Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,525)
- Faculty Publications (528)
- 2020
- Working Paper
Job Loss, Credit and Crime in Colombia
By: Gaurav Khanna, Carlos Medina, Anant Nyshadham, Christian Posso and Jorge Tamayo
We investigate the effects of job displacement, as a result of mass layoffs, on criminal arrests using a matched employer-employee-crime dataset from Medellín, Colombia. Job displacement leads to immediate and persistent earnings losses and higher probability of arrest... View Details
- April 2020 (Revised August 2021)
- Case
Singapore: 'Facing Challenges Together'
Since its expulsion from Malaysia in 1965, Singapore had transformed itself from a third world island nation into a vibrant city-state with one of the highest levels of GDP per capita in the world. However, sluggish demand among Singapore's major trade partners began... View Details
Keywords: Savings; Productivity Growth; Productivity; Economic Institutions; Economic Development; Government And Business; Government Policy; Economic Policy; Country Analysis; Investment And Savings; Institutions; Economic Growth; Macroeconomics; Development Economics; Investment; Government and Politics; Trade; Policy; Research and Development; Analysis; Economics; Business and Government Relations; Asia; Singapore; Southeast Asia
- 2020
- Working Paper
Sticky Capital Controls
By: Miguel Acosta-Henao, Laura Alfaro and Andres Fernandez
There is much ongoing debate on the merits of capital controls as effective policy instruments. The differing perspectives are due in part to a lack of empirical studies that look at the intensive margin of controls, which in turn has prevented a quantitative... View Details
- Spring 2020
- Article
The Basic Economics of Internet Infrastructure
By: Shane Greenstein
The internet's structure and operations remain invisible to most economists. What determines the economic value of internet infrastructure and the incentives to improve it? What are the open research questions for the most salient policy issues? This article reviews... View Details
- March 2020 (Revised September 2020)
- Case
Opportunity Insights: Research and Policy for Social Mobility
By: Scott Duke Kominers, Jeffrey Huizinga and Allison Ciechanover
Opportunity Insights -- a non-profit that researches drivers of economic opportunity and develops policy solutions to help families achieve better life outcomes -- seeks to expand its impact. View Details
- March 2020
- Article
A Revolution in Economics? It's Just Getting Started...
By: Shawn A. Cole, William Pariente and Anja Sautmann
We have each experienced thrills and pain while supporting the mission of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, which facilitated many of the experiments described in the 2019 Nobel Prize citation. J-PAL in many ways seeks to fulfill what Angrist and Pischke... View Details
- February 2020 (Revised January 2022)
- Case
Getting Brexit Done
By: Alberto Cavallo
In the early hours of Friday, December 13, 2019, a triumphant Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister, stood in front of his supporters and declared, “We did it – we pulled it off, didn’t we? We broke the deadlock, [. . .] we smashed the roadblock. [. . .] This election... View Details
- 2020
- Chapter
The Gift of Global Talent: Innovation Policy and the Economy
By: William R. Kerr
Talent is the most precious resource for today’s knowledge-based economy, and a significant share of the U.S. skilled workforce in technology fields is foreign born. The United States has long held a leading position in attracting global talent, but the gap to other... View Details
- January 23, 2020
- Article
Sanctions and the End of Trans-Atlanticism: Iran, Russia, and the Unintended Division of the West
By: Rawi Abdelal and Aurélie Bros
Sanctions have become the dominant tool of statecraft in the United States and other Western states, especially the European Union, since the end of the Cold War. But the systematic use of this instrument may produce unintended and somewhat paradoxical geopolitical... View Details
Keywords: Geopolitics; Economic Sanctions; International Relations; United States; Russia; Iran; Europe
- January 2020
- Teaching Note
Chile: Unrest in the Copper Nation
By: Laura Alfaro and Sarah Jeong
For decades, Chile enjoyed the stability of being the world’s largest producer of copper. Keynes would have advised that this period of growth would have been the time for the government to save, that “the boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity at the... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Cutting the Gordian Knot of Employee Health Care Benefits and Costs: A Corporate Model Built on Employee Choice
