Publications

24 Jun 2016
News

The art and science of the “cheese pull”: Why the cheesiest ad trick still makes us hungry

Fall 2013
Article

In Strange Company: The Puzzle of Private Investment in State-Controlled Firms

By: Mariana Pargendler, Aldo Musacchio and Sergio G. Lazzarini

A large legal and economic literature describes how state-owned enterprises (SOEs) suffer from a variety of agency and political problems. Less theory and evidence, however, have been generated about the reasons why state-owned enterprises listed in stock markets... View Details

Keywords: State-owned Enterprises; Oil Companies; Corporate Governance; Business and Shareholder Relations; Energy Industry; Brazil; Mexico; Norway

SSRN

March 17, 2021
Other Article

Beyond Pajamas: Sizing Up the Pandemic Shopper

By: Ayelet Israeli, Eva Ascarza and Laura Castrillo

A first look at how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted e-commerce apparel shopping in the US and the UK. Extensive analysis and interactive graphics utilizing millions of transactions.
While the pandemic is still playing out, our preliminary investigations... View Details

2015
Book

How the Internet Became Commercial: Innovation, Privatization, and the Birth of a New Network

By: Shane Greenstein

In less than a decade, the Internet went from being a series of loosely connected networks used by universities and the military to the powerful commercial engine it is today. This book describes how many of the key innovations that made this possible came from... View Details

Purchase

April 2007
Case

Microfinance in Bolivia: A Meeting with the President of the Republic

By: Michael Chu

Herbert Muller, chair of leading microfinance bank BancoSol, has met with Evo Morales one year after the populist leader's inauguration as president of Bolivia and proceeds to write an email to his fellow board directors. The bank is world famous for pioneering... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Race; Government Administration; Business and Government Relations; Microfinance; Poverty; Interest Rates; Banks and Banking; Financial Services Industry; Bolivia; South America

January 2020
Article

Rethinking Measurement of Pay Disparity and Its Relation to Firm Performance

By: Ethan Rouen

I develop measures of firm-level pay disparity and examine their relation to firm performance. Using comprehensive compensation data for a large sample of firms, I find no statistically significant relation between the ratio of CEO-to-mean employee compensation and... View Details

Keywords: Pay Disparity; Pay Ratio; CEO Pay Ratio; Income Inequality; Executive Compensation; Employees; Wages; Equality and Inequality; Business Ventures; Performance

25 May 2021
Blog Post

Aisha Fatima Dozie is Igniting Confidence as the Founder of Bossy Cosmetics

earning her MBA at Harvard Business School. In fact, she spent the first decade of her life living down the road from Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, yet the halls of... View Details

19 Jan 2021
News

The Fire This Time: What's Happening in the World of Distress

07 Jun 2017
Research & Ideas

How an African History Scholar Became a Modern Righter of Wrongs

Harvard MBA students visit the Bo-Kaap area of Cape Town, May 1, 2017 (Photo credit: Caroline Elkins) Recently, a first-year MBA student at Harvard Business School was overheard gushing to a friend about a... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

2000
Book

Theory of the Firm: Governance, Residual Claims, and Organizational Forms

By: Michael C. Jensen

Keywords: Theory; Business Ventures

1995
Book

Resource-Based and Evolutionary Theories of the Firm: Towards a Synthesis

By: C. A. Montgomery

Keywords: Business History

10 Sep 2018
Research & Ideas

Celebrating 'The Men and Women of the Corporation' 40 Years Later

inequality in the workplace. In particular, the book makes clear how organizational roles and structures shape unequal access to opportunities, resources, and advancement. In a wide-ranging conversation, Robin Ely, the Diane Doerge Wilson Professor View Details

Keywords: by Robin J. Ely

01 Dec 1996
News

On Eve of Transition, Alumni Conference Set for Hong Kong

Myths, Realities, Opportunities," the conference will be held in Hong Kong April 5 through 8 on the eve of the official transfer of power in June. "We timed the conference to coincide with the transition,"... View Details

Keywords: Elaine Gottlieb

January 2001 (Revised May 2010)
Case

BP Amoco (A): Policy Statement on the Use of Project Finance

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Michael Kane

Following the BP/Amoco merger in December 1998, CFO David Watson asked Bill Young to recommend when and under what circumstances the firm should use external project finance instead of internal corporate funds to finance new capital investments. As part of this... View Details

Keywords: Project Finance; Mergers and Acquisitions; Policy; Capital Budgeting

Educators

Purchase

2014
Working Paper

Making the Numbers? 'Short Termism' & the Puzzle of Only Occasional Disaster

By: Hazhir Rahmandad, Nelson P. Repenning and Rebecca Henderson

Much recent work in strategy and popular discussion suggests that an excessive focus on "managing the numbers"―delivering quarterly earnings at the expense of longer term investments―makes it difficult for firms to make the investments necessary to build competitive... View Details

Keywords: Earnings Management; Competitive Advantage

04 Aug 2023
Blog Post

Four Remarkable Stories of HBS MBA Students Tackling Climate Change

CO2 and eliminate it from existence,” Karan explains. (02:54)With this chemical and geology-driven approach, Karan can help lead the decarbonization transition anywhere with a source of the rocks, called peridotite. Karan says his... View Details

October 2013
Article

Ad Revenue and Content Commercialization: Evidence from Blogs

By: Monic Sun and Feng Zhu

Many scholars argue that when incentivized by ad revenue, content providers are more likely to tailor their content to attract "eyeballs," and as a result, popular content may be excessively supplied. We empirically test this prediction by taking advantage of the... View Details

Keywords: Ad-sponsored Business Models; Media Content; Blog; Revenue Sharing; User-generated Content; Platform-based Markets; Blogs; Business Model; Digital Platforms; Commercialization; Digital Marketing