Publications

10 Feb 2022
Research & Ideas

Why Are Prices So High Right Now—and Will They Ever Return to Normal?

sheds light on a question vexing economists, consumers, and retailers alike: When will prices return to normal? The answer depends on the type of product, and how quickly each individual industry recovers, says Cavallo. When a product is... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

January 2001 (Revised August 2003)
Case

Student Educational Loan Fund, Inc. (Abridged)

By: Peter Tufano

Rick Melnick oversees the Student Educational Loan Fund (SELF), which provides loans to Harvard Business School students. SELF is changing the terms of student loans from variable-rate with semiannual payments to fixed-rate loans with equal monthly payments. Melnick... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Financing and Loans; Business Education; Interest Rates; Education Industry; Boston

02 Feb 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Do Employment Protections Reduce Productivity? Evidence from U.S. States

Keywords: by David H. Autor, William R. Kerr & Adriana D. Kugler

13 May 2024
Research & Ideas

Picture This: Why Online Image Searches Drive Purchases

effectiveness.” Fast forward to six months later, and the results were markedly different: The test group completed 1.6 percent more orders and spent 3.2 percent more on products versus the group that didn’t have access to the new tool.... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products

February 2016
Case

BancoSol and Microfinance in Bolivia

By: Rajiv Lal and Annelena Lobb

BancoSol, a microfinance bank headquartered in La Paz, Bolivia, was forced to adjust its lending strategy and business model because of a regulatory change—60% of the bank's lending portfolio would have to move to the productive sector of the Bolivian economy by 2018,... View Details

Keywords: Microfinance; Banks and Banking; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business Model; Strategy; South America; Bolivia

April 2020 (Revised April 2023)
Case

TransDigm in 2017: The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning?

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher

TransDigm was a highly acquisitive company that manufactured a wide range of highly engineered aerospace parts for both military and commercial customers. Over the ten years ending in 2016, its stock price had increased ten times, and both EBITDA and revenues had grown... View Details

November 2013 (Revised November 2014)
Case

Freemium Pricing at Dropbox

By: Thales Teixeira and Elizabeth Anne Watkins

Online storage company Dropbox provided remote-storage over the internet of any type of computer file, along with file sharing, synchronization and backup. Using a freemium pricing strategy whereby a basic service was free-of-charge and a premium service was paid,... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Price; Internet; Information Technology Industry

June 2000 (Revised December 2001)
Case

Performance Pay at Safelite Auto Glass (A)

By: Brian J. Hall, Edward Lazear and Carleen Madigan

Describes a company's changing of its compensation and incentive plan. In particular, it shows how a change from hourly pay to piece rate pay (for windshield installers) affected productivity, pay, and turnover. View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Performance Productivity; Change; Compensation and Benefits; Service Industry; Auto Industry

July 2020 (Revised November 2020)
Case

Pricing at Netflix

By: Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini, Oded Koenigsberg and Amy Klopfenstein

Since its launch in 1998 as “the Amazon.com of DVDs,” Netflix had evolved from a DVD rental company to a video streaming platform and producer of original films and television shows. As the company matured, it regularly increased prices and adjusted its product... View Details

December 2021
Article

Employee Responses to Compensation Changes: Evidence from a Sales Firm

By: Jason Sandvik, Richard Saouma, Nathan Seegert and Christopher Stanton

What are the long-term consequences of compensation changes? Using data from an inbound sales call center, we study employee responses to a compensation change that ultimately reduced take-home pay by 7% for the average affected worker. The change caused a significant... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Wages; Compensation and Benefits; Change; Performance; Resignation and Termination; Retention; Analysis

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October 2024
Article

Founder-CEO Compensation and Selection into Venture Capital-Backed Entrepreneurship

By: Michael Ewens, Ramana Nanda and Christopher Stanton

We show theoretically that a critical determinant of the attractiveness of VC-backed entrepreneurship for high-earning potential founders is the expected time to develop a startup’s initial product. This is because founder-CEOs’ cash compensation increases... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Executive Compensation

12 Nov 2021
News

The Psychology Behind Meeting Overload

March 2013
Article

Financial Development, Fixed Costs and International Trade

Exporting firms face significant up-front costs in product design, marketing, and distribution, which likely would be difficult to finance externally. We argue that a developed financial system can facilitate exports, and we test three implications. First, a more... View Details

Keywords: Trade; Finance

22 Jan 2020
News

What Are the Best Personal Loans?

2023
Working Paper

Founder-CEO Compensation and Selection into Venture Capital-Backed Entrepreneurship

By: Michael Ewens, Ramana Nanda and Christopher Stanton

We show theoretically that a critical determinant of the attractiveness of VC-backed entrepreneurship for high-earning potential founders is the expected time to develop a startup’s initial product. This is because founder-CEOs’ cash compensation increases... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Executive Compensation

SSRN

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Working Paper

How Do Venture Capitalists Make Decisions?

By: Paul A. Gompers, William Gornall, Steven N. Kaplan and Ilya A. Strebulaev

We survey 885 institutional venture capitalists (VCs) at 681 firms to learn how they make decisions across eight areas: deal sourcing, investment selection, valuation, deal structure, post-investment value-added, exits, internal firm organization, and relationships... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Decision Choices and Conditions

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March 1983
Article

Brilliant but Cruel: Perceptions of Negative Evaluators

By: T. M. Amabile

Using edited excerpts from actual negative and positive book reviews, this research examined the hypothesis that negative evaluators of intellectual products will be perceived as more intelligent than positive evaluators. The results strongly supported the hypothesis.... View Details

Keywords: Social Psychology; Situation or Environment; Performance Evaluation; Perception; Status and Position; Attitudes; Prejudice and Bias; Power and Influence