Publications

SSRN

Article

Do Strict Capital Requirements Raise the Cost of Capital? Bank Regulation, Capital Structure and the Low Risk Anomaly

By: Malcolm Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler

Traditional capital structure theory predicts that reducing banks' leverage reduces the risk and cost of equity but does not change the weighted average cost of capital, and thus the rates for borrowers. We confirm that the equity of better-capitalized banks has lower... View Details

Keywords: Capital Structure; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry

October 2015
Article

Agglomerative Forces and Cluster Shapes

By: William R. Kerr and Scott Duke Kominers

We model spatial clusters of similar firms. Our model highlights how agglomerative forces lead to localized, individual connections among firms, while interaction costs generate a defined distance over which attraction forces operate. Overlapping firm interactions... View Details

Keywords: Agglomeration; Clusters; Industrial Organization; Silicon Valley; Technology Flows; Patents; Networks; Information Technology; Industry Clusters; Entrepreneurship; California

May 2000 (Revised January 2003)
Case

Health Development Corporation

By: Richard S. Ruback

Health Development Corp. (HDC) owns and operates health clubs in the Greater Boston area. HDC engaged a local investment banker to explore a sale of the company. The most likely buyer views HDC's prior purchase of real estate as a negative. HDC's management is... View Details

Keywords: Cash Flow; Property; Business Exit or Shutdown; Valuation; Value; Decisions; Health Industry; Boston

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News

Will President Trump Learn on the Job?

January 2011 (Revised March 2011)
Case

Development and Promotion at North Atlantic Hospital

By: Boris Groysberg, Lisa Leffert, Kerry Herman and Libby Williams

Dr. Elizabeth Harris, Chair of the Department of Anesthesiology (DA) at North Atlantic Hospital (NAH), faces several significant challenges. Staff satisfaction surveys confirmed her assessment that department faculty morale was low, the tenure and promotion system was... View Details

Keywords: Training; Employees; Retention; Performance Evaluation; Personal Development and Career; Motivation and Incentives; Health Industry

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2008
Working Paper

Positions of Power and Status: Reciprocity in the Venture Capital Industry

By: Mikolaj J. Piskorski

This paper proposes a straightforward way of differentiating between central network positions that confer power and those that confer status. I argue that actors achieve high status by receiving numerous exchanges from actors who in turn receive numerous exchanges... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Partners and Partnerships; Power and Influence; Social and Collaborative Networks; Status and Position; Financial Services Industry; United States

08 Aug 2011
Research & Ideas

The Death of the Global Manager

while confirming and further exploring some basic challenges that have, more or less, remained the same. "There are three core strategies that any MNC has to pursue to build layers of competitive advantage," Bartlett says.... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

January 10, 2022
Article

The Secret Ingredient of Thriving Companies? Human Magic

By: Hubert Joly

The traditional corporate approach to motivating people has been a combination of carrots and sticks: a system of financial incentives designed to mobilize everyone around a plan designed by a few smart people at the top. Multiple studies have confirmed that, for any... View Details

Keywords: Meaning; Purpose; Organizational Culture; Employees; Motivation and Incentives; Performance

2011
Working Paper

Entrepreneurship and the Discipline of External Finance

By: Ramana Nanda

I confirm the finding that the propensity to start a new firm rises sharply among those in the top five percentiles of personal wealth. This pattern is more pronounced for entrants in less capital intensive sectors. Prior to entry, founders in this group earn about 6%... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Competency and Skills; Entrepreneurship; Financing and Loans; Personal Finance; Wealth

October, 2023
Article

Cleaning Up the Great Lakes: Housing Market Impacts of Removing Legacy Pollutants

By: Alecia Cassidy, Robyn C. Meeks and Michale R. Moore

The Great Lakes and their tributaries make up the largest freshwater system on the planet, providing drinking water and recreational value to millions of people. Yet manufacturing plants left a legacy of toxic pollutants in the region, tarnishing it as part of the... View Details

Keywords: Valuation Of Environmental Effects; Housing Demand; Water Pollution; Water Quality; Infrastructure; Pollution; Consumer Behavior

November 2011
Case

Comfort Class Transport: Does Customer Service Need an Overhaul?

