Publications

December 2003 (Revised October 2014)
Case

Alusaf Hillside Project

By: Kenneth S. Corts and John R. Wells

The aluminum industry has suffered from long periods of depressed prices and profits interspersed with relatively short-lived price and profit peaks. The case investigates why this has occured, focusing on the decision Alusaf must make on whether to invest in a major... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Business Cycles; Financial Crisis; Metals and Minerals; Financial Strategy; Investment; Price; Profit; Demand and Consumers; Industry Structures

Educators

Purchase

24 Jul 2013
Op-Ed

Detroit Files for Bankruptcy: HBS Faculty Weigh In

Once the hub of American manufacturing, Detroit is in a long state of economic decline. The rubber finally hit the road last week, when the city filed for bankruptcy protection. The challenges ahead for those that call the Motor City home... View Details

Keywords: by John Macomber, Robert C. Pozen, Eric D. Werker & Benjamin Kennedy; Auto

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

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2013
Working Paper

Learning from Double-Digit Growth Experiences

By: Eric D. Werker

This extended memorandum identifies episodes of sustained double-digit growth in real GDP, defined as a compound annual growth rate of 10 percent or more over a period of 8 years or longer. Using a measure of real GDP reported in the World Development Indicators, we... View Details

Keywords: Growth; Liberia

March 2012
Article

How Early Adoption Has Increased Wealth--Until Now

By: Diego Comin and Bart Hobijn

Societies that are better at utilizing tools are likely to be more productive. The authors have studied when 161 countries adopted 104 technologies over the past 200 years, and they conclude that profound economic advantages-as measured by per capita income-accrue to... View Details

Keywords: Technology Adoption; Wealth; Development Economics; Performance Productivity; Competitive Advantage

25 Apr 2014
Research & Ideas

To Pay or Not to Pay: Argentina and the International Debt Market

Rather than stifling investment, the proposed change will hopefully trigger increased focus on equity-type investments, on entrepreneurial activities that actually produce products and services to attract investors, and it will shine a positive light on an emerging... View Details

Keywords: by Laura Alfaro

Program

Managing Turbulence

Summary Even before the global pandemic, businesses and their leaders struggled with the extraordinary challenges of technological change, rapidly evolving consumer tastes, and a reconfiguration of the global economic order. COVID-19... View Details

Article

Platform Competition: Betfair and the U.K. Market for Sports Betting

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Neil Campbell

We examine two episodes of strategic interaction in the U.K. betting industry: (i) Betfair (an entrant multi-sided platform or MSP) vs. Flutter (also an MSP) and (ii) Betfair vs. traditional bookmakers. We find that although Betfair was an underfunded second mover in... View Details

Keywords: Platform Design; Betting; Complements; Competing Business Models; Co-opetition; Entry; Multi-Sided Platforms; Design; Network Effects; Business Model; Competition; Cooperation

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07 Dec 2017
HBS Seminar

Eric von Hippel, MIT Sloan School of Management

22 May 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Strategy-Proofness versus Efficiency in Matching with Indifferences: Redesigning the NYC High School Match

Keywords: by Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Parag A. Pathak & Alvin E. Roth

04 Nov 2002
Research & Ideas

From Lone Star to Team Player

keep rewarding and promoting them. Managers may feel that they need them, of course, as they do perform well. So it is pretty gutsy to fire them in today's rather poor economic environment. But if you're really serious about building a... View Details

Keywords: by Mallory Stark

March 2024 (Revised February 2025)
Case

Doing Business in São Paulo, Brazil

By: Laura Alfaro, Hise O. Gibson, Leonard A. Schlesinger and Pedro Levindo

The case gives readers an overview of key factors of doing business in Brazil, including Brazil’s economic transformation since its colonial years until 2023, when leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was sworn in for his third term, after the most polarized... View Details

Keywords: Business Cycles; Developing Countries and Economies; Economic Growth; Economic Sectors; Economy; Macroeconomics; Business History; International Relations; Political Elections; Taxation; Consumer Behavior; Brazil; Latin America; Sao Paulo

Educators

Purchase

2025
Working Paper

Race, Rental Yields, and Housing Decay in Manhattan

By: Tom Nicholas and Christophe Spaenjers

We develop a new dataset on real estate transactions in Manhattan (1912–1939), linked to federal Census records (1930 and 1940) and property images used for tax assessment purposes (around 1940 and 1980). We analyze investor returns and incentives to maintain... View Details

Keywords: Housing Markets; Rental Yields; Urban Decay; Manhattan; Race; Equality and Inequality; Investment Return; Motivation and Incentives; Real Estate Industry; New York (city, NY)

SSRN

April 2017
Article

The Responsibilities and Role of Business in Relation to Society: Back to Basics?

By: Nien-he Hsieh

In this address, I outline a back-to-basics approach to specifying the responsibilities and role of business in relation to society. Three “basics” comprise the approach. The first is arguing that basic principles of ordinary morality, such as a duty not to harm,... View Details

Keywords: Business And Society; Corporate Responsibility; Harm; Human Rights; Institutions; Pareto Efficiency; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Moral Sensibility; Society; Rights

29 Jan 2009
Working Paper Summaries

An Exploration of the Japanese Slowdown during the 1990s

Keywords: by Diego A. Comin

Web

Live from Klarman Hall - Alumni

and occupations, impacting organizations across diverse industries and at a global level. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) projects that approximately 1.1 billion jobs will... View Details

13 Jan 2003
Research & Ideas

Making Biotech Work as a Business

technologies for drug discovery.) And patients with previously unmet medical needs can now get treatments that were not available before. That should be inspiring, he reminded the audience. Economic frustrations remain, however. Pisano... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Biotechnology; Health; Technology

June – July 2008
Article

A Better Approach to Foreign Aid

By: Justin Muzinich and Eric D. Werker

Frustration with U.S. foreign aid is widespread. At the same time, flows of private development finance—including foreign direct investment and remittances—have begun to dwarf official aid. We suggest a new approach that harnesses the power of private development... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Foreign Direct Investment; International Relations; Taxation; Welfare or Wellbeing; United States