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Faculty & Research

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    • HBS Book

    Negotiation: The Game Has Changed

    By: Max Bazerman

    The world has changed dramatically in just the past few years—and so has the game of negotiation. COVID-19, Zoom, political polarization, the online economy, increasing economic globalization, and greater workplace diversity—all have transformed the who, what, where, and how of negotiation. Today, traditional negotiating tactics, while still effective, need to be tailored to vastly different situations and circumstances. In Negotiation: The Game Has Changed, legendary Harvard Business School professor Max Bazerman, a pioneer in the field of negotiation, shows you how to negotiate successfully today by adapting proven negotiation principles and strategies to the challenging new contexts you face—from negotiating across cultural and political differences to trying to reach an agreement over Zoom or during a supply chain crisis.

    • HBS Book

    Negotiation: The Game Has Changed

    By: Max Bazerman

    The world has changed dramatically in just the past few years—and so has the game of negotiation. COVID-19, Zoom, political polarization, the online economy, increasing economic globalization, and greater workplace diversity—all have transformed the who, what, where, and how of negotiation. Today, traditional negotiating tactics, while still...

    • Journal of Financial Economics 165 (March 2025).

    Optimal Illiquidity

    By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, Christopher Clayton, Christopher Harris, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian

    We study the socially optimal level of illiquidity in an economy populated by households with taste shocks and present bias with naive beliefs. The government chooses mandatory contributions to accounts, each with a different pre-retirement withdrawal penalty. Collected penalties are rebated lump sum. When households have homogeneous present bias, β, the social optimum is well approximated by a single account with an early-withdrawal penalty of 1 − β. When households have heterogeneous present bias, the social optimum is well approximated by a two-account system: (i) an account that is completely liquid and (ii) an account that is completely illiquid until retirement.

    • Journal of Financial Economics 165 (March 2025).

    Optimal Illiquidity

    By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, Christopher Clayton, Christopher Harris, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian

    We study the socially optimal level of illiquidity in an economy populated by households with taste shocks and present bias with naive beliefs. The government chooses mandatory contributions to accounts, each with a different pre-retirement withdrawal penalty. Collected penalties are rebated lump sum. When households have homogeneous present bias,...

    • Health Care Initiative

    Expert Patients’ Use of Avoidable Health Care

    By: Amitabh Chandra, Pragya Kakani and Simone Matecna

    We measure whether expert patients – those trained as physicians and nurses – have fewer emergency department visits and the reasons for these differences. Relative to similar patients physicians and nurses had 19.8% and 5.1% fewer ED visits, principally due to fewer avoidable visits. The differences in avoidable visits between physicians and other patients were largest for diagnoses commonly requiring prescriptions, which physicians often self-prescribed. Our results suggest that improving access to prescriptions for acute symptoms, more than improving patient education, may reduce avoidable health care.

    • Health Care Initiative

    Expert Patients’ Use of Avoidable Health Care

    By: Amitabh Chandra, Pragya Kakani and Simone Matecna

    We measure whether expert patients – those trained as physicians and nurses – have fewer emergency department visits and the reasons for these differences. Relative to similar patients physicians and nurses had 19.8% and 5.1% fewer ED visits, principally due to fewer avoidable visits. The differences in avoidable visits between physicians and...

    • Featured Case

    Blue Owl Financing of Ping Identity

    By: Victoria Ivashina and Srimayi Mylavarapu

    In the fall of 2022, Blue Owl Capital's investment committee evaluated a potential investment in the technology sector. The proposed transaction centered on Ping Identity Corporation (“Ping”), a fast-growing identity access management (IAM) software company that was being taken private by Thoma Bravo. Blue Owl was invited to play a leading role in an $875 million debt financing package to support the acquisition. Ping’s strong fundamentals made the opportunity appealing: the company operated in a high-growth market, generated the majority of its revenues from subscription-based services, and demonstrated significant growth in its product offerings and customer base. However, despite these strengths, Ping had yet to generate meaningful cash flow. This presented Blue Owl with a high-risk, high-reward scenario. The critical question for the team was whether Blue Owl should proceed with the transaction despite the risks, and whether the proposed deal structure offered adequate protection against potential downsides.

