Publications

Working Paper

The Long-Run Effects of the Scramble for Africa

By: Stelios Michalopoulos and Elias Papaioannou

We examine the long-run consequences of a neglected aspect of colonization, the artificial drawing of borders during the Scramble for Africa and uncover the following empirical regularities. First, apart from the land mass and water area, no other pre-colonial trait... View Details

Keywords: Africa; Conflict; Development; Ethnicity; War; Development Economics; Geography; Africa

May 2005 (Revised December 2022)
Case

Aristotle Onassis and the Greek Shipping Industry

By: Geoffrey Jones and Paul Gomopoulos

Examines the career of Aristotle Onassis and his creation of one of the world's largest shipping companies between 1945 and 1973. Explores the role of ethnic and family networks in Greek shipping and how Onassis was able to penetrate this system despite being an... View Details

Keywords: Networks; Ethnicity; Family Business; Innovation Strategy; Management Succession; Competitive Advantage; Personal Development and Career; Entrepreneurship; Shipping Industry; Greece

February 2000 (Revised May 2001)
Case

BET.com

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Pauline M Fischer

Black Entertainment Television, a leading cable programmer, is launching BET.com, an Internet portal targeted toward African-Americans. This case examines the challenges facing BET management as it defines its service offerings and target customer segments in a... View Details

Keywords: Product Positioning; Ethnicity; Internet and the Web; Age; Race; Decision Choices and Conditions; Business Startups; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States

July 2012 (Revised July 2015)
Case

Nalli Silk Sarees (A)

By: V.G. Narayanan, Namrata Arora and Vidhya Muthuram

Nalli Silk Sarees Private Limited was a family owned and operated business that retailed Indian ethnic wear. This 83-year-old company had enjoyed impressive growth with a $95 million turnover, a 22-store retail footprint, and had outdone its competitors by being the... View Details

Keywords: Pricing Strategy; Price; Strategy; Family Business; Growth and Development; Brands and Branding; Growth and Development Strategy; Expansion; Competitive Strategy; Apparel and Accessories Industry; India

January 2022
Background Note

Native American Incarceration

By: Reshmaan Hussam, Sophus A. Reinert and Jordan Naylor

In the early twenty-first century the Native American populations of the United States continued to live with the legacy of colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and cultural destruction. Although other minority groups had increasingly been able to make their voices heard,... View Details

Keywords: Colonialism; Incarceration; Social Issues; Race; Equality and Inequality; History

July 2020 (Revised September 2021)
Case

Mr. Five Percent: Calouste Gulbenkian and the Origins of Global Oil

By: Geoffrey Jones and Yazeed Al-Rashed

This case describes the business career of Calouste Gulbenkian, a skilled intermediary who was able to secure 5 percent of a vast oil concession covering much of the Middle East that was signed in 1928. Gulbenkian was an ethnic Armenian born in the Ottoman Empire,... View Details

Keywords: Oil; Globalization; Energy Sources; History; Biography; Energy Industry; Turkey; Central Asia; Middle East

January 2025
Article

Everyone Steps Back?: The Widespread Retraction of Crowd-Funding Support for Minority Creators When Migration Fear Is High

By: John (Jianqui) Bai, William R. Kerr, Chi Wan and Alptug Yorulmaz

We study funding gaps on Kickstarter across multiple ethnic groups from 2009 to 2021. Scaling the concept of racially salient events, we quantify the close co-movement of minority funding gaps in crowd-funding to inflamed political rhetoric surrounding migration. The... View Details

Keywords: Crowdfunding; Prejudice and Bias; Race; Immigration; Public Opinion

December 2012
Article

Structural Impediments to African Growth? New Evidence from Real Wages in British Africa, 1880–1965

By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg

Recent literature on the historical determinants of African poverty has emphasized structural impediments to African growth, such as adverse geographical conditions, weak institutions, or ethnic heterogeneity. But has African poverty been a persistent historical... View Details

