Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(1,599)
- Faculty Publications (252)
- January–February 2017
- Article
Africa's New Generation of Innovators
By: Clayton M. Christensen, Efosa Ojomo and Derek van Bever
With a young, urbanizing population, abundant natural resources, and a growing middle class, Africa seems to have all the ingredients necessary for huge growth. Nevertheless, a number of multinationals have recently left the continent, discouraged by widespread... View Details
- Article
The Impact of Personal Genomics on Risk Perceptions and Medical Decision-Making
By: Joshua Lev Krieger, Fiona Murray, J. Scott Roberts and Robert C. Green
- 2018
- Working Paper
Bank Risk-Taking and the Real Economy: Evidence from the Housing Boom and Its Aftermath
By: Antonio Falato, Giovanni Favara and David Scharfstein
The short-termism of lenders amplifies boom-bust credit cycles, leading in turn to real costs for the aggregate economy. During the U.S. housing credit boom, publicly-traded banks increased mortgage lending activity and relaxed standards much more than privately-held... View Details
- September 2016
- Article
Monitoring Global Supply Chains
By: Jodi L. Short, Michael W. Toffel and Andrea R. Hugill
Firms seeking to avoid reputational spillovers that can arise from dangerous, illegal, and unethical behavior at supply chain factories are increasingly relying on private social auditors to provide strategic information about suppliers' conduct. But little is known... View Details
- August 2, 2016
- Article
Uncalculating Cooperation Is Used to Signal Trustworthiness
By: Jillian J. Jordan, Moshe Hoffman, Martin A. Nowak and David G. Rand
Humans frequently cooperate without carefully weighing the costs and benefits. As a result, people may wind up cooperating when it is not worthwhile to do so. Why risk making costly mistakes? Here, we present experimental evidence that reputation concerns provide an... View Details
- June 24, 2016
- Other Article
Why Brexit Is a Big Deal
By: John A. Quelch
The consequences of yesterday's vote by the British people to leave the European Union will be far-reaching, but there is no reason for global markets to panic.
Brexit is a vote against the European Union. Once heralded as the engine of a one-for-all and... View Details
Brexit is a vote against the European Union. Once heralded as the engine of a one-for-all and... View Details
Keywords: British Vote; Brexit; European Union; Impact; Historical Result; Governing Rules, Regulations, And Reforms; Disruption; Transition; Volatility; Decision Making; Globalization; Government and Politics; History; Leadership; Outcome or Result; Risk and Uncertainty; Strategy; European Union; Republic of Ireland; United Kingdom
- June 2016
- Case
The Redevelopment of Palazzo Tornabuoni (A)
By: Sid Yog, Arthur I Segel and Ricardo Andrade
In the spring of 2004, Byrne Murphy and his partners at Fingen Group discussed options to redevelop Palazzo Tornabuoni, an iconic 15th century palace in the heart of Florence, Italy. The possibilities included turning the upper floors into office space, hotel rooms,... View Details
- May 2016 (Revised June 2017)
- Case
India's Amul: Keeping Up with the Times
By: Rohit Deshpandé, Tarun Khanna, Namrata Arora and Tanya Bijlani
Amul is an Indian dairy cooperative founded in 1947—eight months before India's independence from British rule—and owned by over three million farmers in the state of Gujarat. It is India's largest food product marketing organization, selling 46 products, including... View Details
- Article
Beyond Statistics: The Economic Content of Risk Scores
By: Liran Einav, Amy Finkelstein, Raymond Kluender and Paul Schrimpf
"Big data" and statistical techniques to score potential transactions have transformed insurance and credit markets. In this paper, we observe that these widely-used statistical scores summarize a much richer heterogeneity, and may be endogenous to the context in which... View Details
- April 2016 (Revised December 2019)
- Case
Dan Gilbert: Crazy or Crazy Like a Fox?