    • Featured Case

    Blue Owl Financing of Ping Identity

    By: Victoria Ivashina and Srimayi Mylavarapu

    In the fall of 2022, Blue Owl Capital's investment committee evaluated a potential investment in the technology sector. The proposed transaction centered on Ping Identity Corporation (“Ping”), a fast-growing identity access management (IAM) software company that was being taken private by Thoma Bravo. Blue Owl was invited to play a leading role in...

    • Featured Case

    Setting a CEO Agenda: Ole Rosgaard at Greif

    By: Krishna Palepu and Kerry Herman

    Since taking over as CEO of industrial packaging giant Greif, Ole Rosgaard has focused on growing the company and improving the perception of its value by the capital markets. He and his senior leadership team have made inroads to this end, including adjusting the company’s portfolio mix to higher-margin businesses and affirming and strengthening Greif’s strong culture. In partnership with the company’s board chair, Rosgaard worked to make changes to the board composition and board routines to create more board engagement with the company’s strategy and transformation. Have these efforts been enough?

    • Featured Case

    Setting a CEO Agenda: Ole Rosgaard at Greif

    By: Krishna Palepu and Kerry Herman

    Since taking over as CEO of industrial packaging giant Greif, Ole Rosgaard has focused on growing the company and improving the perception of its value by the capital markets. He and his senior leadership team have made inroads to this end, including adjusting the company’s portfolio mix to higher-margin businesses and affirming and strengthening...

    • HBS Working Paper

    Prices and Concentration: A U-shape? Theory and Evidence from Renewables

    By: Michele Fioretti, Junnan He and Jorge Tamayo

    We show that when firms compete via supply functions, transferring high-cost capacity to the largest, most efficient firm—thereby diversifying its production technologies while increasing concentration—can lower prices by prompting the leader to expand output and competitors to aggressively defend market shares. However, large transfers prove anticompetitive, as sizable capacity differences discourage price undercutting. Exploiting renewable intermittencies in Colombia’s electricity market, where firms are technology-diversified, we consistently find a U-shape relationship between prices and concentration. Counterfactually reallocating 30% of competitors’ high-cost capacities to the leader cuts prices 10%, while larger transfers raise them, revealing how capacity and efficiency influence market power.

    • HBS Working Paper

    Prices and Concentration: A U-shape? Theory and Evidence from Renewables

    By: Michele Fioretti, Junnan He and Jorge Tamayo

    We show that when firms compete via supply functions, transferring high-cost capacity to the largest, most efficient firm—thereby diversifying its production technologies while increasing concentration—can lower prices by prompting the leader to expand output and competitors to aggressively defend market shares. However, large transfers prove...

    • Working Paper

    Tracking the Short-Run Price Impact of U.S. Tariffs

    By: Alberto Cavallo, Paola Llamas and Franco Vazquez

    This paper examines the short-run impact of the 2025 U.S. tariffs on consumer prices using a unique integration of high-frequency retail pricing data, product-level country-of-origin information, and detailed tariff classifications. By linking daily prices from major U.S. retailers to Harmonized System (HS) codes and import origins, we construct custom price indices that isolate the direct effects of tariff changes across product categories and trading partners. Our analysis reveals rapid pricing responses, though their magnitude remains modest relative to the announced tariff rates and varies by country of origin. Both imported and domestic goods are affected, suggesting broader pricing and supply chain spillovers. These findings offer timely evidence for policymakers, businesses, and consumers navigating the immediate consequences of trade policy changes.

