Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(3,189)
- Faculty Publications (658)
- 2022
- Working Paper
Social Protection and Social Distancing During the Pandemic: Mobile Money Transfers in Ghana
By: Dean Karlan, Matt Lowe, Robert Osei, Isaac Osei-Akoto, Benjamin N. Roth and Christopher Udry
We study the impact of mobile money transfers to a representative sample of low-income
Ghanaians during the COVID-19 pandemic. The announcement of the upcoming transfers
affects neither consumption, well-being, nor social distancing. Once disbursed,... View Details
- 2022
- Article
Values and Inequality: Prosocial Jobs and the College Wage Premium
By: Nathan Wilmers and Letian Zhang
Employers often recruit workers by invoking corporate social responsibility, organizational purpose, or other claims to a prosocial mission. In an era of substantial labor
market inequality, commentators typically dismiss these claims as hypocritical: prosocial... View Details
- May 2022
- Article
Can Gambling Increase Savings? Empirical Evidence on Prize-Linked Savings Accounts
By: Shawn A. Cole, Benjamin Iverson and Peter Tufano
This paper studies the adoption and impact of prize-linked savings (PLS) accounts, which offer lottery-like payouts to individual account holders in lieu of interest. Using microlevel data from a bank in South Africa, we show that PLS is attractive to a broad group of... View Details
- Article
Undisclosed Debt Sustainability
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
Over the past decade, non-Paris Club creditors, notably China, have become an important source of financing for low- and middle-income countries. In contrast with typical sovereign debt, these lending arrangements are not public, and other creditors have no information... View Details
- May 2022
- Article
When Harry Fired Sally: The Double Standard in Punishing Misconduct
By: Mark Egan, Gregor Matvos and Amit Seru
We examine gender differences in misconduct punishment in the financial advisory industry. We find evidence of a “gender punishment gap”: following an incident of misconduct, female advisers are 20% more likely to lose their jobs and 30% less likely to find new jobs... View Details
- April 2022
- Supplement
MicroStrategy: Accounting for Cryptocurrency (B)
By: Jonas Heese and Annelena Lobb
In early 2022, the technology firm MicroStrategy unveiled a series of letters with the SEC that questioned its accounting practices around its holdings of Bitcoin. Since 2020, the firm had shifted its strategy to include not just selling software but buying and holding... View Details
Keywords: Cryptocurrency; Bitcoin; Holding Structures; SEC; Accounting; Finance; Financial Strategy; Technology Industry
- Article
A Career Life-Cycle Perspective on Women's Health and Safety
By: Robert S. Kaplan, Chizoba L. Chukwura, Gregory H. Gorman, Vivian S. Lee, Chester B. Good, Kathleen L. Martin, Gregory A. Ator and Michael D. Parkinson
Women's health has demanded more attention from employers as women integrated into the workforce. Traditionally male-dominant fields and occupations require special attention to workplace design, physical standards for entry, employment practices, equipment, and health... View Details
- 2022
- Chapter
Capitalism and the Environment
By: Geoffrey Jones
Capitalism drove the environmental decimation of the planet. The environment was seen as a free good, while the consequences of dirty industrial and agricultural processes were seen as external to the firm. Public policies largely allowed this to happen, as politicians... View Details
- Other Article
Sustainable Strategies and Net-Zero Goals
By: Mark L. Frigo, Robert S. Kaplan and Karthik Ramanna
In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Kaplan and Ramanna describe a rigorous approach, the E-liability method, for companies’ ESG reporting, especially as it pertains to GHG emissions measurements. They argue that the current standards for measuring... View Details
- March 5, 2022
- Article
Hospital Capacity Shortages: An SEC-Backed Transparency “PULL” Will Open Beds Faster Than a “PUSH” by HHS
In the new normal of ongoing pandemics, hospital bed shortages will continue. Healthcare innovation expert and author of the upcoming book Innovating in Healthcare: Creating Breakthrough Services, Products, and Business Models (Wiley, 2023, 978-1119543008), HBS... View Details
- March 2022
- Case
Metric
By: Christina Wallace, Rebecca Cink and Maria Lappas
Megan Murday, the founder of Metric, an environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) analytics startup, must decide which customer segment to target as a beachhead market. She received positive feedback from a Swiss venture capital (VC) firm, indicating their... View Details
- February 18, 2022
- Article
Transparency as a Solution for COVID-19 Related Hospital Capacity Issues