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Barak D. Richman
The U.S. employer-based health insurance tax exclusion created a system of employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) with limited insurance choices and transparency that may lock employed households into health plans that are costlier or different from those they prefer to... View Details
- November 26, 2019
- Article
Veil-of-Ignorance Reasoning Favors the Greater Good
By: Karen Huang, Joshua D. Greene and Max Bazerman
The “veil of ignorance” is a moral reasoning device designed to promote impartial decision-making by denying decision-makers access to potentially biasing information about who will benefit most or least from the available options. Veil-of-ignorance reasoning was... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Tech Clusters
By: William R. Kerr and Frederic Robert-Nicoud
Tech clusters like Silicon Valley play a central role for modern innovation, business competitiveness, and economic performance. This paper reviews what constitutes a tech cluster, how they function internally, and the degree to which policy makers can purposefully... View Details
- November 2019 (Revised June 2020)
- Case
Russia: A Drama In Three Acts
By: Rawi Abdelal, Rafael Di Tella, Galit Goldstein and Sogomon Tarontsi
The collapse of central authority in the Soviet Union in 1991 ushered in a period of revolutionary transformations for the states that emerged in its wake. The leaders of Russia, the USSR's successor, struggled to reestablish central authority while also seeking to... View Details
Keywords: Business ＆ Government Relations; Developing Countries; Government Policy; Policy Change; Policy Making; Economic Systems; Economics; Globalization; Emerging Markets; Privatization; Non-Renewable Energy; Governance; Global Strategy; Corporate Governance; Policy; Business History; Lawfulness; Problems and Challenges; Business and Government Relations; Risk and Uncertainty; Strategy; Change Management; Russia; Moscow
- 2020
- Working Paper
Tariff Passthrough at the Border and at the Store: Evidence from U.S. Trade Policy
By: Alberto Cavallo, Gita Gopinath, Brent Neiman and Jenny Tang
We use micro data collected at the border and the store to characterize the price impact of recent US trade policy on importers, exporters, and consumers. At the border, import tariff passthrough is much higher than exchange rate passthrough. Chinese exporters did not... View Details
- 2019
- Book
The Economic Turn: Recasting Political Economy in Enlightenment Europe
By: Steven L. Kaplan and Sophus A. Reinert
The mid-eighteenth century witnessed what might be dubbed an “economic turn” that resolutely changed the trajectory of world history. From the birth of new agricultural practices and the foundation of private societies to the sustained and popular theorization of... View Details
- 2019
- Chapter
The Great Divergence and the Great Convergence
By: Geoffrey Jones
This chapter provides a new lens to the extensive debate among economists and economic historians concerning why the West grew rich and the rest of the world lagged behind as modern industrialization took hold in the 19th century. The literature has focused heavily on... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Going Out or Opting Out? Capital, Political Vulnerability, and the State in China's Outward Investment
By: Meg Rithmire
How do state-business relations interact with outward investment in authoritarian regimes? This paper examines this question in the context of China’s rapid transformation into major capital exporter. While most political economy scholarship focuses on firms’ economic... View Details
- 2019
- Chapter
Spatial Agglomeration and Superstar Firms: Firm-level Patterns from Europe and U.S.
By: Laura Alfaro, Maggie X. Chen and Harald Fadinger
We characterize the agglomeration patterns of industries and plants in Europe, distinguishing Eurozone countries and the United States. Using a micro-level index, we quantify the degree of geographic concentration in industrial activities and explore how firm... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Veil-of-Ignorance Reasoning Favors the Greater Good
By: Karen Huang, Joshua D. Greene and Max Bazerman
The “veil of ignorance” is a moral reasoning device designed to promote impartial decision-making by denying decision-makers access to potentially biasing information about who will benefit most or least from the available options. Veil-of-ignorance reasoning was... View Details