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July 2025
Case

Toilets for the Underserved: The SURT Commercialization Challenge

By: Maria P. Roche, Anne Marie Knott and Alexander Oettl

In 2021, a breakthrough in sanitation technology developed under the Gates Foundation’s “Reinvent the Toilet” initiative stood ready for commercialization. The Single User Reinvented Toilet (SURT), engineered by Dr. Shannon Yee, offered an off-grid, self-contained... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Commercialization; Social Issues; Social Enterprise; Public Sector; Private Sector; Market Entry and Exit; Strategic Planning; Engineering; Infrastructure; Innovation Strategy; Utilities Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States; South Africa; India; France

July 2025
Article

Digital Lending and Financial Well-Being: Through the Lens of Mobile Phone Data

By: AJ Chen, Omri Even-Tov, Jung Koo Kang and Regina Wittenberg-Moerman

To mitigate information asymmetry about borrowers in developing economies, digital lenders use machine-learning algorithms and nontraditional data from borrowers’ mobile devices. Consequently, digital lenders have managed to expand access to credit for millions of... View Details

Keywords: Informal Economy; Digital Banking; Mobile Phones; Developing Countries and Economies; Mobile and Wireless Technology; AI and Machine Learning; Analytics and Data Science; Credit; Borrowing and Debt; Well-being; Banking Industry; Kenya

July 2025
Article

On the Economic Origins of Concerns Over Women’s Chastity

By: Anke Becker

This paper studies the origins and function of customs and norms that intend to keep women from being promiscuous. Using large-scale survey data from more than 100 countries, I test the anthropological theory that a particular form of preindustrial... View Details

Keywords: Infibulation; Female Sexuality; Paternity Uncertainty; Concern About Women's Chastity; Pastoralism; Economic Anthropology; History; Gender; Social Issues; Culture

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2025
Working Paper

Public Displays of Alignment: Firm Speech in Autocratic Regimes

By: Joris Mueller, Jaya Y. Wen and Cheryl Wu

Political speech by firms is increasingly common around the world. This paper examines the government as an important, yet understudied, audience for such speech, focusing on how Chinese firms rhetorically align with the state. We introduce novel, general, and... View Details

Keywords: Business and Government Relations; Economic Systems; Power and Influence; Government Administration; Policy; China

Summer 2025
Article

Does Marriage Have a Future?

By: Debora L. Spar and Aryanna Garber

The article explores how technology is reshaping the institution of marriage, highlighting significant changes in societal norms and personal relationships. It discusses the decline in marriage rates in industrialized nations, particularly Japan and the United States,... View Details

Keywords: Family and Family Relationships; Technology Adoption; Society; Transformation; Emotions

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June 2025
Case

Power Struggles: Hydro-Quebec’s Energy Dilemma

By: Juan Alcacer and Danika Couture-Peck

In 2024, Maxime Aucoin, Executive Vice President and CFO of Hydro-Quebec, faced a series of compounding challenges as the utility confronted rapidly rising electricity demand, public pricing constraints, and strained stakeholder relationships. As the steward of... View Details

Keywords: Renewable Energy; Infrastructure; State Ownership; Vertical Integration; Energy; Energy Industry; Canada

May 2025
Case

IQanat: Empowering Rural Youth in Kazakhstan

By: Boris Groysberg and Maxim Pike Harrell

In June 2025, IQanat CEO Aliya Salikova considered scaling opportunities for the foundation, which provided educational opportunities for children from rural regions of Kazakhstan. Established by Kazakhstani businessman and philanthropist Aidyn Rakhimbayev, IQanat... View Details

Keywords: Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Leadership; Social Enterprise; Social Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Rural Scope; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Equality and Inequality; Education Industry; Central Asia; Kazakhstan

May 2025 (Revised June 2025)
Background Note

Social Enterprise in Latin America

By: Brian L. Trelstad and Karina Souza

This research note provides an overview of the social enterprise ecosystem in Latin America, exploring current dynamics across key markets, including country-specific insights on Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, and Central America. In a region characterized... View Details

May 2025
Case

'Net Zero in Action': Impact Investing at the McKnight Foundation

By: Lauren Cohen, Christina R. Wing and Sophia Pan

Elizabeth McGeveran, Vice President of Investments at the McKnight Foundation, reflected on how to effectively advance the organization’s net-zero strategy. The foundation had committed 10% of its endowment to building a portfolio of impact investments and was among... View Details

2025
Working Paper

Race, Rental Yields, and Housing Decay in Manhattan

By: Tom Nicholas and Christophe Spaenjers

We develop a new dataset on real estate transactions in Manhattan (1912–1939), linked to federal Census records (1930 and 1940) and property images used for tax assessment purposes (around 1940 and 1980). We analyze investor returns and incentives to maintain... View Details

Keywords: Housing Markets; Rental Yields; Urban Decay; Manhattan; Race; Equality and Inequality; Investment Return; Motivation and Incentives; Real Estate Industry; New York (city, NY)

May 2025
Case

The Micro-Family Office: Aamir Rehman

By: Lauren Cohen and Sophia Pan

With a successful career and strong academic credentials, Aamir Rehman sought to design a life grounded in autonomy. For him, this meant serving on boards, continuing his professorship, and ensuring a secure and comfortable life for his family. While he didn’t possess... View Details

