Publications

Educators

November–December 2018
Article

Slack Time and Innovation

By: Ajay Agrawal, Christian Catalini, Avi Goldfarb and Hong Luo

Traditional innovation models assume that new ideas are developed up to the point where the benefit of the marginal project is just equal to the cost. Because labor is a key input to innovation when the opportunity cost of time is lower, such as during school breaks or... View Details

Keywords: Crowdfunding; Slack Time; Innovation and Invention; Labor; Projects; Complexity; Value

The prevalence of online platforms opens new doors to traditional businesses for customer reach and revenue growth. This research investigates platform competition in a setting where prices are determined by negotiations between platforms and businesses. We compile a... View Details

February 2009 (Revised May 2010)
Case

Orange: Read&Go

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Toby E. Stuart, Bhaskar Chakravorti, Vincent Marie Dessain, Simon Harrow and Elena Corsi

In late 2008, Orange (aka France Telecom) must decide if launching Read&Go, an electronic newsstand built around an e-paper reader, would be successful. The case describes (1) Orange's strategy; (2) the company's new product development process; (3) e-paper technology,... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Technological Innovation; Demand and Consumers; Product Development; Partners and Partnerships; Competition; Publishing Industry; France

20 Dec 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Zooming In: A Practical Manual for Identifying Geographic Clusters

Keywords: by Juan Alcácer & Minyuan Zhao

14 May 2018
Research & Ideas

Amazon vs. Whole Foods: When Cultures Collide

up with ideas, like a bike messenger service or a new bread recipe, that sometimes found their way to other stores. “That model of empowerment brings with it a lot of wonderful, creative solutions and a... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Food & Beverage

2016
Article

Peer-to-Peer Markets

By: Liran Einav, Chiara Farronato and Jonathan Levin

Peer-to-peer markets such as eBay, Uber, and Airbnb allow small suppliers to compete with traditional providers of goods or services. We view the primary function of these markets as making it easy for buyers to find sellers and engage in convenient, trustworthy... View Details

Keywords: Peer-to-peer; Online Platforms; Matching; Innovation; Digital Platforms; Marketplace Matching; Market Design; Internet and the Web; Technology Adoption; Network Effects; Market Entry and Exit

October 2011
Article

Concentrating on Governance

By: Dalida Kadyrzhanova and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

This paper develops a novel trade-off view of corporate governance. Using a simple model that integrates agency costs and bargaining benefits of management friendly provisions, we identify the economic determinants of the resulting trade-offs for shareholder value.... View Details

Keywords: Market Participation; Corporate Governance; Business and Shareholder Relations

20 Nov 2012
First Look

First Look: November 20

model choices aimed at increasing volume such as building new stores, increasing product variety, everyday low prices (EDLP), and high-powered incentives for store managers. Input and output prices played a... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Disagreement after News: Gradual Information Diffusion or Differences of Opinion?

This paper explores the long-standing empirical fact of increased trading volume around news releases through the lens of canonical models of gradual information diffusion and differences of opinion. I use a unique dataset of clicks on news by key finance... View Details

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

Keywords: Rare Goods; Scarcity; E-commerce; Consumer Behavior; Auctions

December 1998
Case

Casto Travel

By: Thomas J. DeLong and Susan Harmeling

Maryles Casto had the vision to build the largest travel agency in Silicon Valley, mirroring the growth pattern of the entire area. In 1997 the travel business changed dramatically as airlines chose not to pay travel agencies the fees they once did. Simultaneously, the... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Finance; Internet and the Web; Change Management; Markets; Travel Industry

2022
White Paper

The Options Multiplier: Decoding the CareerWise Youth Apprentice Journey

By: Joseph B. Fuller, Rachel Lipson, Farah Mallah, Girish Pendse and Rachel Snyder

As more Americans question the appeal of costly higher education programs, earn-and-learn models, like apprenticeship, are attracting increasing attention from policymakers and employers alike. While apprenticeship is widespread in many parts of Europe,... View Details

Keywords: Apprenticeship; Higher Education; Training; Personal Development and Career; Cost vs Benefits; Success; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms

October 2012
Teaching Note

Liberia (TN)

By: Eric Werker and Ian Cornell

From 1989 to 2003 civil war raged in Liberia, causing GDP per capita to drop an unprecedented 90% from peak to trough. The roots of Liberia's conflict and economic decline are complex and intertwined, resting on over a century of discriminatory elite rule and twisted... View Details

Keywords: Transition; Economic Systems; War; Economy; Government and Politics; Liberia

2016
Other Teaching and Training Material

Organizational Behavior Reading: Decision Making

By: Francesca Gino, Max Bazerman and Katherine Shonk

This Reading argues that decision making is systematically flawed and introduces methods to improve decision-making effectiveness. The Essential Reading section covers the rational decision-making model and three important ideas that challenge it: Herbert Simon's... View Details

Keywords: Game Theory; Decision Making

October 2021 (Revised December 2021)
Case

Customer-Centric Design with Artificial Intelligence: Commonwealth Bank

By: Karim R. Lakhani, Yael Grushka-Cockayne, Jin Hyun Paik and Steven Randazzo

As Commonwealth Bank (CommBank) CEO Matt Comyn delivered the full financial year results in August 2021 over videoconference, it took less than two minutes for him to make his first mention of the organization's Customer Engagement Engine (CEE), the AI-driven customer... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Customer-centricity; Banks and Banking; Customer Focus and Relationships; Technological Innovation; Transformation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance; AI and Machine Learning; Financial Services Industry; Australia

Educators

September 2019
Article

Optimizing Reserves in School Choice: A Dynamic Programming Approach

By: Franklyn Wang, Ravi Jagadeesan and Scott Duke Kominers

We introduce a new model of school choice with reserves in which a social planner is constrained by a limited supply of reserve seats and tries to find an optimal matching according to a social welfare function. We construct the optimal distribution of reserves via a... View Details

Keywords: Matching; Reserves; Dynamic Programming; Marketplace Matching; Mathematical Methods

2011
Chapter

Health Care Applications: From Hospitals to Physicians, from Productive Efficiency to Quality Frontiers

By: Jon Chilingerian and H. David Sherman

This chapter focuses on health-care applications of DEA. The paper begins with a brief history of health applications and discusses some of the models and the motivation behind the applications. Using DEA to develop quality frontiers in health services is offered as a... View Details

Keywords: Data Envelopment Analysis; Physicians; Hospitals; HMOs; Frontier Analysis; Efficiency; Health Care and Treatment; Performance; Quality

Fourth Quarter 2007
Article

Contingent Claims Approach to Measuring and Managing Sovereign Credit Risk

By: Dale . F. Gray, Robert C. Merton and Zvi Bodie

This paper proposes a new approach to measure, analyze, and manage sovereign risk based on the theory and practice of modern contingent claims analysis (CCA). The paper provides a new framework for adapting the CCA model to the sovereign balance sheet in a way that can... View Details

Keywords: Credit; Investment; Sovereign Finance; Risk Management; Emerging Markets; Market Transactions; Mathematical Methods; Valuation