- 2017
- Working Paper
Economic Uncertainty and Earnings Management
By: Luke C.D. Stein and Charles C.Y. Wang
In the presence of managerial short-termism and asymmetric information about skill and effort provision, firms may opportunistically shift earnings from uncertain to more certain times. We document empirically that when financial markets are less certain about a firm's... View Details
- March 2016 (Revised November 2021)
- Teaching Note
T-Mobile in 2013: The Un-Carrier
By: John Beshears and Francesca Gino
By 2013, the U.S. wireless industry was in the midst of a costly transition. As consumers began to embrace more sophisticated mobile devices, the industry's four main players spent heavily to improve their infrastructures for providing reliable high-speed data... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
The Probability of Rare Disasters: Estimation and Implications
By: Emil Siriwardane
I analyze a rare disasters economy that yields a measure of the risk neutral probability of a macroeconomic disaster, p*t. A large panel of options data provides strong evidence that p*t is the single factor driving option-implied jump risk measures in the cross... View Details
- Article
Reaching for Yield in the Bond Market
By: Bo Becker and Victoria Ivashina
Reaching for yield—the propensity to buy riskier assets in order to achieve higher yields—is believed to be an important factor contributing to the credit cycle. This paper analyzes this phenomenon in the corporate bond market. Specifically, we show evidence for... View Details
- August 2015
- Article
Poultry in Motion: A Study of International Trade Finance Practices
By: Pol Antràs and C. Fritz Foley
This paper analyzes the financing terms that support international trade and sheds light on how these terms shape the impact of economic shocks on trade. Analysis of transaction-level data from a U.S.-based exporter of frozen and refrigerated food products, primarily... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
Customers and Investors: A Framework for Understanding Financial Institutions
By: Robert C. Merton and Robert T. Thakor
Financial institutions have both investors and customers. Investors, such as those who invest in stocks and bonds or private/public-sector guarantors of institutions, expect an appropriate risk-adjusted return in exchange for the financing and risk-bearing that they... View Details
Keywords: Financial Institutions
- May 2015
- Teaching Note
The United Kingdom and the Means to Prosperity
By: Laura Alfaro, Lakshmi Iyer and Hilary White
After struggling through the country's longest recession since 2008, the U.K. was expected to grow faster than any other G7 nation in 2014. Analysts wondered whether the return to growth was because, or in spite of, Prime Minister David Cameron's controversial £113... View Details
Keywords: United Kingdom; Austerity; Fiscal Deficits; Fiscal Policy; Keynesian Multiplier; Government; Government Policy; Recessions; Depression; Inequality; Government Intervention In The Markets; Stagnation; Public Finance; Economics; Macroeconomics; Government Administration; Business and Government Relations; Economic Growth; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Public Sector; Economy; Financial Crisis; Taxation; Government and Politics; United Kingdom
- April 2015
- Article
Incentivizing Calculated Risk-Taking: Evidence from an Experiment with Commercial Bank Loan Officers
By: Shawn Cole, Martin Kanz and Leora Klapper
This paper uses a series of experiments with commercial bank loan officers to test the effect of performance incentives on risk assessment and lending decisions. We first show that while high-powered incentives lead to greater screening effort and more profitable... View Details
- February 2015 (Revised December 2016)
- Case
Poseidon Carlsbad: Desalination and the San Diego County Water Authority
By: John Macomber
Extreme drought conditions in California have significant impacts on the ability of the San Diego County Water Authority to provide adequate water for current users. Water shortfalls also could curtail the economic development of one of the fastest growing regions in... View Details
- December 2014 (Revised May 2019)
- Case
Bhutan: Governing for Happiness
By: Sophus A. Reinert, Thomas Humphrey and Benjamin Safran
Unique among the world’s countries, the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan had abandoned the traditional policy goal of increasing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in favor of pursuing Gross National Happiness (GNH). Famously, Bhutan ranked highly on lists of the happiest... View Details