Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,523)
- Faculty Publications (278)
- February 2013
- Article
Institutions and Venture Capital
By: Josh Lerner and Joacim Tag
We survey the literature on venture capital and institutions and present a case study comparing the development of the venture capital market in the United States and Sweden. Our literature survey underscores that the legal environment, financial market development,... View Details
Keywords: Venture Capital; Organizations; Taxation; Entrepreneurship; Financial Markets; United States; Sweden
- 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
- September 2012
- Article
The Relationship Between Economic Preferences and Psychological Personality Measures
By: Anke Becker, Thomas Deckers, Thomas Dohmen, Armin Falk and Fabian Kosse
Although both economists and psychologists seek to identify determinants of heterogeneity in behavior, they use different concepts to capture them. In this review, we first analyze the extent to which economic preferences and psychological concepts of personality, such... View Details
- July 2012
- Article
The IKEA Effect: When Labor Leads to Love
By: Michael I. Norton, Daniel Mochon and Dan Ariely
In four studies in which consumers assembled IKEA boxes, folded origami, and built sets of Legos, we demonstrate and investigate boundary conditions for the IKEA effect—the increase in valuation of self-made products. Participants saw their amateurish creations as... View Details
- 2012
- Other Unpublished Work
Selection, Reallocation, and Knowledge Spillover: Identifying the Sources of Productivity Gains from Multinational Activity
By: Laura Alfaro and Maggie X. Chen
The impact of multinational activity on host-country productivity has been a major topic of economic research. A positive impact can be attributed to knowledge spillovers from foreign multinational to domestic firms or a less stressed, alternative explanation—firm... View Details
- March 2012
- Article
The Incentive Bubble
By: Mihir Desai
The past three decades have seen American capitalism quietly transformed by a single, powerful idea—that financial markets are a suitable tool for measuring performance and structuring compensation. Stock instruments for managers, high-powered incentive contracts for... View Details
- February 2012
- Article
Management Practices across Firms and Countries
By: Nicholas Bloom, Christos Genakos, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
For the last decade we have been using double-blind survey techniques and randomized sampling to construct management data on over 10,000 organizations across 20 countries. On average, we find that in manufacturing American, Japanese, and German firms are the best... View Details
Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Competency and Skills; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Organizations; Developing Countries and Economies; Economic Sectors; Performance; Business and Shareholder Relations; Private Equity; Multinational Firms and Management; United States; Germany; Japan; China; India
- 2011
- Working Paper
Management Practices Across Firms and Countries
By: Nicholas Bloom, Christos Genakos, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
For the last decade we have been using double-blind survey techniques and randomized sampling to construct management data on over 10,000 organizations across 20 countries. On average, we find that in manufacturing, American, Japanese, and German firms are the best... View Details
- November 2011 (Revised February 2012)
- Supplement
Foxconn Technology Group (B)
By: Robert G. Eccles, George Serafeim and Beiting Cheng
The (B) case presents Foxconn’s plan to replace manual labor with robots and move some of its employees to more interesting and sophisticated jobs. View Details
- 2011
- Working Paper
Spatial Determinants of Entrepreneurship in India
By: Ejaz Ghani, William R. Kerr and Stephen O'Connell
We analyze the spatial determinants of entrepreneurship in India in the manufacturing and services sectors. Among general district traits, quality of physical infrastructure and workforce education are the strongest predictors of entry, with labor laws and household... View Details
- September 2011
- Article
The Labor Illusion: How Operational Transparency Increases Perceived Value
By: Ryan W. Buell and Michael I. Norton
A ubiquitous feature of even the fastest self-service technology transactions is the wait. Conventional wisdom and operations theory suggests that the longer people wait, the less satisfied they become; we demonstrate that due to what we term the labor illusion, when... View Details
- July 2011 (Revised June 2013)
- Case
Foxconn Technology Group (A)
By: Robert G. Eccles, George Serafeim and Beiting Cheng
In 2010, Foxconn Technology Group, the largest and fastest growing multinational company in the Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS) industry, came under public scrutiny after a string of employee suicides reached the international press. Although the company was... View Details
Keywords: Multinational; Labor Market; Electronic Manufacturing Services; Health ＆ Wellness; Robots; Automation; Social Responsibility; Employee Relationship Management; Leadership; Stocks; Social Issues; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Capital Markets; Supply Chain Management; Safety; Environmental Accounting; Human Capital; Human Resources; Electronics Industry; Manufacturing Industry; China
- March 2011 (Revised March 2012)
- Case
Fraunhofer: Innovation in Germany
By: Diego A. Comin, J. Gunnar Trumbull and Kerry Yang
Fraunhofer is one of the largest applied research organizations in the world. With 17,000 employees and a 1.6 billion euros budget, Fraunhofer has 60 institutes in Germany that cover most fields of science. The case examines the consequences that Fraunhofer has for the... View Details
- Article
Economic Impacts of Immigration: A Survey
By: Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr
This paper surveys recent empirical studies on the economic impacts of immigration. The survey first examines the magnitude of immigration as an economic phenomenon in various host countries. The second part deals with the assimilation of immigrant workers into... View Details
- 2011
- Working Paper
The 'IKEA Effect': When Labor Leads to Love
By: Michael I. Norton, Daniel Mochon and Dan Ariely
In a series of studies in which consumers assembled IKEA boxes, folded origami, and built sets of Legos, we demonstrate and investigate the boundary conditions for what we term the "IKEA effect&"—the increase in valuation of self-made products. Participants saw their... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Agglomerative Forces and Cluster Shapes
By: William R. Kerr and Scott Duke Kominers
We model spatial clusters of similar firms. Our model highlights how agglomerative forces lead to localized, individual connections among firms, while interaction costs generate a defined distance over which attraction forces operate. Overlapping firm interactions... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Marketplace Institutions Related to the Timing of Transactions
By: Alvin E. Roth
This paper describes the unraveling of transaction dates in several markets, including the labor markets for new lawyers hired by large law firms and for gastroenterology fellows, and the market for post-season college football bowls. Together these will illustrate... View Details
- June 2010
- Article
What Causes Industry Agglomeration? Evidence from Coagglomeration Patterns
By: Glenn Ellison, Edward Glaeser and William R. Kerr
Why do firms cluster near one another? We test Marshall's theories of industrial agglomeration by examining which industries locate near one another, or coagglomerate. We construct pairwise coagglomeration indices for US manufacturing industries from the Economic... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Unraveling Results from Comparable Demand and Supply: An Experimental Investigation
By: Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth and M. Utku Unver
Markets sometimes unravel, with offers becoming inefficiently early. Often this is attributed to competition arising from an imbalance of demand and supply, typically excess demand for workers. However this presents a puzzle, since unraveling can only occur when firms... View Details
- March 2010 (Revised September 2010)
- Case
TeamLease: Putting India to Work (Il) Legally
By: Tarun Khanna and Anjali Raina
This case focuses on the growth dilemmas facing Manish Sabharwal, co-founder, TeamLease Services Pvt. Ltd. TeamLease is a human resource outsourcing and temp staffing company located in India, which has grown rapidly from 2002 to 2009. Set in the context of the highly... View Details