Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(115)
- Faculty Publications (22)
Page 1 of 22
Results →
- April 2024
- Article
Decision Authority and the Returns to Algorithms
By: Hyunjin Kim, Edward L. Glaeser, Andrew Hillis, Scott Duke Kominers and Michael Luca
We evaluate a pilot in an Inspections Department to explore the returns to a pair of algorithms that varied in their sophistication. We find that both algorithms provided substantial prediction gains, suggesting that even simple data may be helpful. However, these... View Details
- September 2023
- Article
Consuming Contests: The Effect of Outcome Uncertainty on Spectator Attendance in the Australian Football League
By: Patrick Ferguson and Karim R. Lakhani
Contests that non-contestants consume for entertainment are a fixture of economic, cultural and political life. We exploit injury-induced changes to teams' line-ups in a professional sports setting to examine whether individuals prefer to consume contests that have... View Details
- Fall 2022
- Article
China's Political Economy and International Backlash: From Interdependence to Security Dilemma Dynamics
By: Margaret Pearson, Meg Rithmire and Kellee Tsai
Contrary to expectations that economic interdependence might lessen security conflict between China and the U.S. and its allies, much of the contestation between China and several OECD countries has focused on firms and economic links. This paper explains the... View Details
- 2022
- Chapter
The Merits and Limits of China's Modern Universities
By: William C. Kirby
China has a long history of advanced learning, but its modern universities are quite young. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, the establishment of Chinese universities based on international models signaled the end of a millennium of promoting talent through... View Details
- April 2022 (Revised July 2022)
- Case
Stalin’s Capitalists: American Business and Soviet Industrialization
By: Jeremy Friedman, Jingyu Liu and Christine Riggle
In the late 1920s and early 1930s when Joseph Stalin, leader of the world’s first Communist state, sought to industrialize his largely peasant country on an unprecedented scale, he turned for help to those who had the most experience constructing on such a scale:... View Details
Keywords: Communism; Industrialization; Socialism; History; Industry Growth; Economic Systems; Soviet Union
- March 2022 (Revised June 2022)
- Case
The United States National Security Apparatus, Multipolarity, and the Rise of Commercial Space
By: Matthew C. Weinzierl and Brendan L. Rosseau
In 2019, the U.S. national security community crossed a Rubicon by declaring that space was “a war-fighting domain” and undergoing a major reorganization, including the creation of the U.S. Space Force, the first new military branch in over 70 years. Military and... View Details
- May 2021
- Article
Ideology and Composition Among an Online Crowd: Evidence From Wikipedians
By: Shane Greenstein, Grace Gu and Feng Zhu
Online communities bring together participants from diverse backgrounds and often face challenges in aggregating their opinions. We infer lessons from the experience of individual contributors to Wikipedia articles about U.S. politics. We identify two factors that... View Details
- 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
- 2021
- Working Paper
Consuming Contests: Outcome Uncertainty and Spectator Demand for Contest-based Entertainment
By: Patrick J. Ferguson and Karim R. Lakhani
Contests that are designed to be consumed for entertainment by non-contestants are a fixture of economic, cultural and political life. In this paper, we examine whether individuals prefer to consume contests that have more uncertain outcomes. We look to... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Public Debt and Investment Under Political Competition: Evidence from Toxic Loans
By: Julien Sauvagnat and Boris Vallée
We examine the response from local governments and their voters to a large and exogenous
increase in municipal indebtedness. We first show that municipalities with loans that become
“toxic” exhibit a reduction in municipal investments as large as the associated... View Details
- August 2020 (Revised November 2022)
- Case
George Soros: The Stateless Statesman
By: Geoffrey Jones and Wendy Ying
This case traces the business career and philanthropic activities of George Soros. The Hungarian-born Soros made a fortune as a hedge fund investor after establishing Quantum Fund on the tax haven island of Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles in 1973 where he was... View Details
- March 2020
- Case
Brazil: Contesting the Rules of Government
By: Sophus A. Reinert and Jonathan Schlefer
Brazilian factions so fiercely opposed one another that for a century and a half they had contested not just state policies but the rules and structure of the state itself. Was this politics, so unlike the Western political ideal, sign of an immature or failing... View Details
- October 2019
- Article
Does Political Uncertainty Increase External Financing Costs? Measuring the Electoral Premium in Syndicated Lending
By: Olivia S. Kim
This article investigates the impact of political uncertainty on contractual lending terms using a large sample of syndicated loans and a within-firm estimation approach to achieve identification. Firms pay 7 basis points (bps) more on loans originated when their... View Details
- June 2017
- Article
The Political Economy of Financial Innovation: Evidence from Local Governments
By: Christophe Pérignon and Boris Vallée
We examine the toxic loans sold by investment banks to local governments. Using proprietary data, we show that politicians strategically use these products to increase chances of being re-elected. Consistent with greater incentives to hide the cost of debt, toxic loans... View Details
- January 2016 (Revised February 2016)
- Case
Citizens United and Corporate Speech
By: David Moss and Marc Campasano
The story of Citizens United began in late 2007, as leading members of the Republican and Democratic parties were preparing for the 2008 presidential primaries. Democrats expected a three-way contest in their party between Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, Senator (and... View Details
- November 9, 2012
- Guest Column
For Obama, Where Has Lincoln Gone?
By: Nancy F. Koehn
The 2012 presidential race was not only the most expensive in history, it was also one of the most closely contested elections the country has known. President Barack Obama inherits the very serious challenge of trying to reunite a divided nation in which political... View Details
Keywords: Leadership
- September 2009 (Revised May 2011)
- Case
Acumen Fund: Measurement in Impact Investing (A)
By: Alnoor Ebrahim and V. Kasturi Rangan
Acumen Fund is a global venture capital firm with a dual purpose: it looks for a return on its investments, and it also seeks entrepreneurial solutions to global poverty. This case examines Acumen's new projects in Kenya. The organization's investment committee and its... View Details
- October 2008 (Revised November 2009)
- Case
Obama versus Clinton: The YouTube Primary
By: John A. Deighton and Leora Kornfeld
What was the role of the Internet in the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination between Senators Obama and Clinton? How does the role change in the shift from the Primary to the National election? The case examines media and content choices by each... View Details
- 2008
- Book
The Oxford Handbook of Business History
By: G. Jones and Jonathan Zeitlin
The Handbook of Business History contains 25 original chapters from around the world to present a comprehensive, critical and interdisciplinary examination of current research in business history. The Handbook reveals business history as a wide-ranging and... View Details
- September 2006 (Revised May 2008)
- Supplement
Corporate Responsibility & Community Engagement at the Tintaya Copper Mine (B)
By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Brooke Barton and Ezequiel Reficco
Engaging local stakeholders and building strong relations has become a strategic imperative for multinational firms in the often politically charged mining, oil, and gas sectors. For BHP Billiton, the world's second largest mining company, its Tintaya copper mine in... View Details