Keywords: Living Standards; Real Wages; Labor Market; Colonial Institutions; Economic Growth; Wages; History; Africa

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December 2004 (Revised August 2005)
Case

Managing a Public Image: Sophie Chen

By: Robin J. Ely and Ingrid Vargas

Sophie Chen, an Asian-American MBA student at Harvard Business School, describes a professional situation in which she was unable to mentor a junior person effectively because she disapproved of the way her Asian-American mentee conformed to an ethnic stereotype.... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Perception; Relationships; Diversity

July 2002 (Revised October 2002)
Case

Bradley Marquez: Reduction in Force (A)

By: Thomas J. DeLong and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan

The Bradley Marquez advertising agency had created a successful niche delivering ethnic markets to their clients, corporate giants like Compaq, Sprint, Texaco, and British Airways. The company was operating in aggressive growth mode when, in 2000, the stock market... View Details

Keywords: Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Financial Crisis; Price Bubble; Human Resources; Employees; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Advertising Industry

13 Aug 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Diasporas and Domestic Entrepreneurs: Evidence from the Indian Software Industry

Keywords: by Ramana Nanda & Tarun Khanna; Video Game; Web Services

Working Paper

Trade and Geography in the Origins and Spread of Islam

By: Stelios Michalopoulos, Alireza Naghavi and Giovanni Prarolo

This study examines the spatial distribution of Muslim societies shedding light on its geographic origins. The empirical analysis conducted across countries, virtual countries, and ethnicities establishes that geographic inequality and proximity to pre-Islamic trade... View Details

Keywords: Geography; Religion; Trade

2024
Working Paper

Everyone Steps Back?: The Widespread Retraction of Crowd-Funding Support for Minority Creators When Migration Fear Is High

By: John (Jianqui) Bai, William R. Kerr, Chi Wan and Alptug Yorulmaz

We study racial biases on Kickstarter across multiple ethnic groups from 2009-2021. Scaling the concept of racially salient events, we quantify the close co-movement of minority funding gaps to inflamed political rhetoric surrounding migration. The racial funding gap... View Details

Keywords: Crowdfunding; Prejudice and Bias; Race; Immigration; Public Opinion

2010
Book

Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry

By: Geoffrey Jones

The global beauty business permeates our lives, influencing how we perceive ourselves and what it is to be beautiful. The brands and firms that have shaped this industry, such as Avon, Coty, Estée Lauder, L'Oréal, and Shiseido, have imagined beauty for us. This book... View Details

Keywords: Globalized Markets and Industries; Brands and Branding; Industry Growth; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry

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2009
Other Unpublished Work

Heterogeneous Technology Diffusion and Ricardian Trade Patterns

By: William R. Kerr

This study tests the importance of Ricardian technology differences for international trade. The developed panel includes both emerging and advanced economies, and particular attention is devoted to the variation exploited in empirical tests. The elasticity of export... View Details

Keywords: Trade; Immigration; Competitive Advantage; Integration; Technology; United States

2009
Working Paper

Mental Health in the Aftermath of Conflict

By: Quy-Toan Do and Lakshmi Iyer

We survey the recent literature on the mental health effects of conflict. We highlight the methodological challenges faced in this literature, which include the lack of validated mental health scales in a survey context, the difficulties in measuring individual... View Details

Keywords: Ethnicity; War; Health Disorders; Policy; Health Care and Treatment; Conflict and Resolution; Bosnia and Hercegovina

2012
Chapter

Mental Health in the Aftermath of Conflict

By: Quy-Toan Do and Lakshmi Iyer

We survey the recent literature on the mental health effects of conflict. We highlight the methodological challenges faced in this literature, which include the lack of validated mental health scales in a survey context, the difficulties in measuring individual... View Details

Keywords: Conflict of Interests; Measurement and Metrics; Surveys; Analytics and Data Science; Ethnicity; War; Health Disorders; Body of Literature; Problems and Challenges; Bosnia and Hercegovina