Publications

2014
Working Paper

The New Empirical Economics of Management

By: Nicholas Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun, Daniela Scur and John Van Reenen

Over the last decade the World Management Survey (WMS) has collected firm-level management practices data across multiple sectors and countries. We developed the survey to try to explain the large and persistent TFP differences across firms and countries. This review... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Performance Productivity; Microeconomics

Research Summary

Investigating the Economic Role of Mergers (with Erik Stafford)

What is the economic role of mergers? We investigate this issue by performing a comparative study of mergers and other forms of corporate investment, at the industry and firm levels. In our framework, merger activity is motivated by both firm- and industry-level... View Details

Web

Business Economics Online Course | HBS Online

This course is part of the Strategy track. Introduction to Economics for Managers ENROLL NOW No application needed for our certificate programs. Start your journey today! Economics for Managers $1,850 Next... View Details

January 2022 (Revised February 2022)
Case

Introducing EVA at ISS: A Better Way to Evaluate CEO Performance and Compensation?

By: Jonas Heese, Charles C.Y. Wang and James Weber

In early 2019, Anthony Campagna, the global director of fundamental research at ISS EVA, a unit of the proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), was preparing to release ISS's analyses of public company performance and CEO compensation ahead of Say... View Details

Keywords: Jobs and Positions; Compensation and Benefits; Performance; Performance Productivity; Measurement and Metrics; Analytics and Data Science; Value; Business or Company Management; Performance Evaluation; Business and Shareholder Relations

Educators

2010
Working Paper

The Limits of Nonprofit Impact: A Contingency Framework for Measuring Social Performance

By: Alnoor Ebrahim and V. Kasturi Rangan

Leaders of organizations in the social sector are under growing pressure to demonstrate their impacts on pressing societal problems such as global poverty. We review the debates around performance and impact, drawing on three literatures: strategic philanthropy,... View Details

Keywords: Development Economics; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Leadership; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Performance Expectations; Nonprofit Organizations; Social Issues

01 Dec 1997
News

Merton's Economics Research Wins Nobel Prize

accomplishment from both sides of the Charles. "Robert Merton has been an innovative leader in the field of economic valuations and in improving the capacity to manage financial risk," said Harvard President Neil L. Rudenstine. "This is a... View Details

2013
Working Paper

Digital Dark Matter and the Economics of Apache

By: Shane Greenstein and Frank Nagle

Researchers have long hypothesized that spillovers from government, university, and private company R&D contribute to economic growth, but these contributions may be difficult to measure when they take a non-pecuniary form. The growth of networking devices and the... View Details

Keywords: Measurement and Metrics; Internet and the Web; Performance Productivity; Applications and Software; Economic Growth; Research and Development

2006
Book

Service Productivity Management: Improving Service Performance Using Data Envelopment Analysis

By: H. David Sherman and Joe Zhu

Here is an in-depth guide to the most powerful available benchmarking technique for improving service organization performance—Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The book outlines DEA as a benchmarking technique, identifies high cost service units, isolates specific... View Details

Keywords: Data Envelopment Analysis; Economics; Operations; Mathematical Methods

09 Jul 2010
Working Paper Summaries

The Limits of Nonprofit Impact: A Contingency Framework for Measuring Social Performance

Keywords: by Alnoor Ebrahim & V. Kasturi Rangan

January 1981 (Revised February 1982)
Case

People's Republic of China: Development Strategies and Performance

By: James E. Austin

Keywords: Development Economics; Growth and Development Strategy; Business and Government Relations; China

July 2011
Case

Edna McConnell Clark Foundation-Enabling a Performance Driven Philanthropic Capital Market

By: Allen Grossman and Aldo Sesia

The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, focused on building the organizational capabilities of nonprofits that served the disadvantaged youth in the United States, has recently been named an intermediary in the federal government's new social innovation fund (SIF), which... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Financial Strategy; Performance Improvement; Capital Markets; United States

Educators

June 2010
Article

Correspondence Bias in Performance Evaluation: Why Grade Inflation Works

By: D. A. Moore, S. A. Swift, Z. S. Sharek and F. Gino

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Performance Evaluation; Inflation and Deflation

14 Sep 2012
Working Paper Summaries

What Do Managers Do? Exploring Persistent Performance Differences among Seemingly Similar Enterprises

An abstract is unavailable at this time. View Details

Keywords: by Robert Gibbons & Rebecca Henderson

2010
Working Paper

Surviving the Global Financial Crisis: Foreign Direct Investment and Establishment Performance

By: Laura Alfaro and Maggie Chen

We examine in this paper the differential response of establishments to the global financial crisis, with particular emphasis on the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) in determining micro economic performance. Using a new worldwide dataset that reports the... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; International Finance; Foreign Direct Investment; Local Range; Multinational Firms and Management; Production; Performance Evaluation; Networks

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

11 Aug 2017
Working Paper Summaries

Rethinking Measurement of Pay Disparity and Its Relation to Firm Performance

Keywords: by Ethan Rouen

01 Jun 2016
What Do You Think?

When Business Performance Falters, is Culture Change the Fix?

Yet a third view is that the odds of success in achieving important change are enhanced by coordinated efforts to alter, as Michael Beer puts it, “the organization model” (including culture) and the “economic model” (actions producing View Details

Keywords: by James L. Heskett

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