    • Working Paper

    Tracking the Short-Run Price Impact of U.S. Tariffs

    By: Alberto Cavallo, Paola Llamas and Franco Vazquez

    This paper examines the short-run impact of the 2025 U.S. tariffs on consumer prices using a unique integration of high-frequency retail pricing data, product-level country-of-origin information, and detailed tariff classifications. By linking daily prices from major U.S. retailers to Harmonized System (HS) codes and import origins, we construct...

Initiatives & Projects

Leadership

The Leadership Initiative undertakes cutting-edge research and course development projects about leadership and leadership development, both within HBS and through collaborations with other organizations.
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Recent Publications

Using Satellites and Phones to Evaluate and Promote Agricultural Technology Adoption: Evidence from Smallholder Farms in India

By: Shawn Cole, Tomoko Harigaya, Grady Killeen and Aparna Krishna
  • September 2025 |
  • Article |
  • Journal of Development Economics
This paper evaluates a low-cost, customized soil nutrient management advisory service in India. As a methodological contribution, we examine whether and in which settings satellite measurements may be effective at estimating both agricultural yields and treatment effects. The intervention improves self-reported fertilizer management practices, though not enough to measurably affect yields. Satellite measurements calibrated using OLS produce more precise point estimates than farmer-reported data, suggesting power gains. However, linear models, common in the literature, likely produce biased estimates. We propose an alternative procedure, using two-stage least squares. In settings without attrition, this approach obtains lower statistical power than self-reported yields; in settings with differential attrition, it may substantially increase power. We include a “cookbook'' and code that should allow other researchers to use remote sensing for yield estimation and program evaluation.
Citation
Related
Cole, Shawn, Tomoko Harigaya, Grady Killeen, and Aparna Krishna. "Using Satellites and Phones to Evaluate and Promote Agricultural Technology Adoption: Evidence from Smallholder Farms in India." Journal of Development Economics 176 (September 2025).

Revenue Collapses and the Consumption of Small Business Owners in the COVID-19 Pandemic

By: Olivia S. Kim, Jonathan A. Parker and Antoinette Schoar
  • August 2025 |
  • Article |
  • Journal of Financial Economics
Using financial account data linking small businesses to their owner households, we examine how business owners’ consumption responded to changes in business revenues during the COVID-19 crisis. In the first two months following the National Emergency, business revenues declined by 40 percent, largely driven by national factors rather than local infection rates or policies. However, the pass-through of revenue losses to owner consumption was limited: each dollar of revenue loss resulted in only a 1.6-cent decline in consumption. This muted pass-through persisted through 2021, even after the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines. Our findings suggest that federal subsidies and pandemic-induced reductions in spending opportunities explain the limited impact.
Citation
Related
Kim, Olivia S., Jonathan A. Parker, and Antoinette Schoar. "Revenue Collapses and the Consumption of Small Business Owners in the COVID-19 Pandemic." Art. 104079. Journal of Financial Economics 170 (August 2025).

Don’t Let an AI Failure Harm Your Brand

By: Julian De Freitas
  • July–August 2025 |
  • Article |
  • Harvard Business Review
How companies market their AI systems affects the repercussions they face when their products fail. Marketers must promote their AI products with potential failure in mind. To do that, they must first understand consumers’ unique attitudes toward AI. Marketers who avoid the five pitfalls of promoting AI—people tend to blame AI first, view one AI failure as contaminating other AIs, place more blame on companies that overstate AI capabilities, judge humanized AI more harshly, and become outraged by programmed preferences—will limit the damage caused by AI failures.
Citation
Related
De Freitas, Julian. "Don’t Let an AI Failure Harm Your Brand." Harvard Business Review 103, no. 4 (July–August 2025).

FinSec Bank: Charting an AI Course – Build or Buy?

By: Michael Parzen
  • June 2025 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
Citation
Educators
Purchase
Related
Parzen, Michael. "FinSec Bank: Charting an AI Course – Build or Buy?" Harvard Business School Case 625-126, June 2025.

