Publications

SSRN

Article

Short-Termism and Capital Flows

By: Jesse M. Fried and Charles C.Y. Wang

During 2007–2016, S&P 500 firms distributed to shareholders $7 trillion via buybacks and dividends, over 96% of their aggregate net income, prompting claims that "short-termism" is impairing firms' ability to invest and innovate. We show that, when taking into account... View Details

Keywords: Short-termism; Quarterly Capitalism; Share Buybacks; Open Market Repurchases; Dividends; Equity Issuances; Seasoned Equity Offerings; Equity Compensastion; Acquisitions; Payout Policy; Capital Flows; Capital Distribution; Working Capital; Business and Shareholder Relations; Acquisition

February 2010
Other Article

The Chilling Effect of Sarbanes Oxley: A Discussion of Sarbanes-Oxley and Corporate Risk-Taking

By: Aiyesha Dey

Bargeron, Lehn, and Zutter [2009. Sarbanes–Oxley and corporate risk-taking. Journal of Accounting and Economics, forthcoming] document that as compared with non-US firms, risk-taking by publicly traded companies in the US declined after the passage of the... View Details

Keywords: Risk; Corporate Risk-taking; Risky Investments; Risk and Uncertainty

Article

Adding Value by Talking More

By: Robert S. Kaplan, Derek A. Haas and Jonathan Warsh

The prevailing fee-for-service payment model has led health care administrators and physician practices to impose severe constraints on the time physicians spend talking, for which they are reimbursed poorly or not at all. New value-based reimbursement models, however,... View Details

Keywords: Value Creation; Cost Management; Health Care and Treatment; Customer Focus and Relationships; Health Industry

September 2014
Article

OSHA Inspections Should Be Welcome: Results from a Natural Field Experiment in California

By: David I. Levine and Michael W. Toffel

For companies with strong internal occupational safety and health auditing programs, OSHA inspections might seem a formality that risk uncovering, at most, nitpicky deviations from the thousands of pages of safety regulations. For those with poor safety practices, OSHA... View Details

Keywords: Business and Government Relations; Operations; Safety; Governance Compliance; United States; California

March 2010
Article

The Role of Independent Invention in U.S. Technological Development, 1880-1930

By: Tom Nicholas

Why did independent inventors account for over half of US patents by 1930 and more than three times the number granted to R&D firms? Using new data on patents and historical patent citations, I show that independents supplied high quality innovations to a... View Details

Keywords: History; Technological Innovation; Patents; Urban Scope; Independent Innovation and Invention; Research and Development; United States

December 2006 (Revised December 2008)
Case

Wireless Generation

Reflecting on an innovative joint venture that his company executed with a public school district in 2004, the CEO of Wireless Generation, a five-year-old, privately held educational technology company, is contemplating the company's product development strategy in... View Details

Keywords: Joint Ventures; Education; Government Legislation; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Development; Business and Government Relations; Education Industry

March 2001 (Revised June 2003)
Case

FDI in China

China is one of the most popular investment destinations in the world. Throughout much of the 1990s, China accounted for 50% of foreign direct investment (FDI) going into developing countries, and between 1994 and 1997, China was the second-largest recipient of FDI in... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Foreign Direct Investment; China

March 2001 (Revised April 2001)
Case

Sustainable Development & Socially Responsible Investing: ABB in 2000

By: Forest L. Reinhardt

Several investment firms and mutual funds position themselves as providers or facilitators of opportunities for socially responsible investment. This case addresses the impact of these firms on publicly traded companies. Focuses on managers at ABB, a large... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Social Enterprise; Corporate Governance; Business Strategy; Capital Markets; Management Teams; Business and Community Relations; Trade; Electronics Industry; Switzerland

December 1998
Background Note

Cash Management Practices in Small Companies

By: H. Kent Bowen, Andrew R. Jassy, Laurence E. Katz, Kevin E. Kelly and Baltej Kochar

Most small business managers claim that cash management is their leading concern. Often walking a tightrope between growth and illiquidity, small business managers face different cash management challenges than their counterparts in larger companies. Compared to larger... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Working Capital; Management Practices and Processes; Organizational Design; Cash; Forecasting and Prediction; Policy; Business Strategy

18 Jul 2013
News

The Tesla Electric Car's Creators Chase Their 'IPhone Moment'

Will a Five-Minute Discussion Change Your Mind? A Countrywide Experiment on Voter Choice in France

This paper provides the first estimate of the effect of door-to-door canvassing on actual electoral outcomes, via a countrywide experiment embedded in Francois Hollande’s campaign in the 2012 French presidential election. While existing experiments randomized... View Details

Saving More in Groups: Field Experimental Evidence from Chile

We test the effectiveness of self-help peer groups as a commitment device for precautionary savings, through two randomized field experiments among 2,687 microentrepreneurs in Chile. The first experiment finds that self-help peer groups are a powerful tool to... View Details

12 Mar 2024
Research & Ideas

Publish or Perish: What the Research Says About Productivity in Academia

participated represented the largest research institutions in the US in 2019, accounting for nearly $500 million in state, federal, and private-sector grants, according to the National Science Foundation. One thing became clear, Myers... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Education

November 2018 (Revised April 2019)
Case

Zespri Grows

By: David E. Bell and Natalie Kindred

Controlling about a third of global kiwifruit exports by volume and nearly half by value in 2018, Zespri was a grower-owned “corporatized cooperative” with the exclusive right to export New Zealand-grown kiwifruit (except to Australia). Zespri did not grow fruit but... View Details

Web

Strategy Explained - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

compete in each distinct business or industry. While both are essential, business units typically account for 90% or more of economic performance—and therefore it is the focus of Michael Porter’s strategy work. The business unit, and not... View Details

14 Nov 2023
Research & Ideas

The Network Effect: Why Companies Should Care About Employees’ LinkedIn Connections

most? Are these connections more important if you are somebody in sales versus someone in research?” You Might Also Like: How to Get Companies to Make Investments That Benefit Everyone Looking For a Job? Some LinkedIn Connections Matter More Than Others Why We Still... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

January 2020
Article

The Long-Run Dynamics of Electricity Demand: Evidence from Municipal Aggregation

By: Tatyana Deryugina, Alexander MacKay and Julian Reif

We study the dynamics of residential electricity demand by exploiting a natural experiment that produced large and long-lasting price changes in over 250 Illinois communities. Using a flexible difference-in-differences matching approach, we estimate that the price... View Details

Keywords: Electricity Demand; Consumption Dynamics; Energy; Policy; Demand and Consumers; Price; Mathematical Methods

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December 2020
Article

The Parable of the Auctioneer: Complexity in Paul R. Milgrom's Discovering Prices

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Alexander Teytelboym

Designing marketplaces in complex settings requires both novel economic theory and real-world engineering, often drawing upon ideas from fields such as computer science and operations research. In Discovering Prices, Milgrom (2017) explains the theory and design... View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Design; Auctions; Market Design; Complexity

Article

Are Crises Good for Long-term Growth? The Role of Political Institutions

By: Alberto Cavallo and Eduardo Cavallo

This paper provides empirical evidence for the importance of institutions in determining the outcome of crises on long-term growth. We show that once unobserved country-specific effects and other sources of endogeneity are accounted for, political institutions affect... View Details

Keywords: Growth; Democracy; Macroeconomics; Growth and Development; Financial Crisis; Economic Growth; Government and Politics