Publications

May 2021
Article

Private and Social Returns to R&D: Drug Development and Demographics

By: Efraim Benmelech, Janice Eberly, Dimitris Papanikolaou and Joshua Krieger

Investment in intangible capital such as R&D has increased dramatically since the 1990s. However, productivity growth remains sluggish in recent years. One potential reason is that a significant share of the increase in intangible investment is geared toward consumer... View Details

Keywords: Drug Development; Research and Development; Investment Return; Demographics; Pharmaceutical Industry

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19 Jun 2018
News

When Technology Gets Ahead of Society

07 Apr 2008
Research & Ideas

The Debate over Taxing Foreign Profits

Congress and the next president of the United States will be under pressure to make major changes to U.S. corporate tax policy, the consequences of which could have significant impact on profit and... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

January 1998 (Revised April 1998)
Case

Lincoln Electric: Venturing Abroad

By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Jamie O'Connell

Lincoln Electric, a 100-year-old manufacturer of welding equipment and consumables based in Cleveland, Ohio, motivates its U.S. employees through a culture of cooperation between management and labor and an unusual compensation system based on piecework and a large... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Restructuring; Transformation; Construction; Compensation and Benefits; Management; Market Entry and Exit; Labor and Management Relations; Competitive Advantage; Expansion; Manufacturing Industry; Ohio

January 2015 (Revised January 2018)
Technical Note

Note on Comparative Capitalism

By: Clayton S. Rose and Rebecca Henderson

This note draws on academic work, as well as social and economic data across several countries, to provide a basic understanding of some of the differences among capitalist systems. It begins with a description of the system of capitalism, and characteristics that to a... View Details

Keywords: Capitalism; Global; Economic Systems; Global Range; Japan; Germany; China; United States; Sweden

Hise Gibson graduated from West Point, where he was a member of the Division-1A Army football team. Following graduation, he commissioned in the US Army as an Aviation Officer in the UH60 Blackhawk Helicopter. He served with distinction in various command and staff... View Details

01 May 2020
News

The Business of Medicine in the Era of COVID-19

Jan W. Rivkin

Jan W. Rivkin is a Professor in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. In the past, he has served as Faculty Chair of the MBA Program, Senior Associate Dean for Research, and head of the Strategy Unit. His research, course development, and teaching focus on... View Details

Keywords: airline; computer; internet; music; transportation

2018
Working Paper

Corporate Tax Cuts Increase Income Inequality

By: Suresh Nallareddy, Ethan Rouen and Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato

This paper studies the effects of corporate tax changes on income inequality. Using state corporate tax rate changes as a setting, we show that cutting state corporate tax rates leads to increases in income inequality. This result is robust to using regression and... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Taxation; Income; Equality and Inequality; United States

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2017
Article

Handgun Waiting Periods Reduce Gun Deaths

By: Michael Luca, Deepak Malhotra and Christopher Poliquin

Handgun waiting periods are laws that impose a delay between the initiation of a purchase and final acquisition of a firearm. We show that waiting periods, which create a “cooling off” period among buyers, significantly reduce the incidence of gun violence. We estimate... View Details

Keywords: Gun Policy; Gun Violence; Waiting Period; Injury Prevention; Policy; Safety; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; United States

Ten of the fifteen seats on the U.N. Security Council are held by rotating members serving two-year terms. We find that a country's U.S. aid increases by 59 percent and its U.N. aid by 8 percent when it rotates onto the council. This effect increases during years in... View Details

November–December 2014
Article

Using Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing to Identify Value-Improvement Opportunities in Healthcare

By: Robert S. Kaplan, Mary L. Witkowski, Megan Abbott, Alexis Guzman, Laurence Higgins, John Meara, Erin Padden, Apurva Shah, Peter Waters, Marco Weidemeier, Samuel Wertheimer and Thomas W. Feeley

As healthcare providers cope with pricing pressures and increased accountability for performance, they should be rededicating themselves to improving the value they deliver to their patients: better outcomes and lower costs. Time-driven activity-based costing offers... View Details

Keywords: Value Creation; Activity Based Costing and Management; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; United States; Europe

August 1994
Case

Saturn Corp.'s Module II Decision

In the Spring of 1994, Saturn Corp. was setting sales records by attracting more than 25,000 buyers per month. Saturn officials believed there was a long-term opportunity to sell 400,000 to 500,000 cars per year in the United States and selected international markets.... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Production; Expansion; Manufacturing Industry; Auto Industry; Retail Industry; Tennessee; United States

Summer Jackson is an Assistant Professor of Management in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School. She teaches LEAD in the MBA required curriculum.

Professor Jackson is an organizational ethnographer... View Details

October 2010 (Revised May 2012)
Background Note

Reverse Engineering, Learning, and Innovation

By: Willy C. Shih

This background reading looks at reverse engineering in the context of piracy and knock-offs in emerging markets like China. It first considers legal aspects of reverse engineering in strong property rights regimes like the United States as a way of unpacking the legal... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Learning; Engineering; Innovation and Invention; Intellectual Property; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Emerging Markets; China; United States

winter 2000
Article

Assessing the Impact of Venture Capital to Innovation

By: Samuel Kortum and Josh Lerner

We examine the influence of venture capital on patented inventions in the United States across twenty industries over three decades. We address concerns about causality in several ways, including exploiting a 1979 policy shift that spurred venture capital fundraising.... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Innovation and Invention

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February 2011 (Revised October 2018)
Case

ALAC International

By: Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff

ALAC was a small importer of specialty industrial chemicals. The case explores the different financing alternatives to facilitate the company's explosive growth in working capital. At the end of 2009, the company was awarded the United States distributorship for the... View Details

Keywords: Working Capital; Growth Management; Financing and Loans; Chemical Industry

September 1993 (Revised September 1997)
Case

China (A): The Great Awakening

By: Debora L. Spar

As the third largest economy after the United States and Japan, China's startling economic growth has spurred increasing interest in the economic, social, and political factors that catapulted the country to sudden prominence. This case starts with an overview of the... View Details

Keywords: History; Government and Politics; Society; Macroeconomics; China