Benjamin N. Roth

Ben Roth is an assistant professor of business administration in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit, teaching The Entrepreneurial Manager to MBA students. He is a development economist that employs both economic theory and field experimentation to pursue questions in two overlapping agendas: understanding and relaxing the constraints to small-scale entrepreneurship in the developing world, and understanding how investors should behave when they have both financial and social preferences. 

Ben earned a BA in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a PhD in economics from MIT. 

Journal Articles

• Liu, Ernest, and Benjamin N. Roth. "Contractual Restrictions and Debt Traps." Review of Financial Studies (forthcoming). View Details
• Roth, Benjamin N., and Ran I. Shorrer. "Making Marketplaces Safe: Dominant Individual Rationality and Applications to Market Design." Management Science (forthcoming). View Details
• Karlan, Dean, Sendhil Mullainathan, and Benjamin Roth. "Debt Traps? Market Vendors and Moneylender Debt in India and the Philippines." American Economic Review: Insights 1, no. 1 (June 2019): 27–42. View Details

Book Chapters

• Roth, Benjamin N. "Market Design Under Weak Institutions." In More Equal by Design: Economic Design Responses to Inequality, edited by Scott Duke Kominers and Alex Teytelboym. Oxford University Press, forthcoming. View Details

Working Papers

• Hussam, Reshmaan, Natalia Rigol, and Benjamin N. Roth. "Targeting High Ability Entrepreneurs Using Community Information: Mechanism Design in the Field." Working Paper, February 2021. (Conditionally Accepted, American Economic Review.) View Details
• Lowe, Matt, V G Nadhanael, and Benjamin N. Roth. "India's Food Supply Chain During the Pandemic." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-070, December 2020. View Details
• Green, Daniel, and Benjamin N. Roth. "The Allocation of Socially Responsible Capital." Working Paper, November 2020. View Details
• Roth, Benjamin N. "Impact Investing: A Theory of Financing Social Entrepreneurship." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-078, February 2020. View Details
• Arraiz, Irani, Miriam Bruhn, Benjamin N. Roth, Claudia Ruiz-Ortega, and Rodolfo Stucchi. "Free Riding in Loan Approvals: Evidence From SME Lending in Peru." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-079, February 2020. View Details
• Bhattacharya, Vivek, and Benjamin N. Roth. "Rank-Based Elicitation Schemes for Relative Likelihoods of Binary Events." Working Paper, March 2016. View Details

Cases and Teaching Materials

• Khanna, Tarun, Ramana Nanda, Benjamin N. Roth, and Brian Trelstad. "Impact Investment, Catalytic Capital and Blended Finance." Harvard Business School Technical Note 321-078, September 2020. (Revised December 2020.) View Details
• Nanda, Ramana, Benjamin N. Roth, and Olivia Hull. "Prime Coalition: Catalytic Capital for Climate Innovation." Harvard Business School Case 820-007, February 2020. (Revised March 2020.) View Details
• Nicholas, Tom, Ramana Nanda, and Benjamin N. Roth. "Masayoshi Son and the Vision Fund." Harvard Business School Case 819-041, October 2018. (Revised February 2018.) View Details
• Roth, Benjamin N., Joseph B. Lassiter III, and Natalia Rigol. "Husk Power: Scaling the Venture." Harvard Business School Case 819-069, December 2018. (Revised January 2020.) View Details

Additional Information

• Curriculum Vitae

Areas of Interest

• economic development
• entrepreneurship
• social entrepreneurship