Publications

Educators

27 Mar 2018
HBS Seminar

Jeffrey Clemens, University of San Diego, Economics

12 Nov 2013
News

Cities, startups tap the wisdom of crowds for sustainability

May 2020
Article

Identifying Sources of Inefficiency in Health Care

By: Amitabh Chandra and Douglas O. Staiger

In medicine, the reasons for variation in treatment rates across hospitals serving similar patients are not well understood. Some interpret this variation as unwarranted and push standardization of care as a way of reducing allocative inefficiency. However, an... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Performance Efficiency; Performance Productivity; Mathematical Methods

Register to Read

Forthcoming
Article

On the Economic Origins of Concerns Over Women’s Chastity

By: Anke Becker

This paper studies the origins and function of customs and norms that intend to keep women from being promiscuous. Using large-scale survey data from more than 100 countries, I test the anthropological theory that a particular form of preindustrial... View Details

Keywords: Infibulation; Female Sexuality; Paternity Uncertainty; Concern About Women's Chastity; Pastoralism; Economic Anthropology; History; Gender; Social Issues; Culture

08 Sep 2008
HBS Case

The Value of Environmental Activists

There are many methods, most financial, to measure the success of companies in meeting goals. But the question becomes a lot harder at Harvard Business School when MBAs are challenged to measure the efforts of environmental organizations like Greenpeace and the World... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Energy; Utilities

19 Aug 2009
Working Paper Summaries

The Optimal Taxation of Height: A Case Study of Utilitarian Income Redistribution

Keywords: by N. Gregory Mankiw & Matthew Weinzierl

July–August 2019
Article

Coupling Labor Codes of Conduct and Supplier Labor Practices: The Role of Internal Structural Conditions

By: Yanhua Bird, Jodi L. Short and Michael W. Toffel

Exploitive working conditions have spurred companies to pressure their suppliers to adopt labor codes of conduct and to conform their labor practices to the standards set forth in those codes. Yet little is known about whether organizational structures such as codes... View Details

Keywords: Organization Theory; Economic Sociology; Social Responsibility; Sustainability; Auditing; Process Improvement; Organizational Structure; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Supply Chain; Labor; Working Conditions

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

We give a new proof of the “transfer theorem” underlying adaptive data analysis: that any mechanism for answering adaptively chosen statistical queries that is differentially private and sample-accurate is also accurate out-of-sample. Our new proof is elementary and... View Details

December 1989
Article

On the Consistency of Short-Run and Long-Run Exchange Rate Expectations

By: K. A. Froot and T. Ito

This paper examines whether short-term exchange rate expectations 'overreact' by comparing them with long-term expectations. We develop a set of nonlinear restrictions linking expectations at different forecast horizons. The restrictions impose consistency, a property... View Details

Keywords: Currencies; Exchange Rates; International Macroeconomics; Monetary Policy; Currency Controls; Fixed Exchange Rates; Floating Exchange Rates; Currency Bands; Currency Zones; Currency Areas; Rational Expectations; Asset Pricing

December 2018
Article

Some Elements of Peronist Beliefs and Tastes

By: Rafael Di Tella and Juan Dubra

We study the beliefs and values of Peronism. Instead of a comprehensive approach, we focus on three elements. First, we study beliefs and values about the economic system present in Peron’s speeches during the period 1943–1955. Second, given that these beliefs are... View Details

Keywords: Populism; Altruism; Exploitation; Economic Systems; Values and Beliefs; Argentina

May 2004
Article

The Case for International Coordination of Electricity Regulation: Evidence from the Measurement of Efficiency in South America

A decade of experience has shown that monitoring the performance of public and private monopolies is the hardest part of electricity sector reform in South America—because operators control most of the information needed for effective regulation. South American... View Details

Keywords: Information; Mathematical Methods; Monopoly; Globalization; Energy Sources; Energy Industry; South America

15 Dec 2016
HBS Seminar

John-Paul Ferguson, Stanford Graduate School of Business

March 2022 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Moksha Data: Delivering Insights for Public Service

By: Ashish Nanda and Zack Kurtovich

Moksha Data, a boutique consulting firm specializing in public sector work, started in January 2017 with a handshake between friends and a shared commitment to the principles of egalitarianism, ownership, and collaboration. The Houston-based firm had built momentum... View Details

Keywords: Professional Service Firms; Professional Service Firm; Strategy Formulation; Data; Data As A Service; Government Contracting; Consulting; Consulting Firms; Consulting Services; Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Analytics and Data Science; Growth and Development; Strategy; Consulting Industry; Texas

Educators

1998
Article

Alternative Models of Uncertain Commodity Prices for Use with Modern Asset Pricing Methods

By: Malcolm Baker, E. S. Mayfield and John Parsons

This paper provides an introduction to alternative models of uncertain commodity prices. A model of commodity price movements is the engine around which any valuation methodology for commodity production projects is built, whether discounted cash flow (DCF) models or... View Details

Keywords: Asset Pricing; Goods and Commodities; Price; Risk and Uncertainty; Valuation; Production; Projects; Cash Flow

Research Summary

The Strategic and Performance Consequences of CEO Succession

By: Rakesh Khurana

The argument of this paper (with Nitin Nohria) is that research on executive turnover treats the departures of predecessors and the origin of successors as independent events. This approach has led to mixed empirical findings with respect to measuring the effects of... View Details

July 2020
Article

Lessons from the Impact of Price Regulation on the Pricing of Anticancer Drugs in Germany

By: Victoria D. Lauenroth, Aaron S. Kesselheim, Ameet Sarpatwari and Ariel Dora Stern

Worldwide spending on prescription drugs has increased dramatically in recent years. Although this increase has been particularly pronounced in the U.S., it remains largely unaddressed there. In Europe, however, different approaches to regulating drug prices have been... View Details

Keywords: Pharmaceuticals; Prescription Drug Costs; Drug Pricing; Access To Care; Cost Reduction; Health Care and Treatment; Price; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Cost Management; Germany

Sep 2007 - 2007
Conference Presentation

Antecedents of Boundary Spanning in Cross-functional NPD Teams

By: James R. Dillon, Shikhar Sarin and Amy C. Edmondson

Boundary spanning has been shown in prior research to enhance innovativeness and performance of product development teams. In this study, we examine team conditions that foster boundary spanning behavior. We analyze survey data from 207 members of 54 cross-functional... View Details

Keywords: Product Development; Innovation and Invention; Groups and Teams; Behavior; Performance Improvement; Boundaries; Leadership Style; Product; Complexity; Integration; Power and Influence