By: Michael J Roberts and Paul E. Morrison

The general manager of a chauffeured limousine transport company is concerned about underperformance at the company's customer service call center. The eight-person call center handles almost all customer interaction including discussing company services with... View Details

Keywords: Capacity Utilization; Supply ＆ Demand; Operations Management; Customer Service; Management; Demand and Consumers; Service Operations; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Performance Capacity; Customer Satisfaction; Transportation Industry

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Article

How Much Is a Reduction of Your Customers' Wait Worth? An Empirical Study of the Fast-Food Drive-Thru Industry Based on Structural Estimation Methods

In many service industries, companies compete with each other on the basis of the waiting time their customers experience, along with other strategic instruments such as the price they charge for their service. The objective of this paper is to conduct an empirical... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Price; Service Delivery; Mathematical Methods; Competition; Food and Beverage Industry; Service Industry

January 2010
Article

Breakthrough Inventions and Migrating Clusters of Innovation

By: William R. Kerr

We investigate the speed at which clusters of invention for a technology migrate spatially following breakthrough inventions. We identify breakthrough inventions as the top one percent of U.S. inventions for a technology during 1975-1984 in terms of subsequent... View Details

Keywords: History; Technological Innovation; Patents; Labor; Immigration; United States

2009
Chapter

Small and Medium Firm Lending in Mexico: Lessons and Current Issues

By: Rodrigo Canales and Ramana Nanda

Mexico is often cited as one of the world's most entrepreneurial countries in terms of the percentage of its population that has started or is in the process of starting a business venture. Yet Mexico does not seem to be very friendly to entrepreneurs, as confirmed by... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Policy; Competition; Mexico

2015
Working Paper

Thick as Thieves? Dishonest Behavior and Egocentric Social Networks

By: Jooa Julia Lee, Dong-Kyun Im, Bidhan Parmar and Francesca Gino

People experience a threat to their moral self-concept in the face of discrepancies between their moral values and their unethical behavior. We theorize that people's need to restore their view of themselves as moral activates thoughts of a high-density personal social... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Behavior; Social and Collaborative Networks

SSRN

Article

Complementarity between Audited Financial Reporting and Voluntary Disclosure: The Case of Former Andersen Clients

By: Richard Frankel, Alon Kalay, Gil Sadka and Yuan Zou

Prior literature presents various perspectives on the role of financial reporting. One view is that mandatory periodic reporting disciplines managers and encourages timely voluntary disclosure. We examine this "confirmation hypothesis" using the shock to financial... View Details

Keywords: Financial Disclosure; Mandatory Reporting; Reliability; Voluntary Disclosure; Financial Reporting; Quality; Corporate Disclosure

April 2014
Article

Evil Genius? How Dishonesty Can Lead to Greater Creativity

By: F. Gino and S. Wiltermuth

We propose that dishonest and creative behavior have something in common: they both involve breaking rules. Because of this shared feature, creativity may lead to dishonesty (as shown in prior work), and dishonesty may lead to creativity (the hypothesis we tested in... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Creativity; Attitudes

2011
Working Paper

'Last-place Aversion': Evidence and Redistributive Implications

By: Ilyana Kuziemko, Ryan W. Buell, Taly Reich and Michael I. Norton

Why do low-income individuals often oppose redistribution? We hypothesize that an aversion to being in "last place" undercuts support for redistribution, with low-income individuals punishing those slightly below themselves to keep someone "beneath" them. In laboratory... View Details

Keywords: Wages; Surveys; Wealth and Poverty; Behavior; Income; Research; Rank and Position; Attitudes; Personal Characteristics; Economics