Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(11,462)
- Faculty Publications (3,551)
- May 2024
- Article
Financial Innovation in the 21st Century: Evidence from U.S. Patents
By: Josh Lerner, Amit Seru, Nick Short and Yuan Sun
We develop a unique dataset of 24 thousand U.S. finance patents granted over the last two decades to explore the evolution and production of financial innovation. We use machine learning to identify the financial patents and extensively audit the results to ensure... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Old Moats for New Models: Openness, Control, and Competition in Generative AI
By: Pierre Azoulay, Joshua L. Krieger and Abhishek Nagaraj
Drawing insights from the field of innovation economics, we discuss the likely competitive environment shaping generative AI advances. Central to our analysis are the concepts of appropriability—whether firms in the industry are able to control the knowledge generated... View Details
- May 2024
- Article
Relational Attributions for One’s Own Resilience Predict Compassion for Others
By: Rachel Ruttan, Ting Zhang, Sivahn Barli and Katherine DeCelles
Existing work on attribution theory distinguishes between external and internal attributions (i.e., “I overcame adversity due to luck” vs. “my own effort”). We introduce the construct of relational resilience attributions (i.e., “due to help from other people”) as a... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
What Is Newsworthy? Theory and Evidence
By: Luis Armona, Matthew Gentzkow, Emir Kamenica and Jesse M. Shapiro
We study newsworthiness in theory and practice. We focus on situations in which a news outlet observes the realization of a state of the world and must decide whether to report the realization to a consumer who pays an opportunity cost to consume the report. The... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Dusting Off the Old Ones: Drug Licensing to Startups, Innovation Success and Efficiency
By: Mosab Hammoudeh, Joshua Lev Krieger and Jiajie Xu
This paper investigates whether moving R&D from incumbents to startups can increase innovation. Using comprehensive drug development data, we examine the outcomes of drug projects licensed from large firms to startups. We find that these projects licensed to startups... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Does the Case for Private Equity Still Hold?
By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Philipp Chvanov
Private Equity (“PE”) received a 10-fold increase in capital flows since the Great Financial Crisis (“GFC”) Investors sought higher nominal returns relative to those they could obtain in the public capital markets. This paper questions the fundamental assumptions... View Details
- April 2024
- Article
Decision Authority and the Returns to Algorithms
By: Hyunjin Kim, Edward L. Glaeser, Andrew Hillis, Scott Duke Kominers and Michael Luca
We evaluate a pilot in an Inspections Department to explore the returns to a pair of algorithms that varied in their sophistication. We find that both algorithms provided substantial prediction gains, suggesting that even simple data may be helpful. However, these... View Details
- April–May 2024
- Article
Gone with the Big Data: Institutional Lender Demand for Private Information
By: Jung Koo Kang
I explore whether big-data sources can crowd out the value of private information acquired through lending relationships. Institutional lenders have been shown to exploit their access to borrowers’ private information by trading on it in financial markets. As a shock... View Details
- April 2024
- Article
Speaking up and Taking Action: Psychological Safety and Joint Problem-solving Orientation in Safety Improvement
By: Hassina Bahadurzada, Michaela J. Kerrissey and Amy C. Edmondson
Healthcare organizations face stubborn challenges in ensuring patient safety and mitigating clinician turnover. This paper aims to advance theory and research on patient safety by elucidating how the role of psychological safety in patient safety can be enhanced with... View Details
- March 2024 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
Coursera's Foray into GenAI
By: Suraj Srinivasan, Michael Parzen and Radhika Kak
In early 2023, Maggioncalda, CEO of US EdTech firm Coursera, launched Project Genesis to develop a strategy for incorporating GenAI capabilities into the firm's offerings, asking his teams to focus on value to the firm and cost of implementation. The team identified... View Details
- March 2024 (Revised May 2024)
- Case
Amperity: First-Party Data at a Crossroads
By: Elie Ofek, Hema Yoganarasimhan and Alexis Lefort
