Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(537)
- Faculty Publications (123)
- December 2011 (Revised May 2014)
- Case
ReSource Pro
By: Lynda M. Applegate, William R. Kerr, Elisabeth Koll and David Lane
Matt Bruno, founder and general manager of ReSource Pro, left his job working for a New York City-based insurance program shortly after the World Trade Center bombing and arrived in China. Initially he planned to teach English, but soon the entrepreneurial spirit of... View Details
- 2013
- Working Paper
The Dynamics of Firm Lobbying
By: William R. Kerr, William F. Lincoln and Prachi Mishra
We study the determinants of the dynamics of firm lobbying behavior using a panel data set covering 1998–2006. Our data exhibit three striking facts: (i) few firms lobby, (ii) lobbying status is strongly associated with firm size, and (iii) lobbying status is highly... View Details
- June 2011 (Revised January 2013)
- Case
Home Essentials: Building a Global Service Business with Local Operations
By: Lynda M. Applegate, William R. Kerr and David Lane
Chris Exline founded Home Essentials, a furniture rental business targeted toward expatriates, in Singapore but rapidly moved the base of operations to Hong Kong. The company was highly successful in Singapore and Hong Kong and then pursued rapid global expansion.... View Details
- April 2011 (Revised June 2011)
- Case
Internet Securities, Inc.: Path to Sustainability
By: Lynda M. Applegate, William R. Kerr and Ryan Johnson
Founded in 1994 when the Internet was still a "toy for techies," the case is set in 1998 when Internet IPOs were red-hot. Internet Securities provides hard-to-find financial, business, economic, and political information on emerging markets. Information from over 600... View Details
- February 2011
- Case
Chegg: Textbook Rental Takes Flight
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, William A. Sahlman and Evan W. Richardson
In late 2010, Silicon Valley-based Chegg, the leading online college textbook rental company, is scaling rapidly. The case recounts Chegg's history from its origins as a distant competitor to Craigslist in college classified listings through a pivot into textbook... View Details
- July 2010
- Article
The Supply Side of Innovation: H-1B Visa Reforms and U.S. Ethnic Invention
By: William R. Kerr and William F. Lincoln
This study evaluates the impact of high-skilled immigrants on U.S. technology formation. We use reduced-form specifications that exploit large changes in the H-1B visa program. Higher H-1B admissions increase immigrant science and engineering (SE) employment and... View Details
- June 2010
- Article
What Causes Industry Agglomeration? Evidence from Coagglomeration Patterns
By: Glenn Ellison, Edward Glaeser and William R. Kerr
Why do firms cluster near one another? We test Marshall's theories of industrial agglomeration by examining which industries locate near one another, or coagglomerate. We construct pairwise coagglomeration indices for US manufacturing industries from the Economic... View Details
- January 2010
- Article
Clusters of Entrepreneurship
By: Edward L. Glaeser, William R. Kerr and Giacomo A.M. Ponzetto
Employment growth is strongly predicted by smaller average establishment size, both across cities and across industries within cities, but there is little consensus on why this relationship exists. Traditional economic explanations emphasize factors that reduce entry... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Clusters of Entrepreneurship
By: Edward L. Glaeser, William R. Kerr and Giacomo A.M. Ponzetto
Employment growth is strongly predicted by smaller average establishment size, both across cities and across industries within cities, but there is little consensus on why this relationship exists. Traditional economic explanations emphasize factors that reduce entry... View Details
- Article
Local Industrial Conditions and Entrepreneurship: How Much of the Spatial Distribution Can We Explain?
By: Edward L. Glaeser and William R. Kerr
Why are some places more entrepreneurial than others? We use Census Bureau data to study local determinants of manufacturing startups across cities and industries. Demographics have limited explanatory power. Overall levels of local customers and suppliers are only... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
The Supply Side of Innovation: H-1B Visa Reforms and U.S. Ethnic Invention
By: William R. Kerr and William F. Lincoln
This study evaluates the impact of high-skilled immigrants on US technology formation. Specifically, we use reduced-form specifications that exploit large changes in the H-1B visa program. Fluctuations in H-1B admissions levels significantly influence the rate of... View Details
- August 2008
- Article
Ethnic Scientific Communities and International Technology Diffusion
By: William R. Kerr
This study explores the importance of knowledge transfer for international technology diffusion by examining ethnic scientific and entrepreneurial communities in the US and their ties to their home countries. US ethnic research communities are quantified by applying an... View Details
- June 2008
- Article
Current State of Fellowship Hiring: Is a Universal Match Necessary? Is It Possible?
By: Christopher D. Harner, Anil S. Ranawat, Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth, Peter J. Stern, Shepard R. Hurwitz, William Levine, G. Paul DeRosa and Serena S. Hu
Currently, approximately ninety percent of the six hundred twenty graduating orthopaedic residents are planning on entering a post-graduate fellowship. Since January of 2005, two of the largest fellowship match programs, Sports Medicine and Spine Surgery, were... View Details
- April 2008
- Article
The Survey of Industrial R&D—Patent Database Link Project
By: William R. Kerr and Shihe Fu
This paper details the construction of a firm-year panel dataset combining the NBER Patent Dataset with the Survey of Industrial R&D conducted by the Census Bureau and National Science Foundation. The dataset constitutes a platform that offers an unprecedented view of... View Details
- January 2008
- Article
Entrepreneurship and Urban Success: Toward a Policy Consensus
By: Zoltan J. Acs, Edward L. Glaeser, Robert E. Litan, Lee Fleming, Stephan J. Goetz, William R. Kerr, Steven Klepper, Stuart S. Rosenthal, Olav Sorenson and William C. Strange
Like all politics, all entrepreneurship is local. Individuals launch firms and, if successful, expand their enterprises to other locations. But new firms must start somewhere, even if their businesses are conducted largely or exclusively on the Internet. Likewise,... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
What Causes Industry Agglomeration? Evidence from Coagglomeration Patterns
By: Glenn Ellison, Edward Glaeser and William R. Kerr
Many industries are geographically concentrated. Many mechanisms that could account for such agglomeration have been proposed. We note that these theories make different predictions about which pairs of industries should be coagglomerated. We discuss the measurement of... View Details
- June 2007 (Revised June 2011)
- Case
TA Energy (Turkey): A Bundle of International Partnerships
By: William R. Kerr, Daniel J. Isenberg and Ant Bozkaya
Stimulates discussion of entrepreneurship in emerging economies, especially for entrepreneurs returning to their home countries to start businesses with global technologies and partners. Focuses on the partnership tensions between global firms and local... View Details
- June 2007
- Article
Does Employment Protection Reduce Productivity? Evidence from U.S. States
By: David H Autor, William R. Kerr and Adriana D. Kugler
Theory predicts that mandated employment protections may reduce productivity by distorting production choices. Firms facing (non-Coasean) worker dismissal costs will curtail hiring below efficient levels and retain unproductive workers, both of which should affect... View Details
Keywords: Theory; Production; Selection and Staffing; Cost; Employment; Capital; Performance Productivity; United States
- 2008
- Working Paper
The Ethnic Composition of U.S. Inventors
By: William R. Kerr
The ethnic composition of US scientists and engineers is undergoing a significant transformation. This study applies an ethnic-name database to individual patent records granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office to document these trends with greater... View Details