April 2025 (Revised April 2025)
Case

Techint: Strategic Choices for Community Impact

By: Lauren Cohen, Virak Prum, Kenneth Charman, Pedro Levindo and Mariana Cal

In early 2024 Erika Bienek, Chief Community Relations Officer at Techint, had to decide whether to invest in a new company-owned and operated technical school in Veracruz, Mexico, or invest instead in strengthening the city’s public education system. Techint, a global... View Details

Keywords: Technical Institutes; Community Relations; Social Impact; Argentina; Mexico; Brazil; Conglomerate; Stakeholder Management; Government And Business; Community Impact; Philanthropy; Business Conglomerates; Business Subsidiaries; Business Headquarters; Family Business; Decision Making; Private Sector; Public Sector; Education; Curriculum and Courses; Middle School Education; Secondary Education; Teaching; Training; Learning; Energy; Engineering; Construction; Values and Beliefs; Geography; Global Range; Local Range; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Globalized Firms and Management; Government Legislation; Recruitment; Innovation and Invention; Disruptive Innovation; Knowledge; Resource Allocation; Industry Clusters; Infrastructure; Family Ownership; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Business and Community Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Business and Government Relations; Creativity; Reputation; Social and Collaborative Networks; Civil Society or Community; Social Issues; Poverty; Strategy; Construction Industry; Education Industry; Energy Industry; Industrial Products Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Steel Industry; Europe; Italy; Latin America; North and Central America; Mexico; North America; United States; South America; Argentina; Buenos Aires; Brazil

April 2025 (Revised June 2025)
Case

Governing Sustainability in a Shifting Context (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz

In early 2025, boards of directors had to rethink corporate responsibility and sustainability efforts amid rapidly-shifting social, legal, regulatory, and economic forces. While just a few years earlier, calls to address racial justice and climate change reached into... View Details

April 2025
Case

The CHIPS Program Office (Abridged)

By: Mitch Weiss and Sebastian Negron-Reichard

In February 2023, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo weighed signing off on a Notice of Funding Opportunity (“NOFO”) with at least one unconventional provision: a pre-application (“pre-app”) to the actual application for parts of $39 billion in direct semiconductor... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Government Administration; Government Legislation; Motivation and Incentives; Semiconductor Industry; Public Administration Industry; United States

April 2025
Article

Serving with a Smile on Airbnb: Analyzing the Economic Returns and Behavioral Underpinnings of the Host’s Smile

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Elizabeth Friedman, Kannan Srinivasan, Ravi Dhar and Xupin Zhang

Non-informational cues, such as facial expressions, can significantly influence judgments and interpersonal impressions. While past research has explored how smiling affects business outcomes in offline or in-store contexts, relatively less is known about how smiling... View Details

Keywords: Sharing Economy; Airbnb; Image Feature Extraction; Machine Learning; Facial Expressions; Prejudice and Bias; Nonverbal Communication; E-commerce; Consumer Behavior; Perception

April 2025
Article

The Impact of Minority Representation at Mortgage Lenders

By: W. Scott Frame, Ruidi Huang, Erica Jiang, Yeonjoon Lee, Will Liu, Erik J. Mayer and Adi Sunderam

We study links between the labor market for loan officers and access to mortgage credit. Using novel data matching the (near) universe of mortgage applications to loan officers, we find that minorities are significantly underrepresented among loan officers. Minority... View Details

Keywords: Household Finance; Demographic Economics; Financial Institutions; Diversity; Prejudice and Bias; Mortgages; Personal Finance

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March 2025 (Revised June 2025)
Background Note

Getting to Net Zero: The Role of the Financial Sector

By: Shawn Cole, Jonah Zahnd, Karina Chung and Jack Cenovic

In early 2025, momentum towards the goal of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050 continued in many parts of the world, even as it appeared to face a set-back following the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States. Financial institutions... View Details

Keywords: Transition; Climate Change; Environmental Regulation; Environmental Law; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Risk and Uncertainty; Competitive Advantage; Financial Services Industry

March 2025
Case

The Changing Climate on Wall Street

By: Clayton S. Rose, Maxim Pike Harrell and Michael Norris

Increasing and conflicting regulatory requirements and political pressures regarding climate change tested the leaders of U.S. financial institutions, as they struggled to determine how best to comply while managing their business and its risks.
In October 2024,... View Details

March 2025
Case

GiveDirectly: Can Direct Cash Transfers End Extreme Poverty?

By: Natalia Rigol, Benjamin N. Roth, Sarah Mehta and John Schultz

Founded in 2008, GiveDirectly was a nonprofit organization that used direct cash transfers—giving people cash via mobile money—to combat poverty worldwide. By August 2024, the organization had transferred over $800 million to poor people in targeted communities and... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Ethics; Growth and Development; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Research; Nonprofit Organizations; Poverty; Africa; Asia; Latin America; North and Central America; United States

March 2025
Article

Differentiating on Diversity: How Disclosing Workforce Diversity Influences Consumer Choice

By: Maya Balakrishnan, Jimin Nam and Ryan W. Buell

Companies are facing increased pressure to “walk the talk” on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in their operations. One specific call-to-action from stakeholders is the public disclosure of EEO-1s. Companies with 100+ employees are federally mandated to annually... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Corporate Disclosure; Diversity; Employees; Perception

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