In the summer of 2023, Amperity management was facing a critical decision on its future direction. Given the dramatic changes occurring within the digital advertising ecosystem, as concerns over consumer privacy placed limits on the ability to engage in third-party... View Details
- March 2024 (Revised January 2025)
- Case
Hippo: Weathering the Storm of the Home Insurance Crisis
By: Lauren Cohen, Grace Headinger and Sophia Pan
Rick McCathron, CEO of Hippo, considered how the firm’s underwriting model could account for the effects of climate change. Along with providing smart home packages, targeting risk-friendly customers, and using data-driven pricing, the Insurtech used technologically... View Details
Keywords: Fintech; Underwriters; Big Data; Insurance Companies; Business Model Design; Weather Insurance; Business Model; Forecasting and Prediction; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology; Technological Innovation; Natural Environment; Natural Disasters; Weather; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Business Earnings; Insurance; Social Issues; Insurance Industry; United States; California
- 2024
- Working Paper
The Fading Light of Democratic Capitalism: How Pervasive Cronyism and Restricted Suffrage Are Destroying Democratic Capitalism as a National Ideal…and What to Do about It
What are we to do about declining public trust and confidence in democratic capitalism, which many citizens consider a cornerstone of our national ideology and identity? While the answer is not entirely clear, I argue in this essay that any effort aimed at restoring... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Appropriate Entrepreneurship? The Rise of China and the Developing World
By: Josh Lerner, Junxi Liu, Jacob Moscona and David Yang
Global innovation and entrepreneurship has traditionally been dominated by a handful
of high-income countries, especially the US. This paper investigates the international
consequences of the rise of a new hub for innovation, focusing on the dramatic
growth of... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Anytime-Valid Inference in Linear Models and Regression-Adjusted Causal Inference
By: Michael Lindon, Dae Woong Ham, Martin Tingley and Iavor I. Bojinov
Linear regression adjustment is commonly used to analyze randomized controlled experiments due to its efficiency and robustness against model misspecification. Current testing and interval estimation procedures leverage the asymptotic distribution of such estimators to... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Quantifying the Value of Iterative Experimentation
By: Iavor I Bojinov and Jialiang Mao
Over the past decade, most technology companies and a growing number of conventional firms have adopted online experimentation (or A/B testing) into their product development process. Initially, A/B testing was deployed as a static procedure in which an experiment was... View Details
- March 2024
- Case
East Rock Capital: 'Talent Is the Best Asset Class'
By: Boris Groysberg, Sarah L. Abbott and Izzy Yeoh
Adam Shapiro and Graham Duncan launched East Rock Capital, LLC in 2006 with a seed investment from Stuart Miller, executive chairman of Lennar Corporation. East Rock managed long-term assets for high-net-worth families, primarily working with external managers who had... View Details
- March 2024
- Module Note
Accounting Standards for the 21st Century
By: Jonas Heese
Over the past two decades, accounting standards have evolved to meet the demands of a rapidly changing business environment. This module note focuses on understanding the impact of these standards on measuring firm performance and financial position in the context of a... View Details
- 2024
- Book
Deals: The Economic Structure of Business Transactions
By: Guhan Subramanian and Michael Klausner
Drawing on real-life cases from a wide range of industries, two acclaimed experts offer a sophisticated but accessible guide to business deals, designed to maximize value for your side.
Business transactions take widely varying forms—from multibillion-dollar... View Details
Business transactions take widely varying forms—from multibillion-dollar... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Exports in Disguise? Trade Rerouting During the U.S.-China Trade War
By: Ebehi Iyoha, Edmund Malesky, Jaya Wen and Sung-Ju Wu
This paper introduces a new measure of tariff evasion through rerouting and applies it to the
2018 U.S.–China trade war, focusing on Vietnam as a transit country. We use transaction-level trade data and define rerouting as the flow of a granular eight-digit Harmonized... View Details