemiological evidence links specific workplace stressors to health outcomes, the aggregate contribution of these factors to overall mortality and health spending in the United States is not known. In this paper, we build a model to estimate the excess... View Details

Keywords: Occupational Health; Health Costs; Mortality; Applied Optimization; Health

Find at Harvard

2020
Working Paper

Paying It Backward and Forward: Expanding Access to Convalescent Plasma Therapy Through Market Design

By: Scott Duke Kominers, Parag A. Pathak, Tayfun Sönmez and M. Utku Ünver

COVID-19 convalescent plasma (CCP) therapy is currently a leading treatment for COVID-19. At present, there is a shortage of CCP relative to demand. We develop and analyze a model of centralized CCP allocation that incorporates both donation and distribution. In order... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Convalescent Plasma; Vouchers; Health Pandemics; Health Care and Treatment; Resource Allocation; Market Design

01 Apr 2020
Blog Post

The Product Design Sprint - 5 Things I Learned in Launch Lab 1

insightful feedback on how well the solutions matched real customers’ needs. A unique feature of the course is that it is designed for teams with ideas at different stages, allowing teams to bring ideas into the course from prior MS-MBA... View Details

←
4
5
…
56
57
→