Publications

June 2013
Article

Opting-in: Participation Bias in Economic Experiments

By: Robert Slonim, Carmen Wang, Ellen Garbarino and Danielle Merrett

Assuming individuals rationally decide whether to participate or not to participate in lab experiments, we hypothesize several non-representative biases in the characteristics of lab participants. We test the hypotheses by first collecting survey and experimental data... View Details

Keywords: Participation Bias; Laboratory Experiments; Prejudice and Bias; Research

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23 Aug 2011
First Look

First Look: August 23

that exposure to informational advertising can decrease the consumer's tendency to purchase the promoted product. The structural estimates imply that an exposure to a single advertisement decreases the consumer's probability of not choosing her best alternative View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

November 2004
Article

Unemployment Benefits As a Substitute for a Conservative Central Banker

By: Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch

In the many years since their introduction, positive theories of inflation have rarely been tested. This paper documents a negative relationship between inflation and the welfare state (proxied by the parameters of the unemployment benefit program) that is to be... View Details

Keywords: Unemployment; Welfare State; Compensation and Benefits; Inflation and Deflation

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22 Nov 2011
First Look

First Look: November 22

PublicationsCompeting through Business Models Authors:Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Joan E. Ricart Publication:In Handbook of Research on Competitive Strategy, edited by Giovanni Battista Dagnino. Edward Elgar Publishing, forthcoming An... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

February 1984 (Revised February 1986)
Case

E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.: Titanium Dioxide

By: W. Carl Kester, Robert R. Glauber, David W. Mullins Jr. and Stacy S. Dick

Disequilibrium in the $350 million TiO2 market has prompted Du Pont's Pigments Department to develop two strategies for competing in this market in the future. The growth strategy has a smaller internal rate of return than the alternative strategy due to large capital... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Cash Flow; Investment Return; Growth and Development Strategy; Strategic Planning; Projects; Chemical Industry

September–October 2020
Article

When It's Time to Pivot, What's Your Story?: How to Sell Stakeholders on a New Strategy

By: Rory McDonald and Robert Bremner

To succeed, a new company must rally investors, staff, customers, and the media around a good story. But often that narrative turns out to be wrong, and entrepreneurs realize they need to change direction. How that shift is communicated can have a huge impact on a... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Model; Strategy; Change Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Communication Strategy; Business and Stakeholder Relations

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12 Jun 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, June 12, 2018

emergence of political economy and the project of creating market societies. By reconstructing ideas in their historical contexts, I address motivations and contingencies at the very foundations of modernity. Publisher's link:... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

January 2019
Case

Data.gov (Abridged)

By: Karim R. Lakhani, Robert D. Austin and Yumi Yi

This case presents the logic and execution underlying the launch of Data.gov, an instantiation of President Obama's initiative for transparency and open government. The process used by Vivek Kundra, the federal CIO, and his team to rapidly develop the website and to... View Details

Keywords: Safety; Rights; Analytics and Data Science; Internet and the Web; Ethics; Cost vs Benefits; Innovation and Management; Information Management; Public Administration Industry; Information Industry; United States

07 Feb 2012
First Look

First Look: February 7

has been divided by both worldview and practice. Why, in the face of the common challenge of dependence on imported Russian gas, have national reactions to such vulnerability varied so dramatically across the continent? And why have a... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2018 (Revised February 2020)
Teaching Note

Improving Access at VA

By: Ryan W. Buell and Robert S. Huckman

In 2015, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) ran the largest healthcare system in the United States, with over 1,700 sites of care that served nearly 9 million veterans. One year earlier, a scandal had erupted over a cover-up of the excessive wait times veterans... View Details

Keywords: Service Operations; Service Delivery; Social Issues; Health Care and Treatment; Government Administration; Performance Improvement; Public Administration Industry; Health Industry; United States

July 1991 (Revised October 1995)
Case

KPMG Peat Marwick: The Shadow Partner

By: Robert G. Eccles Jr.

KPMG Peat Marwick executives needed to decide whether to fund full development of "The Shadow Partner," the name coined to describe a worldwide information network that would link all KPMG professionals to each other and to a wealth of data bases and information... View Details

Keywords: Information Management; Data and Data Sets; Knowledge Management; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Networks; Partners and Partnerships; Information Technology

November 2016 (Revised December 2016)
Module Note

Strategy Execution Module 14: Managing Strategic Risk

By: Robert Simons

This module reading provides an overview of the business conduct boundaries, strategic boundaries, and internal control systems used to manage risk. Boundary systems—linked to clear, enforceable sanctions—are essential whenever demanding performance goals are set and... View Details

Keywords: Management Control Systems; Implementing Strategy; Strategy Execution; Boundary Systems; Innovation; Internal Controls; Fraud; Human Behavior; Staff Experts; Strategy; Risk Management; Behavior; Governance Controls; Management Practices and Processes; Boundaries; Employees; Business Strategy; Innovation and Invention

June 1996 (Revised November 1996)
Background Note

Economic Gains from Trade: Comparative Advantage

By: Robert E. Kennedy and Nancy F. Koehn

How nations trade and whether they benefit from it are two of the oldest and most important questions in political economy. In the 170 years since David Ricardo formally developed the theory of comparative advantage, it has become one of the principles most widely... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Microeconomics; Trade; Cost Management; Business and Government Relations

18 Dec 2012
First Look

First Look: December 18

PublicationsHarder Than I Thought: Adventures of a Twenty-First Century Leader Authors:Austin, Robert D., Richard L. Nolan, and Shannon O'Donnell Publication:Harvard Business Review Press, 2012 Abstract Being a great leader today is... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

03 Nov 2009
First Look

First Look: Nov. 3

self-report of the licensee. The self-reporting aspect of the environment gives rise to demand for auditing by the licensor or third-party attestation by the licensee. We characterize the optimal royalty... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

May 2010 (Revised May 2010)
Case

Data.gov

By: Karim R. Lakhani, Robert D. Austin and Yumi Yi

This case presents the logic and execution underlying the launch of Data.gov, an instantiation of President Obama's initiative for transparency and open government. The process used by Vivek Kundra, the federal CIO, and his team to rapidly develop the website and to... View Details

Keywords: Safety; Rights; Analytics and Data Science; Internet and the Web; Ethics; Cost vs Benefits; Innovation and Management; Information Management; Public Administration Industry; Information Industry; United States

October 2022
Article

It’s Not Just the Prices: Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing for Initiation of Veno-Venous Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation at Three International Sites—A Case Review

By: Michael Nurok, Vin Pellegrino, Marc Pineton de Chambrun, Jonathan Warsh, Meredith Young, Erik Dong, Neil Parrish, Syed Shehab, Alain Combes and Robert S. Kaplan

The United States spends more for intensive care units (ICUs) than do other high-income countries. We used time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) to analyze ICU costs for initiation of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) for respiratory failure to estimate... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare; Cost; Time-Driven ABC; Health Care and Treatment; Cost Management; Activity Based Costing and Management; Health Industry

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April 2008 (Revised April 2009)
Case

Heidrick & Struggles International, Inc.

By: Robert G. Eccles and David Lane

As CEO of leading executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles for the past 18 months, Kevin Kelly was pleased with his accomplishments so far but concerned about threats he perceived to Heidrick's position at the highest levels of the executive search business. In... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Recruitment; Disruptive Innovation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Competition; Competitive Strategy; Employment Industry; Service Industry