Publications

Article

Foreign Competition and Domestic Innovation: Evidence from U.S. Patents

By: David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon H. Hanson, Gary P. Pisano and Pian Shu

Manufacturing accounts for more than three-quarters of U.S. corporate patents. The competitive shock to this sector emanating from China's economic ascent could in theory either augment or stifle U.S. innovation. Using three decades of U.S. patents matched to corporate... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Production; Trade; Competition; Innovation and Invention; United States

November 1993 (Revised November 1994)
Case

Molding the Impossible: the NYPRO/Vistakon Disposable Contact Lens Project

By: Clayton M. Christensen

NYPRO, Inc., one of the world's leading manufacturers of plastic injection-molded products, is asked by the Vistakon Division of Johnson & Johnson to manufacture molds that Vistakon will use to produce disposable contact lenses. The required dimensional tolerances for... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Engineering; Management Practices and Processes; Product Development; Production; Groups and Teams; Manufacturing Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

August 2012 (Revised December 2012)
Case

Telecommunications Regulation and Coordinated Competition in Romania

By: Arthur Daemmrich, Alex Radu and Ana Sarbu

Leaders of the Romanian telecommunications agency must decide about a proposed international merger and how to structure bandwidth auctions critical to the telecoms market. The case is designed to teach about regulatory choices from the perspective of a regulatory... View Details

Keywords: Regulation; Auction Policy; European Union; Government Policy; Cell Phone Industry; Mergers and Acquisitions; Telecommunications Industry; Romania

Forthcoming
Article

Trading Volume Manipulation and Competition Among Centralized Crypto Exchanges

By: Dan Amiran, Evgeny Lyandres and Daniel Rabetti

How competition affects manipulation by firms of information about important attributes of their products and how such information manipulation impacts firms’ short-term and long-term performance are open empirical questions. We use a setting that is especially... View Details

Keywords: Cryptocurrency; Financial Markets; Performance; Competition

Register to Read

October 1999 (Revised April 2003)
Case

International Investor, The: Islamic Finance and the Equate Project

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Mathew M Millett

Equate Petrochemical Co. (Equate) is a joint venture between Union Carbide Corp. and Petrochemical Industries Co. (PIC) for the construction of a $2 billion petrochemical plant in Kuwait. The sponsors began construction in August 1994, using a bridge loan, and are in... View Details

Keywords: International Finance; Project Finance; Religion; Investment; Finance; Mining Industry; Energy Industry; Kuwait

Research Summary

"Creating Competitive Advantage Through Knowledge Management" (with Elie Ofek)

This project explores how the concept of Knowledge Management (KM) is likely to impact competition among professional services firms (e.g. Consultants, Accounting Firms and Advertising Agencies). Assuming that the "KM technology" exhibits economies of scale, first we... View Details

July 1981
Background Note

Competitive Status of the U.S. Automobile Industry--1981: Crisis and Transition

By: Kim B. Clark

Examines the competitive status of the U.S. auto industry in 1979-80. Provides information on the historical background of the current crisis using data on the United States and Japan. Discusses the competitive position of the U.S. industry in terms of productivity,... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage; Auto Industry

11 Oct 2011
Working Paper Summaries

US Healthcare Reform and the Pharmaceutical Industry

Keywords: by Arthur Daemmrich; Pharmaceutical; Health

02 Apr 2024
What Do You Think?

What's Enough to Make Us Happy?

The result is measured in terms of outcomes that may be more or less than we expected, just as customer satisfaction is measured in terms of whether our expectations were met or exceeded. But how many of us take time out periodically to... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

2021
Working Paper

Time Dependency, Data Flow, and Competitive Advantage

By: Ehsan Valavi, Joel Hestness, Marco Iansiti, Newsha Ardalani, Feng Zhu and Karim R. Lakhani

Data is fundamental to machine learning-based products and services and is considered strategic due to its externalities for businesses, governments, non-profits, and more generally for society. It is renowned that the value of organizations (businesses, government... View Details

Keywords: Economics Of AI; Value Of Data; Perishability; Time Dependency; Flow Of Data; Data Strategy; Analytics and Data Science; Value; Strategy; Competitive Advantage

SSRN

November 2007
Article

Measuring Consumer and Competitive Impact with Elasticity Decompositions

Marketing investments are designed to change consumer behavior in ways that help goods compete in the marketplace. Previous research has focused on using elasticity decompositions to measure how these investments affect either consumer decision making or competing... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment Return; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Measurement and Metrics; Mathematical Methods; Competitive Advantage

11 May 2020
Op-Ed

Immigration Policies Threaten American Competitiveness

negative impact on America’s competitiveness that could result. We surveyed thousands of Harvard Business School alumni for their views on immigration. Our alumni were overwhelmingly supportive of skilled immigration. Over 90 percent said... View Details

Keywords: by William R. Kerr

2016
Working Paper

Foreign Competition and Domestic Innovation: Evidence from U.S. Patents

By: David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon H. Hanson, Pian Shu and Gary Pisano

Manufacturing is the locus of U.S. innovation, accounting for more than three quarters of U.S. corporate patents. The rise of import competition from China has represented a major competitive shock to the sector, which in theory could benefit or stifle innovation. In... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Competition; System Shocks; Trade; Innovation and Invention; Manufacturing Industry; China; United States

14 Dec 2010
Op-Ed

Tax US Companies to Spur Spending

United States. President Obama's proposal to allow for immediate expensing of investments could help ensure that firms were tilted toward spending that excess cash on new projects within the United States. A reduction in the corporate tax... View Details

Keywords: by Mihir A. Desai

06 Oct 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Using What We Know: Turning Organizational Knowledge into Team Performance

Keywords: by Bradley R. Staats, Melissa A. Valentine & Amy C. Edmondson; Video Game; Web Services

2018
Working Paper

Creativity Under Fire: The Effects of Competition on Creative Production

By: Daniel P. Gross

Though fundamental to innovation and essential to many industries and occupations, individual creativity has received limited attention as an economic behavior and has historically proven difficult to study. This paper studies the incentive effects of competition on... View Details

Keywords: Incentives; Tournaments; Radical Vs. Incremental Innovation; Motivation and Incentives; Competition; Creativity; Innovation and Invention

SSRN

September 1985 (Revised July 2007)
Case

Population Services International: The Social Marketing Project in Bangladesh

By: V. Kasturi Rangan

Population Services International (PSI) was a not-for-profit agency founded to disseminate family planning information and to market birth control products, primarily in less developed countries seeking to curb their population explosions. In 1976, PSI concluded an... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Health; Marketing Strategy; Social Marketing; Business and Government Relations; Nonprofit Organizations; Bangladesh

May 2020
Article

Inventory Auditing and Replenishment Using Point-of-Sales Data

By: Achal Bassamboo, Antonio Moreno and Ioannis Stamatopoulos

Spoilage, expiration, damage due to employee/customer handling, employee theft, and customer shoplifting usually are not reflected in inventory records. As a result, records often report phantom inventory, i.e., units of good not available for sale. We derive an... View Details

Keywords: Shelf Availability; Inventory Record Inaccuracy; Optimal Replenishment; Retail Analytics; Performance Effectiveness; Analysis; Mathematical Methods