Publications

Article

Bilateral Contracts

By: Jerry R. Green and Seppo Honkapohja

A mathematical characterization of self-enforcing bilateral contracts is given. Contracts where both parties exercise some control over the quantity traded can sometimes be superior to contracts that rest control entirely with one side. Some qualitative characteristics... View Details

Keywords: Contracts; Mathematical Methods

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April 2007
Article

Knowledge-based Innovation: Emergence and Embedding of New Practice Areas in Management Consulting Firms

By: N. Anand, H. K. Gardner and T. Morris

How do innovative knowledge-based structures emerge and become embedded in organizations? We drew on theories of knowledge-intensive firms, communities of practice, and professional service firms to analyze multiple cases of new practice area creation in management... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge; Innovation and Invention; Management Practices and Processes; Organizational Structure; Economy; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Experience and Expertise; Service Operations; Consulting Industry

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2007
Working Paper

Fair (and Not So Fair) Division

By: John W. Pratt

Drawbacks of existing procedures are illustrated and a method of efficient fair division is proposed that avoids them. Given additive participants' utilities, each item is priced at the geometric mean (or some other function) of its two highest valuations. The... View Details

Keywords: Fairness; Price

18 Jun 2024
Research & Ideas

Central Banks Missed Inflation Red Flags. This Pricing Model Could Help.

doctoral student at the University of Chicago. The ‘state’ of the price gap matters Economists generally use two main data models to detect inflation and predict the pace at which retailers raise prices: time dependent and state... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Financial Services; Banking

March 1992 (Revised March 1998)
Case

Adam Opel AG (B)

By: Hugo Uyterhoeven

Should General Motors make a strategic manufacturing investment in East Germany after becoming number one in this market through an aggressive marketing strategy? The proposal, dependent on government assistance and based on a number of uncertain economic assumptions,... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Investment; Government and Politics; Leadership; Marketing Strategy; Production; Organizational Structure; Strategy; Germany

August 2009 (Revised January 2012)
Case

Steel Street

By: Arthur I Segel, William J. Poorvu, Ben Creo and Justin Seth Ginsburgh

The case involves repositioning an old 6-story warehouse in Pittsburgh and many of the issues of rehabilitation and selecting and managing the development team especially in a world of capital market uncertainty. The case also demonstrates the alignment of interests of... View Details

Keywords: Construction; Capital Markets; Financial Management; Investment; Property; Urban Development; Real Estate Industry; Pittsburgh

2022
Working Paper

The Disagreement Problem in Explainable Machine Learning: A Practitioner's Perspective

By: Satyapriya Krishna, Tessa Han, Alex Gu, Javin Pombra, Shahin Jabbari, Steven Wu and Himabindu Lakkaraju

As various post hoc explanation methods are increasingly being leveraged to explain complex models in high-stakes settings, it becomes critical to develop a deeper understanding of if and when the explanations output by these methods disagree with each other, and how... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Analytics and Data Science; Mathematical Methods

08 Mar 2022
Blog Post

Recalling My First Cold Call: A Conversation with Second-Year Students

The start of 2022 not only marks a new year but also the graduation year of the MBA Class of 2022. As they begin their last semester, we asked EC (second-year) students about their first cold call, case method teaching, and how both... View Details

Article

Valuation of Bankrupt Firms

By: S. C. Gilson, E. S. Hotchkiss and R. S. Ruback

This study compares the market value of firms that reorganize in bankruptcy with estimates of value based on management's published cash flow projections. We estimate firm values using models that have been shown in other contexts to generate relatively precise... View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Business Ventures; Insolvency and Bankruptcy

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Research Summary

Optimal Heteroskedasticity Autocorrelation Consistent Covariance Estimators for GMM Weighting Matrices

This paper considers the optimal bias-variance tradeoff for estimators of the long run covariance matrix used to generate GMM weighting matrices in time series contexts. Minimum MSE HAC estimators do not yield minimum MSE GMM estimators. Instead, achieving... View Details

26 Nov 2001
Research & Ideas

How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers

American Big Three and many other auto companies had done major benchmarking studies, and they and other companies had tried to implement their own forms of the Toyota Production System. There is the Ford Production System, the Chrysler Operating System, and View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston; Manufacturing; Transportation; Auto

2022
Article

Exploring Counterfactual Explanations Through the Lens of Adversarial Examples: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis.

By: Martin Pawelczyk, Chirag Agarwal, Shalmali Joshi, Sohini Upadhyay and Himabindu Lakkaraju

As machine learning (ML) models become more widely deployed in high-stakes applications, counterfactual explanations have emerged as key tools for providing actionable model explanations in practice. Despite the growing popularity of counterfactual explanations, a... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning Models; Counterfactual Explanations; Adversarial Examples; Mathematical Methods

22 Nov 2023
Research & Ideas

Humans vs. Machines: Untangling the Tasks AI Can (and Can't) Handle

Knowing when to use artificial intelligence and when to rely on the human mind is a shifting fine line, one delineated by new research that shows considerable benefit and speed from generative AI—if it’s applied to the right tasks. What... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Information Technology; Technology

2023
Working Paper

Nailing Prediction: Experimental Evidence on the Value of Tools in Predictive Model Development

By: Daniel Yue, Paul Hamilton and Iavor Bojinov

Predictive model development is understudied despite its centrality in modern artificial intelligence and machine learning business applications. Although prior discussions highlight advances in methods (along the dimensions of data, computing power, and algorithms)... View Details

Keywords: Analytics and Data Science

SSRN

Predictive model development is understudied despite its importance to modern businesses. Although prior discussions highlight advances in methods (along the dimensions of data, computing power, and algorithms) as the primary driver of model quality, the value of... View Details

August 2015 (Revised January 2017)
Technical Note

From Correlation to Causation

By: Feng Zhu and Karim R. Lakhani

To make sound business decisions, managers must be comfortable with the concepts of correlation and causation. This background note provides an overview of correlation and causation using examples and explains why the former does not imply the latter. It also describes... View Details

Keywords: Statistics; Regression; Data Analytics; Decisions; Forecasting and Prediction; Judgments

29 Apr 2025
HBS Seminar

Magie Cheng & David Huang

October 1997 (Revised May 1998)
Case

Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division

By: David A. Garvin and Michael Roberto

Describes a senior management team's strategic decision-making process. The division president faces three options for redesigning the process to address several key concerns. The president has extensive quantitative and qualitative data about the process to guide him... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Management Teams; Performance Improvement; Planning; Mathematical Methods; Strategy