How to Build a Life: Why Wittgenstein Was Right About Silence

By: Arthur C. Brooks
  • June 5, 2025 |
  • Article |
  • The Atlantic
Citation
Related
Brooks, Arthur C. "How to Build a Life: Why Wittgenstein Was Right About Silence." The Atlantic (June 5, 2025).

Governing Sustainability in a Shifting Context

By: Lynn S. Paine
  • 3 Jun 2025 |
  • Talk |
  • Faculty Research
Citation
Related
Paine, Lynn S. "Governing Sustainability in a Shifting Context." In Closing Ceremony. SDG Ambition Accelerator, United Nations Global Compact, Boston, MA, USA, June 3, 2025.

Fiscal Externalities of Transaction Taxes: Evidence from the Los Angeles Mansion Tax

By: Daniel Green, Vikram Jambulapati, Jack Liebersohn and Tejaswi Velayudhan
  • 2025 |
  • Working Paper |
  • Faculty Research
We estimate the fiscal externalities of a property transfer tax, the Los Angeles “Mansion Tax”, on the revenues from property taxes when assessed values are closely tied to transactions. In California, as in over half of U.S. states, growth in tax as- sessments between transactions lags market values, so any reduction in transaction frequency reduces the growth of property tax revenue. The fiscal externality is sizable: the resulting property tax revenue loss conservatively offsets at least two-thirds of the revenue generated by the transfer tax. The net revenue loss is larger for high-value and commercial properties.
Citation
SSRN
Related
Green, Daniel, Vikram Jambulapati, Jack Liebersohn, and Tejaswi Velayudhan. "Fiscal Externalities of Transaction Taxes: Evidence from the Los Angeles Mansion Tax." SSRN Working Paper Series, No. 5273034, June 2025.

Tax Elasticities of Top Donors: Evidence from Family Foundations

By: Simon Essig Aberg
  • 2025 |
  • Working Paper |
  • Faculty Research
High net-worth donors who give through a family foundation or donor-advised fund constitute the fastest growing segment of charitable giving in the United States. Using a novel database of foundation tax filings, I document facts about top donors, estimate how they respond to tax incentives over time, and evaluate the welfare effects of policy changes. I focus on two sets of tax incentives: the tax subsidy for a donor's contributions to their foundation, and the tax penalty imposed if a foundation's charitable disbursements average less than 5% of assets. I employ a new approach to identify short-run responses to these tax incentives. I then translate those estimates into dynamic elasticities using a new method. I find that a 1% increase in the tax subsidy for contributions would increase contributions to foundations by 0.67% in present value terms, but would only raise charitable disbursements by 0.37%. Additionally, I find that a one percentage point increase in the 5% minimum payout rate would increase charitable disbursements by 0.33% in present value terms, primarily financed by foundation assets. I discuss how these findings relate to recent legislative proposals regarding the regulation of foundations and donor-advised funds.
Citation
SSRN
Related
Essig Aberg, Simon. "Tax Elasticities of Top Donors: Evidence from Family Foundations." Working Paper, June 2025.
More Publications

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    Think Big, Buy Small, with Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff

    Re: Richard Ruback & Royce Yudkoff
    • 01 Jun 2025
    • We Made It In America

    Zero to $600 Million: Hakeem Belo-Osagie’s Untold Story

    Re: Hakeem Belo-Osagie
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The Case Method

Introduced by HBS faculty to business education in 1925, the case method is a powerful interactive learning process that puts students in the shoes of a leader faced with a real-world management issue and challenges them to propose and justify a resolution.
Today, HBS remains an authority on teaching by the case method. The School is also the world’s leading case-writing institution, with HBS faculty members contributing hundreds of new cases to the management curriculum a year via the School’s unique case development and writing process.
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Harvard Business School seeks candidates in all fields for full time positions. Candidates with outstanding records in PhD or DBA programs are encouraged to apply.
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