Publications

2020
Working Paper

Improving Regulatory Effectiveness Through Better Targeting: Evidence from OSHA

By: Matthew S. Johnson, David I. Levine and Michael W. Toffel

We study how a regulator can best target inspections. Our case study is a US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) program that randomly allocated some inspections. On average, each inspection averted 2.4 serious injuries (9%) over the next five years.... View Details

Keywords: Government Administration; Working Conditions; Safety; Quality; Production; Analysis; Resource Allocation; Manufacturing Industry; United States

SSRN

2014
Working Paper

Entrepreneurship as Experimentation

By: William R. Kerr, Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

Entrepreneurship research is on the rise but many questions about its fundamental nature still exist. We argue that entrepreneurship is about experimentation: the probabilities of success are low, extremely skewed and unknowable until an investment is made. At a macro... View Details

Keywords: Experiments; Innovation; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Invention

SSRN

March 2015
Case

Unilever: Combatting Global Food Waste

By: David F. Drake, Janice H. Hammond and Matthew G. Preble

The global consumer goods company Unilever was on pace to hit a number of aggressive targets by 2020 as part of the Unilever Sustainable Living Project, including a goal to halve the waste associated with the disposal of its products. Unilever's chief supply chain... View Details

Educators

16 Aug 2016
First Look

August 16, 2016

activities of a large cohort of physician-MBAs by gathering information on 206 physician graduates from the Harvard Business School MBA program who obtained their degrees between 1941 and 2014. Key outcome measures that were examined... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

October 2008 (Revised December 2008)
Supplement

Gillette Company (E): Procter & Gamble

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Matthew Bird

After arriving in 2001 as the first outsider Chairman and CEO in Gillette history, Jim Kilts led a remarkable turnaround. But by late 2004 he had to make a difficult decision. To better position the 104-year-old, Boston-based company, he opted to sell it to... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Decision Choices and Conditions; Leading Change; Growth and Development Strategy; Managerial Roles; Organizational Change and Adaptation

October 2009 (Revised October 2010)
Case

Grove Street Advisors: September 2009

By: Matthew Rhodes-Kropf and Ann Leamon

The investment committee of Grove Street Advisors, a pioneer in the provision of customized private equity funds-of-funds for pension fund clients, must decide how to respond to the market opportunities and challenges presented by the turmoil of 2008 and 2009. How can... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Expansion; Investment Funds; Financial Services Industry

Educators

Article

Beyond the Target Customer: Social Effects in CRM Campaigns

By: Eva Ascarza, Peter Ebbes, Oded Netzer and Matthew Danielson

Customer relationship management (CRM) campaigns have traditionally focused on maximizing the profitability of the targeted customers. The authors demonstrate that in business settings characterized by network externalities, a CRM campaign that is aimed at changing the... View Details

Keywords: Social Effects; Field Experiment; Mobile; Customer Relationship Management; Network Effects; Consumer Behavior

02 Apr 2013
First Look

First Look: April 2

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=41870 Expected Returns Dynamics Implied by Firm Fundamentals By: Lyle, Matthew R., and Charles C.Y. Wang Abstract—We provide a tractable stock valuation model to study the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

December 2013 (Revised December 2014)
Case

Reform in the Chicago Public Schools

By: Matthew Weinzierl and Katrina Flanagan

In 2012, the Chicago Teachers' Union went on strike over proposed reforms by the city's mayor, Rahm Emanuel. At the heart of the reforms, and the strike, was frustration over many decades of underperformance in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and a surge of... View Details

Keywords: Public Education; Public Goods; Samuelson Rule; Externalities And Pigouvian Corrections; Tiebout Sorting And Efficiency; Education; Labor Unions; Public Administration Industry; Education Industry; Chicago

Educators

10 Aug 2010
First Look

First Look: August 10

recipients' actual trustworthiness. This lax approach gives rise to adverse selection: the sites that seek and obtain trust certifications are actually less trustworthy than others. Using an original dataset on web site safety, I demonstrate that sites certified View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2020
Working Paper

Designing, Not Checking, for Policy Robustness: An Example with Optimal Taxation

By: Benjami Lockwood, Afras Y. Sial and Matthew C. Weinzierl

Economists typically check the robustness of their results by comparing them across plausible ranges of parameter values and model structures. A preferable approach to robustness—for the purposes of policymaking and evaluation—is to design policy that takes these... View Details

Keywords: Optimal Taxation; Robust Optimization; Taxation; Income; Policy; Design

27 Oct 2009
First Look

First Look: October 27

and Karim R. Lakhani Publication: Organization Science (forthcoming). Abstract We examine who the winners are in science problem-solving contests characterized by open broadcast of problem information, self-selection of external solvers... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

September 1999
Case

Sally Jameson - 1999

By: George C. Chacko, Henry B. Reiling, Peter Tufano and Matthew Bailey

Sally Jameson has a large block of appreciated stock, which she is contemplating selling to purchase a home. She is comparing an outright sale, borrowing against the stock, shorting against the box, and a stock loan proposed by a small financial services firm. View Details

Keywords: Asset Pricing; Asset Management; Financial Liquidity; Stocks; Stock Options; Financing and Loans; Financial Services Industry

23 Feb 2011
First Look

First Look: Feb. 23

PublicationsEngineers and the State in Modern China Author:William C. Kirby Publication:In Prospects for the Professions in China, edited by William P. Alford, William C. Kirby, and Kenneth Winston, 283-314. Routledge Studies in Civil... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

18 Mar 2008
First Look

First Look: March 18, 2008

Working PapersWhere Does It Go? Spending by the Financially Constrained Authors:Shawn A. Cole, John Thompson, and Peter Tufano Abstract In this paper, we analyze the spending decisions of over 1.5 million Americans who vary in their... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

27 May 2014
First Look

First Look: May 27

argues Mikołaj Piskorski, one of the world's leading experts on the business of social media. In A Social Strategy, he provides the most convincing answer yet, one backed by original research, data, and case studies from companies such as... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

22 Apr 2014
First Look

First Look: April 22

control over the use of remittances. In partnership with a Salvadoran bank, we offered U.S.-based migrants from El Salvador bank accounts in their home country into which they could send remittances. We randomly varied migrant control over El Salvador-based savings... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2021
Article

Everyday Illiberalism: How Hungarian Subnational Politics Propel Single-Party Dominance

By: Laura Jakli and Matthew Stenberg

While numerous studies consider the roles that media consolidation, court-packing, and economic crises have played in Hungary's democratic decline since 2010, none have considered the subnational mechanisms driving illiberalism. This study examines the types of... View Details

Keywords: Democracy; Government and Politics; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Hungary

February 26, 2024
Article

Making Workplaces Safer Through Machine Learning

By: Matthew S. Johnson, David I. Levine and Michael W. Toffel

Machine learning algorithms can dramatically improve regulatory effectiveness. This short article describes the authors' scholarly work that shows how the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) could have reduced nearly twice as many occupational... View Details

Keywords: Government Experimentation; Auditing; Inspection; Evaluation; Process Improvement; Government Administration; AI and Machine Learning; Safety; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms