Publications

17 Aug 2021
Op-Ed

Dispensing Justice: The Case for Legalizing Cannabis Nationally

Last month, US Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer and senators Cory Booker and Ron Wyden introduced draft legislation to legalize cannabis federally. Some commentators say that by expunging federal, nonviolent marijuana offenses from criminal records, the proposed... View Details

Keywords: by Ashish Nanda and Tabatha Robinson

Web

The Gift of Global Talent

Business Insider Modest praise for US reform of visa program for skilled workers Rob Lever 09 Feb 2019 | AFP The Gift of Global Talent Rebecca Ward & Philip Alexiou 02 Feb 2019 | VOA: Press Conference USA An Economy of Talent: Harvard’s... View Details

September 2010 (Revised March 2012)
Case

AQR's Momentum Funds (A)

By: Daniel Baird Bergstresser, Lauren H. Cohen, Randolph B. Cohen and Christopher J. Malloy

AQR is a hedge fund based in Greenwich, Connecticut, that is considering offering a wholly new line of product to retail investors, namely the ability to invest in the price phenomenon known as momentum. There is a large body of empirical evidence supporting momentum... View Details

Keywords: Financial Strategy; Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Product Development; Financial Services Industry; Greenwich

January 2019 (Revised February 2020)
Case

Jay Gould, 'The Most Hated Man in America'

By: Tom Nicholas, John Masko and Matthew G. Preble

Railroad magnate Jay Gould, a controversial figure in the history of U.S. capitalism, was a disruptive influence on an industry that had previously relied on formal and informal agreements to move traffic long distances across lines operated by different companies.... View Details

Keywords: Railroads; Gould; Vanderbilt; Rail Transportation; History; Consolidation; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Competition; Strategy; Rail Industry; United States

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 and safety, critics see them as arbitrary and costly... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

16 Apr 2020
Research & Ideas

Has COVID-19 Broken the Global Value Chain?

The coronavirus pandemic has not only disrupted lives and businesses, it has illuminated underlying fragilities in the global value chain (GVC) that drives economies around the world. The smartphone you use many times daily is a product of a global value chain,... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

12 Jul 2004
Research & Ideas

Enron’s Lessons for Managers

Salter said Enron's legacy of corporate reforms in the U.S. since its fall is deep and wide and not necessarily reassuring. Steps to curb Enron-like corporate abuses, such as the shift from a principles-based corporate governance system... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

Web

K–12 Education | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

In 2003, HBS launched an MBA elective course focused on entrepreneurship in education reform and cofounded the Public Education Leadership Project (PELP) in collaboration with the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This multiyear... View Details

22 Aug 2022
Research & Ideas

Can Amazon Remake Health Care?

Haven, along with JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway, which was a naive effort to reform health care. Haven folded in 2021. And in the late 1990s, they tried to buy drugstore.com. So, they’ve been interested in health care for a very... View Details

Keywords: by Christina Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette; Health

2024
Working Paper

What Makes Players Pay? An Empirical Investigation of In-Game Lotteries

By: Tomomichi Amano and Andrey Simonov

In 2020, gamers spent more than $15 billion on loot boxes, lotteries of virtual items in video games. Paid loot boxes are contentious. Game producers argue that loot boxes complement the gameplay and expenditures on loot boxes reflect players’ enjoyment of the game.... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Policy; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Product Design; Ethics; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Video Game Industry

Read Now

February 2016 (Revised June 2016)
Case

The Maggi Noodle Safety Crisis in India (A)

By: Karthik Ramanna and Radhika Kak

The local government in Delhi has ordered a ban on Nestlé's flagship product in India—Maggi Noodles—citing excessive lead content per government lab tests. Nestlé disputes the government tests, noting that internal and third-party tests show the product to be safe.... View Details

Keywords: Multinationals; Regulation; Customer Relations; Business And Government; Crisis Management; Leadership; Multinational Firms and Management; Globalization; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Safety; Customer Relationship Management; Business and Government Relations; India; Europe; Switzerland

15 Apr 2015
Research & Ideas

Why Americans Voted for an Income Tax

once again front-and-center in US politics. Sometimes it can seem that these debates go around in circles, with partisans from both extremes advocating reforms that even they don't imagine becoming reality. But we should celebrate these... View Details

Keywords: by Matthew C. Weinzierl

30 Jan 2013
Working Paper Summaries

These Are the Good Old Days: Foreign Entry and the Mexican Banking System

Keywords: by Stephen Haber & Aldo Musacchio; Banking

20 Oct 2010
Op-Ed

Export Competitiveness: Reversing the Logic

country-specific data rather than an adoption of general policy principles from abroad. It implies to identify which policies are truly critical at a given point in time, instead of trying to do everything in parallel. And it implies identifying which packages of... View Details

Keywords: by Christian Ketels

January 2023 (Revised December 2023)
Case

OhmConnect: Energizing the Future

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Jennifer Fonstad and Nicole Tempest Keller

Founded in 2013, OhmConnect was a free consumer web app that alerted customers about peak hours of electricity demand, and paid them to lower their energy use at home during these periods. The company sold the aggregated reductions generated by thousands of households... View Details

Keywords: App Development; Renewable Energy; Electricity Usage; Regulations; VC; Technology; Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC); Scalability; Applications and Software; Growth and Development Strategy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business Model; Venture Capital; Energy Industry; United States; California; Texas; Europe

May 2019
Article

The Role of Gatekeepers in Capital Markets

By: Sugata Roychowdhury and Suraj Srinivasan

Gatekeepers in financial markets have the power to provide the institutional stability, fortitude and direction necessary for the development and the smooth functioning of capital markets. At the same time, they are often motivated by their own private incentives.... View Details

Keywords: Gatekeepers; Capital Markets; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Performance Effectiveness