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Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(1,133)
- People (1)
- News (175)
- Research (735)
- Events (6)
- Multimedia (1)
- Faculty Publications (283)
- 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
- 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
Chung, Doug J. "Roush Performance: How to Design a Sales Force Compensation Plan." Harvard Business School Case 519-066, January 2019. (Revised February 2020.)
- 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
Coles, Peter A., John Cawley, Phillip B. Levine, Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth, and John J. Siegfried. "The Job Market for New Economists: A Market Design Perspective." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 10-096, May 2010.
- 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
Jagadeesan, Ravi, Scott Duke Kominers, and Ross Rheingans-Yoo. "Strategy-Proofness of Worker-Optimal Matching with Continuously Transferable Utility." Games and Economic Behavior 108 (March 2018): 287–294.
- 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
Slonim, Robert, and Carmen Wang. "Market Design for Altruistic Supply: Evidence from the Lab." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 16-112, March 2016.
- 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
Di Tella, Rafael, and Robert MacCulloch. "Informal Family Insurance and the Design of the Welfare State." Economic Journal 112, no. 477 (February 2002): 481–503.
- 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
Abdulkadiroglu, Atila, Yeon-Koo Che, Parag A. Pathak, Alvin E. Roth, and Oliver Tercieux. "Minimizing Justified Envy in School Choice: The Design of New Orleans' OneApp." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 23265, March 2017.
- 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
Whillans, Ashley, and Gabriel Rondón Ichikawa. "Designing the Future of Work: Atlassian's Distributed Work Practices." Harvard Business School Case 925-029, March 2025. (Revised June 2025.)
- 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
Kominers, Scott Duke, and E. Glen Weyl. "Holdout in the Assembly of Complements: A Problem for Market Design." American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings 102, no. 3 (May 2012): 360–365.
- 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
- 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
Ashraf, Nava, Oriana Bandiera, and Scott S. Lee. "Awards Unbundled: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment." Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 100 (April 2014): 44–63.
- 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
Kominers, Scott Duke, and 1337 Skulls Sers. "A New NFT Launch Strategy: The Wave Mint." a16zcrypto.com (April 6, 2023).
- 2019
- Working Paper
Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 8 Rationalizing Flow Processes
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
Baldwin, Carliss Y. "Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 8 Rationalizing Flow Processes." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-032, September 2019.
- Article
Popular Acceptance of Inequality Due to Innate Brute Luck and Support for Classical Benefit-based Taxation
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
Weinzierl, Matthew C. "Popular Acceptance of Inequality Due to Innate Brute Luck and Support for Classical Benefit-based Taxation." Journal of Public Economics 155 (November 2017): 54–63. (Also Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 16-104, March 2016; revised July 2016, and NBER Working Paper Series, No. 22462, July 2016. See Notes on Fortune article.)
- 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
Tucker, Anita L., W. Scott Heisler, and Laura D. Janisse. "Designed for Workarounds: A Qualitative Study of the Causes of Operational Failures in Hospitals." Permanente Journal 18, no. 3 (Summer 2014): 33–41.
- 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
Goh, Joel, Jeffrey Pfeffer, and Stefanos A. Zenios. "The Relationship Between Workplace Stressors and Mortality and Health Costs in the United States." Management Science 62, no. 2 (February 2016): 608–628.
- 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
Kominers, Scott Duke, Parag A. Pathak, Tayfun Sönmez, and M. Utku Ünver. "Paying It Backward and Forward: Expanding Access to Convalescent Plasma Therapy Through Market Design." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-116, May 2020. (NBER Working Paper Series, No. 27143, May 2020.)
- December 2006
- Article
Europe vs America: Institutional Hysteresis in a Simple Normative Model
By: Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch
We show how the differences in US and European institutions can arise in a normative model. The paper focuses on the labor market and the government's decision to set unemployment benefits in response to an unemployment shock. The government balances insurance... View Details
Keywords: Optimal Unemployment Benefits; Labor Market Institutions; Hysteresis; Europe; United States
Di Tella, Rafael, and Robert MacCulloch. "Europe vs America: Institutional Hysteresis in a Simple Normative Model." Journal of Public Economics 90, no. 12 (December 2006): 2161–86.