Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(896)
- Faculty Publications (202)
- 2013
- Chapter
The Global and the Local in the Beauty Industry: A Historical Perspective
By: G. Jones
This chapter explores the impact of the global beauty industry on beauty ideals. It shows that as the industry internationalized from the late nineteenth century, there was a homogenization of beauty ideals and practices around the world. Western and white beauty... View Details
- 2013
- Chapter
Market Imperfections and Sustainable Competitive Advantage
By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Dennis Yao
This chapter reviews the main theories in strategic management that seek to explain persistent differences in profitability across companies. We argue that these differences are ultimately explained by market imperfections. Studying differences in financial performance... View Details
- June 2013
- Article
Dysfunction in the Boardroom: Understanding the Persistent Gender Gap at the Highest Levels
By: Boris Groysberg and Deborah Bell
The article examines the gender gap that is present in boardrooms in U.S. corporations and internationally in 2013 as more women attempt to reach executive-level positions. Countries in the European Union are attempting to institute laws regarding the minimum... View Details
- December 2012
- Article
Structural Impediments to African Growth? New Evidence from Real Wages in British Africa, 1880–1965
By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg
Recent literature on the historical determinants of African poverty has emphasized structural impediments to African growth, such as adverse geographical conditions, weak institutions, or ethnic heterogeneity. But has African poverty been a persistent historical... View Details
Keywords: Living Standards; Real Wages; Labor Market; Colonial Institutions; Economic Growth; Wages; History; Africa
- 2015
- Working Paper
Entrepreneurship and Urban Growth: An Empirical Assessment with Historical Mines
By: Edward L. Glaeser, Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr
We study entrepreneurship and growth through the lens of U.S. cities. Initial entrepreneurship correlates strongly with urban employment growth, but endogeneity bedevils interpretation. Chinitz (1961) hypothesized that coal mines near cities led to specialization in... View Details
- 2012
- Article
Mutual Fund Trading Pressure: Firm-Level Stock Price Impact and Timing of SEOs
By: Mozaffar N. Khan, Leonid Kogan and George Serafeim
In tests of the equity market timing theory of external finance, the prior literature has used overvaluation identifiers such as high market-to-book and high prior returns that are likely correlated with other determinants of SEOs. We use price pressure resulting from... View Details
- 2012
- Working Paper
What Do Managers Do? Exploring Persistent Performance Differences among Seemingly Similar Enterprises
By: Robert Gibbons and Rebecca Henderson
Social networks and social groups have both been seen as important to discouraging malfeasance and supporting the global pro-social norms that underlie social order, but have typically been treated either as pure substitutes or as having completely independent effects.... View Details
- 2012
- Working Paper
How Short-Termism Invites Corruption—And What to Do About It
Researchers and business leaders have long decried short-termism: the excessive focus of executives of publicly traded companies-along with fund managers and other investors-on short-term results. The central concern is that short-termism discourages long-term... View Details
- January 2012 (Revised April 2015)
- Case
India 2014: The Challenges of Governance
By: Lakshmi Iyer and Richard H. K. Vietor
In January 2012, the government of India faced significant challenges to achieving three key objectives of high growth, inclusive development, and improved governance. The economy was experiencing a growth slowdown, persistently high inflation, and infrastructure and... View Details
- 2012
- Chapter
Institutional Pressures and Organizational Characteristics: Implications for Environmental Strategy
By: Magali A. Delmas and Michael W. Toffel
A broad literature has emerged over the past decades demonstrating that firms' environmental strategies and practices are influenced by stakeholders and institutional pressures. Such findings are consistent with institutional sociology, which emphasizes the importance... View Details
- 2012
- Chapter
What Do Managers Do? Exploring Persistent Performance Differences among Seemingly Similar Enterprises
By: Rebecca Henderson and Robert Gibbons
- 2013
- Working Paper
The Dynamics of Firm Lobbying
By: William R. Kerr, William F. Lincoln and Prachi Mishra
We study the determinants of the dynamics of firm lobbying behavior using a panel data set covering 1998–2006. Our data exhibit three striking facts: (i) few firms lobby, (ii) lobbying status is strongly associated with firm size, and (iii) lobbying status is highly... View Details
- March 2011
- Article
What Do Dividends Tell Us About Earnings Quality
By: Douglas Skinner and Eugene F. Soltes
Over the past 30 years, there have been significant changes in the distribution of earnings (cross-sectional variation has increased, with increasing left skewness) as well as in corporate payout policy, with many fewer firms paying dividends and the emergence of stock... View Details
Keywords: Distribution; Business Earnings; Change; Policy; Stocks; Investment Return; Performance Consistency; Quality
- February 2011
- Article
Bounded Ethicality in Negotiations
By: Max Bazerman
Routine and persistent acts of dishonesty prevail in everyday life, yet most people resist shining a critical moral light on their own behavior, thereby maintaining and oftentimes inflating images of themselves as moral individuals. We overview the psychology that... View Details
- Article
Temporal View of the Costs and Benefits of Self-Deception
By: Zoe Chance, Michael I. Norton, Francesca Gino and Dan Ariely
Researchers have documented many cases in which individuals rationalize their regrettable actions. Four experiments examine situations in which people go beyond merely explaining away their misconduct to actively deceiving themselves. We find that those who exploit... View Details
- December 2010
- Case
Everything or Nothing: Martti Ahtisaari and the Aceh Negotiations (A)
By: James K. Sebenius and Alex Green
In early 2005, Martti Ahtisaari planned negotiations to end the decades-long conflict between Acehnese insurgents and the Indonesian government that had claimed thousands of lives. The "modern" phase of the insurgency by the fighters from the Free Aceh Movement that... View Details
- Article
On the Origin of Shared Beliefs (and Corporate Culture)
This article shows how corporate culture, in the sense of shared beliefs and values, originates (often unintentionally) through screening, self-sorting, and manager-directed joint learning. It shows that such culture will be stronger among more important employees and... View Details
- April 2010 (Revised January 2013)
- Case
California's Budget Crises, Tax Reform, and Domestic and International Tax Competition
By: Matthew C. Weinzierl and Jacob Kuipers
How do (and how should) governments design fiscal policies to compete in a globalized economy while meeting internal policy priorities including redistribution? In 2009, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger repeatedly declared fiscal emergencies as California's state budget... View Details
- April 2010
- Article
Performance Persistence in Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital
This paper presents evidence of performance persistence in entrepreneurship. We show that entrepreneurs with a track record of success are much more likely to succeed than first-time entrepreneurs and those who have previously failed. In particular, they exhibit... View Details
- Article
Signaling Firm Performance Through Financial Statement Presentation: An Analysis Using Special Items
By: Edward J. Riedl and Suraj Srinivasan
This paper investigates whether managers' presentation of special items within the financial statements reflects economic performance or opportunism. Specifically, we assess special items presented as a separate line item on the income statement (income statement... View Details