Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(715)
- Faculty Publications (115)
- 2008
- Working Paper
Fixing Market Failures or Fixing Elections? Agricultural Credit in India
By: Shawn A. Cole
This paper integrates theories of political budget cycles with theories of tactical electoral redistribution to test for political capture in a novel way. Studying banks in India, I find that government-owned bank lending tracks the electoral cycle, with agricultural... View Details
- 2008
- Book
Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors Reveal About the Minds of Consumers
By: Gerald Zaltman and Lindsay Zaltman
Why do advertising campaigns and new products often fail? Why do consumers feel that companies don't understand their needs? Because marketers themselves don't think deeply about consumers' innermost thoughts and feelings. Marketing Metaphoria is a... View Details
- May 2008
- Case
Thomas Green: Power, Office Politics and a Career in Crisis
By: W. Earl Sasser Jr. and Heather Beckham
The case describes the dilemma of a marketing manager, Thomas Green, who, after being rapidly promoted, is harshly criticized by his boss, Frank Davis. Green and Davis disagree on work styles and market projections. Green believes the sales goals set by Davis are based... View Details
- 2008
- Case
Thomas Green:Power, Office Politics and a Career in Crisis
By: W. Earl Sasser
The case describes the dilemma of a marketing manager, Thomas Green, who, after being rapidly promoted, is harshly criticized by his boss, Frank Davis. Green and Davis disagree on work styles and market projections. Green believes the sales goals set by Davis are based... View Details
- March 2008
- Article
What Have We Learned from Market Design?
By: Alvin E. Roth
This essay discusses some things we have learned about markets, in the process of designing marketplaces to fix market failures. To work well, marketplaces have to provide thickness, i.e. they need to attract a large enough proportion of the potential participants in... View Details
Keywords: Risk Management; Market Design; Market Participation; Market Transactions; Failure; Safety
- January 2008 (Revised August 2008)
- Case
The Time Warner Center: Mixed-Use Development
By: A. Eugene Kohn, Arthur I Segel and David Lane
Despite the failure of other attempts to bring mixed use development in New York City, Related Companies in 2004 opened Time Warner Center, a huge complex incorporating offices, shops, restaurants, music auditoriums, a hotel, and luxury apartments on Columbus Circle in... View Details
- December 2007 (Revised August 2014)
- Case
Xanadu on Broadway
By: Anita Elberse
Can one of Hollywood's biggest flops magically turn into a Broadway hit? Xanadu, an adaptation of a 1980 Olivia Newton-John roller-disco film described by one critic as "the epic failure to end all epic failures," opened on Broadway in July 2007. Producer Rob Ahrens,... View Details
- 2006
- Working Paper
Democratizing Entry: Banking Deregulations, Financing Constraints, and Entrepreneurship
By: William R. Kerr and Ramana Nanda
We examine entrepreneurship and creative destruction following US banking deregulations using Census Bureau data. US banking reforms brought about exceptional growth in both entrepreneurship and business closures. The vast majority of closures, however, were the new... View Details
- November 2006 (Revised December 2012)
- Background Note
Strategies Beyond the Market
By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Dennis Yao
Strategists are not alone in finding failing markets irresistible. Governments and social groups ranging from unions to the World Wildlife Fund also respond to market failures. Governments typically seek to fix failing markets, often with prescriptions of what... View Details
- April 2006 (Revised October 2006)
- Case
Best Buy Co., Inc.: Customer-Centricity
By: Rajiv Lal, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Irina Tarsis
With FY2005 sales of $27.3 billion, Richfield, Minn.-based Best Buy Co., Inc. was the leading retailer of consumer electronics, home-office products, and related services in North America. Its operations included the distinct store formats Best Buy, Future Shop in... View Details
- Article
Consequences of Financial Reporting Failure for Outside Directors: Evidence from Accounting Restatements and Audit Committee Members
By: Suraj Srinivasan
I use a sample of 409 companies that restated their earnings from 1997 to 2001 to examine penalties for outside directors, particularly audit committee members, when their companies experience accounting restatements. Penalties from lawsuits and Securities and Exchange... View Details
- December 2004 (Revised December 2005)
- Case
Nectar: Making Loyalty Pay
By: John A. Deighton
Loyalty Management UK (LMUK) manages British supermarket chain Sainsbury's frequent-shopper card program, called Nectar. LMUK uses Sainsbury's sponsorship as the magnet to attract other retailers into a profitable, multisponsor loyalty network. Examines the economics... View Details
- March 2004 (Revised June 2004)
- Case
Blackout: August 14, 2003
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Ryland Matthew Willis
On August 14, 2003, an electricity blackout cascaded throughout the northeastern United States and Canada. Describes the structure, technology, and economics of the electric utility industry and how gradual deregulation beginning in the 1970s placed unprecedented, and... View Details
- November 2003 (Revised March 2004)
- Case
Teledesic (Abridged)
Describes plans for a failed project that proposed the use of 288 satellites to deliver high-speed data communications services anywhere in the world. View Details
- August 2003 (Revised August 2024)
- Case
Fighting the Battle of the Bulge—Evaluating Do Good/Do Well Innovations in Morbid Obesity Treatment
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and John McDonough
Many health care innovations appear successful; but fail. This is the first case in the Innovating Health Care course that investigates how to create successful health care innovations. It is part of the first module in the course. This module focuses on how to... View Details
- December 2001 (Revised April 2002)
- Case
Synthes
Synthes is the recognized leader in the U.S. orthopedic implant market, with a 50% market share in the metallic plates, rods, and screws used to fix severe bone fractures. Synthes' marketplace strength lies in the strength of its sales force and in the quality and... View Details
- September 2001 (Revised October 2002)
- Case
Virgin Group, The: Filling in the Value Gap
By: Frances X. Frei, Hanna Rodriguez-Farrar and Corey B. Hajim
Chronicles the successes and failures of the Virgin Group. By examining these examples, students discover attributes of Virgin's overall service concept, which, at its core, competes on quality rather than on price. Students are challenged to consider how Virgin might... View Details
- June 2001
- Case
AtomFilms
By: Bharat N. Anand and Taslim Pirmohamed
Examines the evolution of AtomFilms--one of the few companies that survived the spate of failures in digital entertainment in 2000--from the time of its founding in 1998 to its merger with Shockwave in December 2000. Within a short period of time, AtomFilms had built... View Details
- April 2000
- Background Note
Market Failures
Examines the role of transaction costs in impeding the functioning of markets and shows how the concept of transaction costs sheds light on a broad range of issues in strategy. View Details
- April 2000
- Article
The Fable of Fisher Body
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Daniel F. Spulber
General Motors' (GM) acquisition of Fisher Body is the classic example of market failure in the literature on contracts and the theory of the firm. According to the standard account, GM merged vertically with Fisher Body in 1926, a maker of auto bodies, because of... View Details