Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(808)
- News (146)
- Research (554)
- Events (13)
- Multimedia (3)
- Faculty Publications (280)
- 2022
- Working Paper
Consumer Demand with Social Influences: Evidence from an E-Commerce Platform
By: El Hadi Caoui, Chiara Farronato, John J. Horton and Robert Schultz
For some kinds of goods, rarity itself is valued. "Fashionable'" goods are demanded in part because they are unique. In this paper, we explore the economics of rare goods using auctions of limited-edition shoes held by an e-commerce platform. We model endogenous entry... View Details
- December 2013 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
Breaking Bad (the Rules): Argentina Defaults, Inflates (and Grows), 1997–2015
By: Rafael Di Tella and Fernanda Miguel
In late October 2011, after losing 1 billion of dollar reserves in one month, the Argentine government began imposing a series of currency controls, limiting the ability to buy foreign currency. As of October 2011, Argentina's tax collection agency AFIP had been... View Details
- September 2012 (Revised September 2015)
- Case
Doing Business in China
By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Michael Shih-ta Chen, Nancy Dai and G.A. Donovan
This case examines the challenges and opportunities of doing business in China. It highlights China's remarkable economic transformation in the decades leading up to 2012 in the context of its history, culture, and politics. The case summarizes the main obstacles faced... View Details
- September 2007
- Journal Article
Refugee Camp Economies
By: Eric D. Werker
This paper describes the economy of a refugee camp. Key distortions to the economy of Kyangwali Refugee Settlement in Uganda are noted and the findings are used to construct a generic model of a refugee camp economy. Camp economies are influenced by host country... View Details
Keywords: Refugees; Economy; Policy; Civil Society or Community; Human Needs; Societal Protocols; Uganda
- October 2009 (Revised June 2011)
- Case
Zappos.com 2009: Clothing, Customer Service, and Company Culture
By: Frances X. Frei, Robin J. Ely and Laura Winig
On July 17, 2009, Zappos.com, a privately held online retailer of shoes, clothing, and other soft line retail categories, learned that Amazon.com, a $19 billion multinational online retailer, had won its board of directors' approval to offer to merge the two companies.... View Details
- August 2012
- Article
A Darker Side to Decentralized Banks: Market Power and Credit Rationing in SME Lending
By: Rodrigo Canales and Ramana Nanda
We use loan-level data to study how the organizational structure of banks impacts small business lending. We find that decentralized banks-where branch managers have greater autonomy over lending decisions-give larger loans to small firms and those with "soft... View Details
- January–February 2011
- Article
Adverse Selection in Online 'Trust' Certifications and Search Results
By: Benjamin Edelman
Widely used online "trust" authorities issue certifications without substantial verification of recipients' actual trustworthiness. This lax approach gives rise to adverse selection: the sites that seek and obtain trust certifications are actually less trustworthy than... View Details
- 06 May 2010
- Working Paper Summaries
Introductory Reading For Being a Leader and The Effective Exercise of Leadership: An Ontological Model
- 02 Apr 2012
- Research & Ideas
Do Online Dating Platforms Help Those Who Need Them Most?
though women look at as many profiles as men do, they message men much less," Piskorksi said. "It seems that these sites have done little to overcome a very restrictive social norm that makes it inappropriate for women to make... View Details
When Should a Social Platform Give People Fewer Choices and Charge More for Them?
Existing economic wisdom offers unequivocal advice to managers seeking to establish new platform businesses: Invest to acquire users as quickly as possible and make sure that they have ... View Details
- May 2023
- Article
A Public Health Approach to Negative News Media: The 3-to-1 Solution
By: Tyler VanderWeele and Arthur C. Brooks
There is clear evidence that the prevalence of negative media reporting has increased substantially over the past years. There is evidence also that this negative reporting adversely affects social interactions, as well as health and well-being outcomes. Given the wide... View Details
- 2012
- Other Unpublished Work
What Are We Meeting For? The Consequences of Private Meetings with Investors
By: Eugene F. Soltes and David H. Solomon
Executives of publicly-traded firms spend considerable time meeting privately with investors, despite regulation restricting their ability to convey material nonpublic information. Using a set of records of all one-on-one meetings between senior management and... View Details
- July 2002 (Revised April 2003)
- Case
QuickMedx Inc.
By: Richard M.J. Bohmer and Jonathan P Groberg
QuickMedx has created a chain of small kiosks, located in drugstores and shopping malls in the Minneapolis area, that cater to patients with a limited range of very simple primary care conditions. Service is rapid and cheap and patients wait only a few minutes to be... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
I Am Not on the Market, I Am Here with Friends: Using On-Line Social Networks to Find a Job or a Spouse
By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski
Sociologists have extensively documented that networks influence market exchange through improved matching and vouching. In this paper, I propose that networks can also blunt the signal of market participation, as actors who are on the market surrounded by their... View Details
- December 2014
- Article
When to Sell Your Idea: Theory and Evidence from the Movie Industry
By: Hong Luo
I study a model of investment and sale of ideas and test its empirical implications using a novel data set from the market for original movie ideas. Consistent with the theoretical results, I find that buyers are reluctant to meet unproven sellers for early-stage... View Details
- 28 Feb 2019
- News
The Future of Leadership Development
- February 2012 (Revised January 2013)
- Case
The New York Times Paywall
On March 28, 2011, The New York Times website became a restricted site where most of the content was protected behind a "paywall." Users who exceeded the limit of 20 free articles per month were required to pay for either a digital or print subscription. The newspaper... View Details
- 2011
- Other Unpublished Work
Networks as Covers: Evidence from On-Line Social Networks
By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski
Sociologists have extensively documented that networks influence market exchange through improved matching and vouching. In this paper, I propose that networks can also blunt the signal of market participation, as actors who are on the market surrounded by their... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Preference Intensities and Risk Aversion in School Choice: A Laboratory Experiment
By: Flip Klijn, Joana Pais and Marc Vorsatz
We experimentally investigate in the laboratory two prominent mechanisms that are employed in school choice programs to assign students to public schools. We study how individual behavior is influenced by preference intensities and risk aversion. Our main results show... View Details