Publications

April 2011
Teaching Note

European Union: The Road to Lisbon (TN)

By: J. Gunnar Trumbull and Diane Choi

Teaching Note for 711032. View Details

Keywords: Currency; Financial Crisis; Problems and Challenges; Performance Effectiveness; Portugal

2011
Working Paper

Why Fears about Municipal Credit Are Overblown

Highly publicized predictions of 50-100 municipal defaults have caused anxiety among municipal bond investors. While there is some chance that negative investor sentiment will lead to further spread widening, the probability of the kind of widespread default that would... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Borrowing and Debt; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Bonds; Investment Return; City

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09 Jan 2019
Research & Ideas

The UK Needs a Bold Strategy Around Competition to Survive Brexit

is that the membership in the European Union has too often been a convenient scapegoat and distracted from the failure of government to mount a credible and actionable economic strategy. Hit hard by the 2008 economic View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

01 Feb 1997
News

Mexico on the Brink: A Conversation with Juan Enriquez-Cabot (MBA '86)

upheaval - financial collapse, peasant uprisings, and political violence. What's going on? Some people see the repression in Mexico's political system and call the system authoritarian. Others see its freedoms and label it an emerging... View Details

June 2011 (Revised September 2011)
Case

Tough Choices for the Illinois Pension System

By: Robert C. Pozen and Brij S. Khurana

This case describes the precarious fiscal situation of the Illinois public pension system in the spring of 2009 and the accounting of pension plans by non-federal municipalities more generally. In February 2009, in the midst of a recession, recently-appointed Governor... View Details

Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Financial Crisis; Financial Liquidity; Annuities; Financial Management; Financing and Loans; Taxation; Strategic Planning; Problems and Challenges; Illinois

01 Feb 2002
News

Q&A: Wrestling with the Unthinkable

to businesses about what can happen when a crisis hits and they're not ready. A crisis could be triggered by terrorism but also by an earthquake, a product recall, or anything that constitutes a serious risk... View Details

Keywords: counterterrorism; terrorism; National Security and International Affairs; Government

01 Sep 2020
News

Righting the Ship

very quickly from mistakes. Third, you’re going to need very serious, courageous leaders with worthy missions, and if you don’t have them, you need to change out your people. This crisis calls for leaders who are able to rise above the... View Details

18 Oct 2021
Blog Post

Embracing Activism for Social Change

behavioral health professionals in situations where their expertise would make a critical difference in resolving crisis situations, or even preventing them in the first place,” explains 2020–2021 HBS Leadership Fellow Sarika Mendu (MBA... View Details

01 Sep 2009
News

Consumer Finance Makes HBS Debut

in the economic crisis that hit last fall. Howell and I have been working on these issues for a decade. With the economic crisis, the issues of household debt, retail financial services, and regulation in... View Details

Keywords: Roger Thompson; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services; Finance

November 1997
Case

Herbert Hoover (B)

By: Louis T. Wells Jr.

Presents a character sketch of Herbert Hoover, along with Hoover's views on the cause of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Illustrates the political economy of the period and presents different interpretations of the course of the Great Depression. A rewritten version... View Details

Keywords: Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Financial Crisis; Government and Politics; Personal Characteristics

December 2008 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Olam International

By: David E. Bell and Mary Shelman

In 20 years, Sunny Verghese had built Singapore-based Olam International from a small Nigerian export company into a $5 billion global leader in agricultural commodities with a core competence in Africa. Olam's growth had come by pursuing product and geographic... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Trade; Growth and Development Strategy; Supply Chain; Expansion; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Africa; Singapore

06 Nov 2019
Op-Ed

Torched Planet: The Business Case to Reinvent Almost Everything

The world is. on. fire. The Earth is burning. We only have a little time to arrest climate change, and if we fail to do so the consequences will be both dire and irreversible. We have the technology and the resources to fix things, if we want to. We even have a... View Details

Keywords: by Rebecca Henderson; Energy

29 Apr 2008
Research Event

Venture Capital

Date: January 9-10, 2008 Faculty Chairs: Josh Lerner, William Sahlman Faculty Summary Report: Colloquium: Venture Capital What were the overall goals of the colloquium? The VC Conference is one in a series of 14 alumni and practitioner... View Details

Keywords: by Josh Lerner; Financial Services

01 Jun 2010
News

Devilish Plot

Devilish plot: This year’s HBS Show, The Devil Wears Crimson (here in rehearsal), centered on an anonymous gossip blogger who wreaks havoc at HBS as she tries to uncover who caused the financial crisis. When she learns that her... View Details

Keywords: Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services

2013
Working Paper

Did Bank Distress Stifle Innovation During the Great Depression?

By: Ramana Nanda and Tom Nicholas

We find a negative relationship between bank distress and the level, quality and trajectory of firm-level innovation during the Great Depression, particularly for R&D firms operating in capital intensive industries. However, we also show that because a sufficient... View Details

Keywords: Great Depression; R＆D; Bank Distress; Patents; Research and Development; Financial Crisis; Innovation and Invention; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry; United States

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01 Sep 2016
News

The Untold Story of the US Auto Bailout

The US automotive industry collapse was one of the most important business stories to come out of the 2008 financial crisis—and like so many events of that time, it was big on headlines but short on nuance.... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; Transportation Equipment Manufacturing; Manufacturing

December 1998
Case

Origins of National Income Accounting

By: David A. Moss and Joseph P Gownder

Set in the Great Depression, this case explores the origins of national income accounting in the United States. Highlights Senator La Follette's 1932 proposal for the federal government to begin collecting national income statistics. View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Financial Crisis; Analytics and Data Science; Mathematical Methods; United States