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- 2024
- Working Paper
Health, Human Capital Development and the Longevity of Japanese Elites Since 710
By: Tom Nicholas and Hiroshi Shimizu
We examine the lifespan of over 40,000 elites in Japan born between 710 and 1912, including samurai warriors, feudal lords, business, political, cultural, and religious leaders at the apex of the social hierarchy. Japanese elites experienced increases in lifespan about... View Details
- August 2023
- Article
Status and Mortality: Is There a Whitehall Effect in the United States?
By: Tom Nicholas
The influential Whitehall studies found that top-ranking civil servants in Britain experienced lower mortality than civil servants below them in the organizational hierarchy due to differential exposure to workplace stress. I test for a Whitehall effect in the United... View Details
- August 2022
- Case
Air Wars: Deregulating the U.S. Airline Industry
By: Tom Nicholas and James Weber
In the early decades of the twentieth century, the U.S. government assisted in the development of an airline industry by subsidizing the delivery of mail and allowing mail carriers to also fly passengers. Because the government awarded mail routes to the lowest... View Details
Keywords: Government Regulation; Deregulation; Change Management; Economics; Entrepreneurship; Financial Management; Business History; Human Resources; Compensation and Benefits; Labor; Labor Unions; Leading Change; Leadership Style; Crisis Management; Industry Structures; Operations; Strategy; Adaptation; Competition; Air Transportation; Air Transportation Industry; United States
- July 2022 (Revised February 2025)
- Case
A Soul and a Service: North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance
By: Tom Nicholas and John Masko
The North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association (the Mutual) was founded in 1898 as a for-profit entity selling life insurance catering to the Black community. The Mutual was entering a field crowded with established White-owned competitors that largely refused to... View Details
- February 2022
- Article
Taxation and Innovation in the 20th Century
By: Ufuk Akcigit, John Grigsby, Tom Nicholas and Stefanie Stantcheva
This paper studies the effect of corporate and personal taxes on innovation in the United States over the twentieth century. We build a panel of the universe of inventors who patent since 1920, and a historical state-level corporate tax database with corporate tax... View Details
- January 2022 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
Chinese Restriction, Violence, and Exclusion in the United States
By: Tom Nicholas, Boyang Han and Tomas Rosales
Many early Chinese immigrants to the United States during the 1850s worked as traditional gold miners, but as gold mining declined in significance, an increasing number were employed as laborers for large scale construction projects such as railroads, roadways, and in... View Details
Keywords: Immigration Acts; Immigration; Labor; Jobs and Positions; Race; Social Issues; Laws and Statutes
- Article
How History Shaped the Innovator's Dilemma
By: Tom Nicholas
In 1993, four years prior to the publication of Clayton Christensen’s highly influential book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, the Business History Review (BHR) published an article by Christensen titled “The Rigid Disk Drive Industry: A History of... View Details
- February 2021 (Revised June 2021)
- Case
Barbarians at the Gate or Turnaround Gurus? Private Equity and the Rise of the LBO
By: Tom Nicholas and John Masko
During the 1980s, leveraged buyouts (LBOs) and the private equity (PE) firms responsible for carrying them out revolutionized both investment and management in the U.S. Between 1980 and 1989, buyout activity in the U.S. surged from $1 billion per year to $60 billion.... View Details
Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Conglomerates; Restructuring; Borrowing and Debt; Private Equity; Bonds; Investment Return; Institutional Investing; Profit Sharing; Business History; Management Style; Private Ownership; Performance Effectiveness; Value Creation; Financial Services Industry; United States
- 2021
- Working Paper
Status and Mortality: Is There a Whitehall Effect in the United States?
By: Tom Nicholas
Do white collar workers with lower social status in the occupational hierarchy die younger? The influential Whitehall studies of British civil servants identified a strong inverse relationship between employment rank and mortality, but we do not know if this effect... View Details
- October 2020 (Revised April 2022)
- Case
When Institutions Fail: HIV/AIDS in the 1980s
By: Tom Nicholas and Christian Godwin
During the early 1980s, young gay men in urban centers such as San Francisco and New York City began contracting a mysterious illness that would come to be known as HIV/AIDS. A diagnosis meant almost certain death, with a less than 1% survival rate. Conflicting... View Details
Keywords: Ethics; Policy; Government and Politics; Health Pandemics; History; Rights; Media; Organizations; Business and Community Relations; Religion; Social Psychology; Identity; Prejudice and Bias; Social Issues; Public Opinion; Pharmaceutical Industry; Biotechnology Industry; Health Industry; Journalism and News Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Public Administration Industry; United States
- January 2020
- Case
The Origins of Bell Labs
By: Tom Nicholas and John Masko
In 1947, scientists at Bell Labs invented the transistor—a tiny signal amplifier that would go on to become the fundamental building block of the digital age. But, confounding most traditional economic assumptions, it was not a vigorous startup that made this momentous... View Details
- 2019
- Article
History, Micro Data, and Endogenous Growth
By: Ufuk Akcigit and Tom Nicholas
The study of economic growth is concerned with long-run changes, and therefore, historical data should be especially influential in informing the development of new theories. In this review, we draw on the recent literature to highlight areas in which study of history... View Details
- 2019
- Book
VC: An American History
By: Tom Nicholas
An exploration of venture financing in America, from its origins in the whaling industry to the rise of Silicon Valley, that shows how venture capital (VC) created an epicenter for the development of high-tech innovation. The VC industry arose from the United States’... View Details
- April 2019 (Revised April 2020)
- Case
Reaganomics: Impact and Legacy
By: Tom Nicholas, John Masko and Matthew G. Preble
During the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan and his administration instituted several far-reaching economic policies that had both near- and long-term impacts on such aspects of the U.S. economy as monetary policy, inflation, the tax structure, and the role of... View Details
- January 2019 (Revised February 2020)
- Case
Jay Gould, 'The Most Hated Man in America'
By: Tom Nicholas, John Masko and Matthew G. Preble
Railroad magnate Jay Gould, a controversial figure in the history of U.S. capitalism, was a disruptive influence on an industry that had previously relied on formal and informal agreements to move traffic long distances across lines operated by different companies.... View Details
- October 2018 (Revised February 2018)
- Case
Masayoshi Son and the Vision Fund
In October 2016, SoftBank Group Corp., the Japanese conglomerate giant caused a significant shock to the worldwide market for venture capital and private equity by announcing the Vision Fund, the largest tech investment fund in the world at close to $100 billion. The... View Details
- September 2018 (Revised February 2025)
- Background Note
The Gender Gap In U.S. History
By: Zoë B. Cullen, Tom Nicholas and Sophie Kainen
- 2018
- Working Paper
Taxation and Innovation in the 20th Century
By: Ufuk Akcigit, John Grigsby, Tom Nicholas and Stefanie Stantcheva
This paper studies the effect of corporate and personal taxes on innovation in the United States over the 20th century. We use three new datasets: a panel of the universe of inventors who patent since 1920; a dataset of the employment, location, and patents of firms... View Details
- March 2018
- Teaching Note
The Flint, Michigan Sit-Down Strike
By: Christopher Stanton and Tom Nicholas
Teaching Note for HBS No. 817-005. View Details