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October 2022 (Revised September 2024)
Case

To SFO or Not To SFO: The Tolman Family Selects a Family Office Strategy

By: Lauren Cohen, Hao Gao, Victoria Alvarez-Arango, Grace Headinger, Mili Sanwalka and Anna Yuan

Peter Tolman, a first-generation investment professional, debated which family office strategy to adopt for managing his family’s assets. As the sole steward of his family’s wealth, he sought to conserve and grow his family’s wealth for him, his wife, and his two very... View Details

Keywords: Family Office; Investment Strategy; U.S.; Canada; Family Business; Financial Strategy; Investment; Strategy; Diversification; Management; Financial Services Industry; United States; Canada

25 Aug 2017
News

What Iraq's Kurdish Peshmerga Believe

June 2008 (Revised April 2013)
Case

Bernd Beetz: Creating the New Coty

By: Geoffrey Jones and David Kiron

Considers the creation of the world's largest fragrance company by Bernd Beetz, appointed chief executive of Coty Inc. in 2001. In 1990 the German consumer goods company Benkiser began acquiring fragrance and cosmetics brands with the intent of developing a beauty... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Entrepreneurship; Globalized Firms and Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Germany; United States

25 Nov 2008
First Look

First Look: November 25, 2008

http://papers.nber.org/papers/w14483 The Flattening Firm and Product Market Competition: The Effect of Trade Liberalization Authors: Maria Guadalupe and Julie M. Wulf Abstract This paper establishes a causal effect of competition from... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

November 2017
Case

Outrageous Ambition: Duke University

By: William C. Kirby and Yuanzhuo Wang

Duke University had grown from a one room schoolhouse in rural North Carolina in 1859 to one of the leading research universities in the U.S. and the world. Since the late 1950s, Duke’s leaders had consciously used the process of strategic planning to guide the... View Details

September 2004 (Revised May 2006)
Case

Bohemian Crowns: Ceskoslovenska Obchodni Banka (A)

By: Rawi E. Abdelal, Vincent Dessain and Monika Stachowiak

Tells the story of the Czech transition from a centrally planned to a free market economy, describing the first economic reforms, the fixed-exchange rate regime, and the voucher privatization. Also explains why, in the middle of the 1990s, the Czech Republic... View Details

Keywords: History; Currency Exchange Rate; Credit; Government Administration; Decisions; Economic Systems; Expansion; Mergers and Acquisitions; Developing Countries and Economies; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry; Czech Republic

October 2019 (Revised November 2019)
Case

C16 Biosciences: Lab-Grown Palm Oil

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Olivia Hull

Synthetic biology start-up C16 Biosciences wants to solve a big problem: replace palm oil, a major contributor to deforestation and climate change, with a lab-grown substitute. CEO Shara Ticku has ambitious plans to supply her lab-grown palm oil to food manufacturers,... View Details

Keywords: Science-Based Business; Environmental Sustainability; Social Entrepreneurship; Product Development; Product Positioning; Venture Capital; Strategy; Decision Making; Food and Beverage Industry; Consumer Products Industry

2021
Working Paper

CEO Activism, Consumer Polarization, and Firm Performance

By: Young Hou and Christopher W. Poliquin

CEOs are increasingly engaging in activism on controversial social and political issues that do not directly affect their businesses. Simultaneously, the general public is increasingly polarized. We examine how CEO support for gun control after two mass shootings... View Details

Keywords: CEO Activism; Guns; Polarization; Non-market Strategy; Social Issues; Leadership; Consumer Behavior; Performance

April 2020 (Revised May 2021)
Case

Middlebury College: Energy2028

By: Brian Trelstad, Michael Norris and John McKinley

In 2018, Middlebury College’s board of trustees is considering a proposal called Energy2028 that would push the small, liberal arts and sciences college in Vermont to become a net zero carbon emitter, decrease energy usage by 25%, divest fossil fuels from its... View Details

Keywords: Divestment; Energy; Higher Education; Energy Conservation; Climate Change

Spring 2024
Article

One Aspirational Future for India’s Higher Education Sector

By: Tarun Khanna

Several recent encouraging experiments in Indian higher education suggest a plausible aspirational path toward a more salubrious future than that suggested by an otherwise struggling system. Four case studies of privately conceived and funded universities each exhibit... View Details

Keywords: Higher Education; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; India

2024
Working Paper

The Seeds of Ideology: Historical Immigration and Political Preferences in the United States

By: Paola Giuliano and Marco Tabellini

We study the long run effects of immigration on American political ideology. Exploiting cross-county variation in the presence of European immigrants between 1900 and 1930, we establish a novel result: historical European immigration is associated with stronger... View Details

Keywords: Political Ideology; Preferences For Redistribution; Cultural Transmission; Immigration; History; Values and Beliefs; Welfare; United States

SSRN

2008
Book

Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters for America—and How We Can Get More of It

By: Arthur C. Brooks

Who are the happiest Americans? Surveys show that religious people think they are happier than secularists, and secularists think they are happier than religious people. Liberals believe they are happier than conservatives, and conservatives disagree. In fact, almost... View Details

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April 2017 (Revised February 2023)
Case

Helena Rubinstein: Making Up the Modern Woman

By: Geoffrey Jones and Kathy Choi

This case examines the entrepreneurial career of Helena Rubinstein before 1938. Rubinstein is widely considered the single most important female entrepreneur in the United States in the 20th century. She was born in Poland but immigrated to Australia where she started... View Details

Keywords: Female Entrepreneur; Brands and Branding; Luxury; Entrepreneurship; Personal Development and Career; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry

September 2019
Article

Bill McKibben’s Influence on U.S. Climate Change Discourse: Shifting Field-Level Debates Through Radical Flank Effects

By: Todd Schifeling and Andrew J. Hoffman

This article examines the influence of radical flank actors in shifting field-level debates by increasing the legitimacy of preexisting but peripheral issues. Using network text analysis, we apply this conceptual model to the climate change debate in the United States... View Details

Keywords: Government Legislation; Climate Change; Public Opinion; Power and Influence; Policy; United States

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Land reforms have been critical to the development of Chinese capitalism over the last several decades, yet land in China remains publicly owned. This book explores the political logic of reforms to land ownership and control, accounting for how land development... View Details

11 Sep 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Banking Deregulations, Financing Constraints and Firm Entry Size

Keywords: by William R. Kerr & Ramana Nanda; Banking

2023
Article

Let's Coordinate! The Reinforcement of a ‘Liberal Bastion’ within European Industrial Federations, 1978-1987

By: Sabine Pitteloud

This article focuses on the establishment in the 1970s of a new international private governance forum, the so-called ‘Interlaken Conferences’, which gathered together the leading figures of the Industrial Federations of the Federal Republic of Germany, Austria,... View Details

Keywords: Business Interest Association; Lobbying; Neo-Liberalism; Neocorporatism; Coordination; Economic Policy; Business and Government Relations; Labor Unions; Economics; Policy; Europe