Publications

March 2018
Article

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

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

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: Capability; Short-termism; System Dynamics; Tipping Point; Business or Company Management; Earnings Management; Resource Allocation

2018
Book

Markets, Morals, Politics: Jealousy of Trade and the History of Political Thought

By: Béla Kapossy, Isaac Nakhimovsky, Sophus A. Reinert and Richard Whatmore

When Istvan Hont died in 2013, the world lost a giant of intellectual history. A leader of the Cambridge School of Political Thought, Hont argued passionately for a global-historical approach to political ideas. To better understand the development of liberalism, he... View Details

Keywords: Morals; Politics; Istvan Hont; Jealousy Of Trade; Enlightenment; Economic Nationalism; Markets; Moral Sensibility; Government and Politics; Trade; History

2018
Book

New Perspectives on the History of Political Economy

By: Robert Fredona and Sophus A. Reinert

This volume offers a snapshot of the resurgent historiography of political economy in the wake of the ongoing global financial crisis and suggests fruitful new agendas for research on the political-economic nexus as it has developed in the Western world since the end... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Government and Politics; History

Article

Orienteering for Electioneering

By: Jonah Kallenbach, Robert Kleinberg and Scott Duke Kominers

In this paper, we introduce a combinatorial optimization problem that models the investment decision a political candidate faces when treating his or her opponents’ campaign plans as given. Our formulation accounts for both the time cost of traveling between districts... View Details

Keywords: Political Elections; Resource Allocation; Time Management; Analysis

March 2018
Article

Scraped Data and Sticky Prices

By: Alberto Cavallo

I use daily prices collected from online retailers in five countries to study the impact of measurement bias on three common price stickiness statistics. Relative to previous results, I find that online prices have longer durations, with fewer price changes close to... View Details

Keywords: Online Data; Scraped Data; Sticky Prices; Scanner Data; Consumer Price Index; Price; Data and Data Sets

Other Article

Sidestepping Some of the Partisan Debate: An Interview with Max Stier

By: Aaron K. Chatterji and Michael W. Toffel

Whereas some organizational leaders are engaging in CEO activism by speaking out on social and political issues not directly related to their bottom line, some leaders want to avoid doing so. Some, in fact, hold neutrality as a core component of their strategy. But... View Details

Keywords: Social Issues; Government and Politics; Leadership; Communication Strategy

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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

2018
Chapter

The Logic of Agglomeration

By: Gilles Duranton and William R. Kerr

This review discusses frontier topics in economic geography as they relate to firms and agglomeration economies. We focus on areas where empirical research is scarce but possible. We first outline a conceptual framework for city formation that allows us to contemplate... View Details

Keywords: Agglomeration; Clusters; Innovation; Cities; Industry Clusters; City; Innovation and Invention

2018
Chapter

The United States in Contemporary Perspectives: Evolving Forms, Strategy, and Performance

By: David J. Collis, Bharat Anand and J. Yo-Jud Cheng

BOOK ABSTRACT: In spite of surging interest in the business group organization among business scholars, economists, and historians in recent years, academic research on business groups has, to date, remained within the boundary of emerging markets. The major aim of... View Details

2018
Other Unpublished Work

Trump's Populism: What Business Leaders Need To Understand

By: Rafael Di Tella

In the 2016 United States presidential election, candidates from both major political parties used anti-establishment messaging to appeal to Americans, a theme that had been on the sidelines of US political discourse for decades. Donald Trump, in particular, played... View Details

Keywords: Populism; Globalization; Public Opinion; Social Issues; Government and Politics; Demographics; United States

Article

Why Compliance Programs Fail: And How to Fix Them

By: Hui Chen and Eugene Soltes

Firms spend millions of dollars annually on whistle-blower hotlines, training, and other efforts to ensure adherence to laws, regulations, and company policies. Yet malfeasance remains entrenched in the corporate world. Why? Too many firms treat compliance as a... View Details

Keywords: Governance Compliance; Programs; Employees; Training; Performance Effectiveness; Measurement and Metrics

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February 2018
Teaching Note

Chase Sapphire: Creating a Millennial Cult Brand

By: Shelle Santana, Jill Avery and Christine Snively

Teaching Note for HBS No. 518-024. View Details

February 2018
Teaching Note

Indonesia—Unity in Diversity

By: Sophus A. Reinert

Teaching Note for HBS No. 715-035. View Details

February 2018
Case

Whole Foods and JANA Partners

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Quinn Pitcher

In 2017, JANA Partners decided to launch an activist campaign at struggling supermarket chain Whole Foods Market. The company had struggled for the past several years, and JANA thought the presence of new directors could help turn around its operations, while Whole... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Information Technology; Institutional Investing; Investment Activism; United States

Educators

Other Article

Why I Volunteer at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair

By: Scott Duke Kominers

February 2018
Teaching Note

Going Rogue: Choson Exchange in North Korea

By: Sophus A. Reinert

Teaching Note for HBS No. 717-015. View Details

February 2018 (Revised August 2018)
Case

KT Corporation in the New Energy Market

By: Forest L. Reinhardt and Dawn H. Lau

Keywords: South Korea; Korea Telecom; Energy Markets; Chang-Gyu Hwang; KT; Energy; Energy Industry; Telecommunications Industry; South Korea; Korean Peninsula

Educators

February 2018
Teaching Note

Piracy in Somalia (A) and (B)

By: Sophus A. Reinert

Teaching Note for HBS Nos. 718-018 and 718-019. View Details

February 2018 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Wellington Global Impact

By: Shawn Cole and Lynn Schenk

Wellington Global Impact is one of the first public equities impact investing strategies in the market. The case explores how the strategy was developed at Wellington, including an analysis of the culture that supported its development. It also explores the difficulty... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Impact Investing; Investment; Strategy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Culture; Analysis

Educators