Publications

February 2010
Article

The Optimal Taxation of Height: A Case Study of Utilitarian Income Redistribution

By: N. Gregory Mankiw and Matthew C. Weinzierl

Should the income tax include a credit for short taxpayers and a surcharge for tall ones? The standard Utilitarian framework for tax analysis answers this question in the affirmative. Moreover, a plausible parameterization using data on height and wages implies a... View Details

Keywords: Taxation; Wages; Personal Characteristics

Find at Harvard

2002
Chapter

Factories in the Countryside: The Industrial Workforce and Social Division in Nantong County, 1895-1937

By: Elisabeth Koll

Keywords: History; Human Capital; Rural Scope; Society; China

Research Summary

Leadership and Leadership Development: An Ontological Approach

This summarizes my research program over the last twelve years (with my co-investigators Werner Erhard, Steve Zaffron, and more recently Kari Granger) in which the objective has been to rigorously distinguish leader and leadership and to create a technology for... View Details

24 Mar 2002
Lessons from the Classroom

Case Study: A Lesson in Private Venture Financing

With few opportunities for IPOs, a developing infrastructure, low transparency, and a limited labor market, the environment for private venture financing in Africa could be described as "challenging" at best. Yet if the demands... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

December 2023 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Yellow Corporation: On the Verge of Bankruptcy

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Edward A. Meyer

Yellow Corporation, one of the country’s oldest and largest less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers, was nearing its 100th anniversary in 2024. Whether it would reach that milestone, however, was uncertain as the company was attempting to restructure its operations to... View Details

Keywords: Labor Unions; Labor and Management Relations; Capital Structure; Restructuring; Financial Management; Ethics; Borrowing and Debt; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Financial Strategy; Truck Transportation; Change Management; Transportation Industry; Shipping Industry; United States

05 Dec 2013
What Do You Think?

Is Walmart Defying Economic Gravity?

of very large challenges, including that of how to grow a nearly half-trillion-dollar organization charged with everything from bribery in its Mexican operation to discrimination in its labor policies, and blamed for low wages and... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Retail

10 Mar 2008
Research & Ideas

Encouraging Entrepreneurs: Lessons for Government Policy

Danish labor market across time (the data tracks when a person enters a company and when he or she moves between periods of employment and self-employment), Nanda and Sørensen found that rates of entrepreneurship are higher in... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

12 Oct 1999
Research & Ideas

Rapid Response: Inside the Retailing Revolution

years of extensive study, including a comprehensive database compiled under the aegis of the Harvard Center for Textile and Apparel Research (HCTAR). The keys to success in an age of product proliferation, the authors found, are no longer economies of scale and cheap... View Details

Keywords: by James E. Aisner; Apparel & Accessories; Fashion; Consumer Products; Manufacturing; Retail

14 Aug 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, August 14, 2018

growth at the firm level. Importantly, however, we also document substantial crowding out of non-treated firms' employment within local labor markets. While the overall net employment effect was positive, it was close to zero in tight... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

25 May 2018
Working Paper Summaries

Trust and Disintermediation: Evidence from an Online Freelance Marketplace

Keywords: by Grace Gu and Feng Zhu; Service

2024
Article

Learning Under Random Distributional Shifts

By: Kirk Bansak, Elisabeth Paulson and Dominik Rothenhäusler

Algorithmic assignment of refugees and asylum seekers to locations within host countries has gained attention in recent years, with implementations in the U.S. and Switzerland. These approaches use data on past arrivals to generate machine learning models that can... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Refugees; Employment

2024
Working Paper

Health, Human Capital Development and the Longevity of Japanese Elites Since 710

By: Tom Nicholas and Hiroshi Shimizu

We examine the lifespan of over 40,000 elites in Japan born between 710 and 1912, including samurai warriors, feudal lords, business, political, cultural, and religious leaders at the apex of the social hierarchy. Japanese elites experienced increases in lifespan about... View Details

Keywords: Life Expectancy; Status and Position; Health; History; Human Capital; Japan

January 1995 (Revised June 1995)
Case

Managing Conflict in a Diverse Workplace

Consists of several vignettes and discussion points around issues of conflict in the workplace. Issues presented are differences of race, gender, nationality, culture, religion; access to power, training, advancement; tolerance of style of management, language,... View Details

Keywords: Conflict Management; Working Conditions; Diversity Characteristics

March 1995 (Revised April 1995)
Case

UAL Corporation

By: Stuart C. Gilson and Jeremy Cott

In the largest attempted employee-buyout in history, a large U.S. commercial airline seeks substantial wage concessions from its employees in return for 53% stake in the airline's commmon stock and guaranteed seats on the board of directors. Management must convince... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Corporate Governance; Labor; Wages; Management Teams; Employee Ownership; Business and Shareholder Relations; Strategy; Value; United States

05 Apr 2011
First Look

First Look: April 5

PublicationsThe Labor Illusion: How Operational Transparency Increases Perceived Value Authors:Ryan W. Buell and Michael I. Norton Publication:Management Science (forthcoming) Abstract A ubiquitous feature of even the fastest... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

23 Jul 2018
Research & Ideas

The Open Office Revolution Has Gone Too Far

SolStock As of this July, what do Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Associate Professor Ethan Bernstein have in common? They’ve all published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Bernstein’s new paper, The Impact of the ‘Open’ Workspace on Human... View Details

Keywords: Re: Ethan S. Bernstein

05 Oct 2016
Research & Ideas

Why Don't More People Get Flu Shots at Work?

With a yearly price tag of roughly $87 billion in lost productivity and adverse health consequences, the flu is nothing to sneeze at. It’s no surprise that workplace flu vaccination clinics have gained popularity as employers try to keep the illness from decimating... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Health

October 2019 (Revised March 2021)
Background Note

Modern Automation (B): Robotics

By: William R. Kerr and James Palano

Driven largely by advances in perception and situational awareness, robots in the 2010s were gaining functionality that allowed them to be applied to fundamentally new types of work. The expanding range of new tasks that could be completed by machines had significant... View Details

Keywords: Robotics; Artificial Intelligence; Future Of Work; Technology Commercialization; Information Technology; Commercialization; Employment; AI and Machine Learning

2007
Working Paper

The New Market for Federal Judicial Law Clerks

By: Christopher Avery, Christine Jolls, Richard Posner and Alvin E. Roth

In the past, judges have often hired applicants for judicial clerkships as early as the beginning of the second year of law school for positions commencing approximately two years down the road. In the new hiring regime for federal judicial law clerks, by contrast,... View Details

Keywords: Law; Education; Employment; Selection and Staffing; Marketplace Matching