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Richard Boxer
In the initial phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, many U.S. hospitals could not provide an adequate supply of beds to meet demand. Solving the problem of hospital bed capacity is of great importance in the “new normal,” which requires recognizing that SARS-CoV-2 is but... View Details
Keywords: COVID; COVID-19 Pandemic; Health Care; Health Care Demand; Health Care Delivery; Health Care Industry; Health Care Operations; Health Care Policy; Transparency; Hospital; Hospital Management; Hospitals; Health Pandemics; Health Care and Treatment; Service Delivery; Operations; Performance Capacity; Policy; Health Industry
- February 18, 2022
- Article
Why Really Smart Executives Do Really Stupid Things
CEO exits due to workplace misconduct are all too common. Over and over we hear about top officials at companies, universities or in government resigning, either because they had affairs with subordinates in their inner circles or made verbal advances to junior workers... View Details
- February 2022 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
Huazhu: A Chinese Hotel Giant's Journey of Digital Transformation
By: Feng Zhu, Yulin Fang, Bonnie Yining Cao and Duan Yang
Based in Shanghai, China, Huazhu Group, the world’s third-largest hotel operator, was known for its standardized IT system. It helped the company boost efficiency during the COVID-19 pandemic. Chief Digital Officer Xinxin Liu also faced some longer-term challenges:... View Details
- February 2022
- Article
Borrowing to Save? The Impact of Automatic Enrollment on Debt
By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian and William L. Skimmyhorn
Does automatic enrollment into a retirement plan increase financial distress due to increased borrowing outside the plan? We study a natural experiment created when the U.S. Army began automatically enrolling newly hired civilian employees into the Thrift Savings Plan.... View Details
- January 2022
- Technical Note
BGIE Macro Data Repository
By: Alberto Cavallo
This technical note describes an up-to-date data repository containing balance of payment, exchange rate, and aggregate macroeconomic data in a standard format used by case studies written by members of the Business, Government & the International Economy (BGIE) group... View Details
Keywords: Macroeconomics
- January 2022 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Geely SEA: New Electric Vehicle Platforms
By: Willy C. Shih and Shu Lin
Kent Bovellan, the Chief Engineer and Head of the Vehicle Architecture Center for Geely Holding, the Hangzhou, China headquartered global automotive group, was debating the platform choice for an upcoming "D" segment midsized battery electric vehicle (BEV). He had led... View Details
Keywords: Product Innovation; Product Architecture; Product Engineering; Platform Design; Platform Strategy; Information Infrastructure; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Product Design; Product Development; Cost Management; Decision Making; Competitive Strategy; Industry Structures; Auto Industry; China; Sweden
- January 2022 (Revised December 2022)
- Case
TotalEnergies’ Investment in Hyzon Motors
By: Vikram S. Gandhi and David Lane
In November 2021, Girish Nadkarni, the head of TotalEnergies’ corporate venture capital arm (TEV) was considering whether, and on what terms, to exit an investment in Hyzon Motors, a start-up supplier of hydrogen-powered trucks. TEV had invested $4 million in Hyzon,... View Details
Keywords: Business Units; Communication Intention and Meaning; Renewable Energy; Venture Capital; Growth and Development Strategy; Market Design; Standards; Commercialization; Investment Portfolio; Market Transactions; Energy Industry; Financial Services Industry; Transportation Industry; Europe; New York (city, NY)
- 2022
- Article
Improving Efficiency and Reducing Costs of MRI-Guided Prostate Brachytherapy Using Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing
By: Nikhil G. Thaker, Rajat J. Kudchadker, James R. Incalcaterra, Tharakeswara K. Bathala, Robert S. Kaplan, Ankit Agarwal, Deborah A. Kuban, Benjamin D. Frank, Prajnan Das, Thomas W. Feeley and Steven J. Frank
Integrated quality improvement (QI) and cost reduction strategies can help increase value in cancer care. We applied standard QI and TDABC methods to improve workflow efficiency and reduce costs for MRI-guided prostate brachytherapy. We constructed process maps,... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Limits to Bank Deposit Market Power
By: Juliane Begenau and Erik Stafford
Claims about the market power of bank deposits in the banking literature are numerous and far reaching. Recently, a causal narrative has emerged in the banking literature: market power in bank deposits, measured as imperfect pass-through of short-term market rates on... View Details