Publications

Educators

Purchase

07 Jul 2008
Research & Ideas

Innovation Corrupted: How Managers Can Avoid Another Enron

companies can adapt key aspects of the private-equity governance model to ensure that they fulfill their oversight responsibilities. With respect to avoiding the perverse financial incentives that corrupted Enron, my book makes specific... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Energy; Utilities

Research Summary

Optimal Contracting with Reciprocal Agents

(with Florian Englmaier) (Job Market Paper)

Abstract: Empirically, compensation systems often seem to generate substantial effort despite weak incentives. We consider reciprocal motivations as a source of incentives. We solve for the optimal... View Details

21 Feb 2023
Research & Ideas

Are Your Employees Passing Up Incentives? Try Promoting the Programs More

Motivating employees takes more than carrots and sticks—it hangs on making them aware of those incentives and deterrents, according to new research. Companies, governments, and institutions across the globe spend countless billions on... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis

October 1995
Article

Start-ups, Spin-offs, and Internal Projects

By: James J. Anton and Dennis Yao

We examine the incentive problem confronting a firm and employee when the employee privately discovers a significant invention and faces a choice between keeping the invention private and leaving the firm to form a new company (start-up), or transferring knowledge and... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Projects; Motivation and Incentives; Rights; Employees; Innovation and Invention; Compensation and Benefits; Knowledge Sharing; Capital; Profit

2023
Article

A Review of Commercialisation Mechanisms for Carbon Dioxide Removal

By: Conor Hickey, Sam Fankhauser, Stephen Smith and Myles Allen

The deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) needs to be scaled up to achieve net zero emission pledges. In this paper we survey the policy mechanisms currently in place globally to incentivise CDR, together with an estimate of what different mechanisms are paying... View Details

Keywords: Carbon Dioxide Removal; Climate Change; Markets; Cost; Policy; Environmental Regulation

February 2006
Article

Wealth and Executive Compensation

Using new data on the wealth of Swedish CEOs, I show that higher wealth CEOs receive stronger incentives. Since high wealth (excluding own-firm holdings) implies low absolute risk aversion, this is consistent with a risk aversion explanation. To examine whether wealth... View Details

Keywords: Wealth; Executive Compensation; Motivation and Incentives; Power and Influence; Risk Management; Competency and Skills; Wages; Sweden

Research Summary

Current Research

Ian studies extrinsic rewards -- monetary incentives from formal compensation systems, as well as other formal and informal external rewards-- in order to help businesses understand the tensions and tradeoffs inherent in motivating employees. His research takes a... View Details

31 Jan 2023
Op-Ed

Can Insurance Technology Solve the Uninsured Driver Problem?

insurance at a time and only pay for coverage on the days they actually drive. The high cost of the uninsured While 13 percent of drivers nationwide are uninsured, the problem is even worse in some states like California (17 percent),... View Details

Keywords: by Ray Kluender; Insurance

01 Mar 2016
First Look

March 1, 2016

U.S. GAAP and IFRS for every topic covered in the book. For a preview of the book, please see: www.createspace.com/Preview/1186020. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=50689 Infrastructure, Incentives and... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

April 2000 (Revised July 2000)
Case

Ameritrade Holding Corporation

By: Lisa K. Meulbroek

Some of the senior managers at Ameritrade, an Internet brokerage firm, are selling their holdings in the firm. Why are the managers selling, how will it affect shareholders, and what should the CEO do about it? The CEO is concerned that the market will interpret... View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Internet and the Web; Stock Options; Risk Management; Financial Services Industry

Educators

Purchase

28 Apr 2022
Research & Ideas

Can You Buy Creativity in the Gig Economy?

e-book market. New regulations have shaken up the e-book landscape in China, intensifying competition and prompting writers to work harder, according to research by Harvard Business School Professor Feng Zhu. Book contracts that give authors a share of sales rather... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

09 Nov 2011
Working Paper Summaries

CEO Bonus Plans: And How to Fix Them

Keywords: by Kevin J. Murphy & Michael C. Jensen

20 Nov 2012
First Look

First Look: November 20

pay between different-state managers increased by less relative to same-state managers after the rule change. Taken together, our findings suggest that peer comparison decreases pay disparity within firms... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

13 Sep 2006
Op-Ed

Rising CEO Pay: What Directors Should Do

long-term trend has been for CEO pay to rise along with the pay for other senior executives, and it is now twice as much as that of CEOs in major European countries, according to Towers Perrin, a global... View Details

Keywords: by Jay W. Lorsch

2017
Working Paper

Self-Employment Dynamics and the Returns to Entrepreneurship

By: Eleanor W. Dillon and Christopher T. Stanton

Small business owners and others in self-employment have the option to transition to paid work. If there is initial uncertainty about entrepreneurial earnings, this option increases the expected lifetime value of self-employment relative to pay in a single year. This... View Details

Keywords: Self-employed; Small Business; Business Earnings; Entrepreneurship; Ownership; Compensation and Benefits

10 May 2004
Research & Ideas

Rethink the Value of Joint Ventures

more than 3,000 American transnationals suggests that JVs are falling out of favor. Why? Increasing forces of globalization such as increasingly fragmented production processes make the decision not to collaborate pay off. That's one... View Details

Keywords: by Cynthia Churchwell

fall 2010
Article

Lawsuits and Empire: On the Enforcement of Sovereign Debt in Latin America

By: Faisal Z. Ahmed, Laura Alfaro and Noel Maurer

The re-occurring phenomenon of sovereign default has prompted an enormous theoretical and empirical literature. Most of this research has focused on why countries ever chose to pay their debts (or why private creditors ever expected repayment). The problem originates... View Details

Keywords: Lawsuits and Litigation; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Sovereign Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Debt Securities; Motivation and Incentives; Markets; Equity; Banking Industry; Latin America

28 Nov 2012
What Do You Think?

Should Pay-for-Performance Compensation be Replaced?

incentives in influencing desired effort, especially if they are routinely expected and aimed at managers who may be relatively insensitive to added monetary awards. Any effort to inject long-term thinking into View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

July–August 2013
Article

Complementary Goods: Creating, Capturing, and Competing for Value

By: Taylan Yalcin, Elie Ofek, Oded Koenigsberg and Eyal Biyalogorsky

This paper studies the strategic interaction between firms producing strictly complementary products. With strict complements, a consumer derives positive utility only when both products are used together. We show that value-capture and value-creation problems arise... View Details

Keywords: Complementary Goods; Product Development; Royalty Fees; Product Marketing; Competition