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Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, first published in 1776, helped create the discipline of economics with its conjuring of the invisible hand,...
- January 2021
- Teaching Note
Maritz Automotive
By: Ashley V. Whillans and Lamar Pierce
This case focuses on Charlotte Blank, the Chief Behavioral Officer at Maritz, as she tries to assist a major automotive manufacturer (CarCo) with increasing their sales by prepaying monthly bonuses to independently franchised car dealers and clawing them back if the...
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- January 2021
- Article
Veil-of-Ignorance Reasoning Mitigates Self-Serving Bias in Resource Allocation During the COVID-19 Crisis
By: Karen Huang, Regan Bernhard, Netta Barak-Corren, Max Bazerman and Joshua D. Greene
The COVID-19 crisis has forced healthcare professionals to make tragic decisions concerning which patients to save. Furthermore, the COVID-19 crisis has foregrounded the influence of self-serving bias in debates on how to allocate scarce resources. A utilitarian...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Designing, Not Checking, for Policy Robustness: An Example with Optimal Taxation
By: Benjami Lockwood, Afras Y. Sial and Matthew C. Weinzierl
Economists typically check the robustness of their results by comparing them across plausible ranges of parameter values and model structures. A preferable approach to robustness—for the purposes of policymaking and evaluation—is to design policy that takes these...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 2 Transactions in a Task Network
From the 1930s through today, many economists have conceived of large technical systems for the production of goods and services as a series of transactions. This point of view has led eminent economists to assert that transactions are the fundamental unit of analysis...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
What Can Economics Say About Alzheimer's Disease?
By: Amitabh Chandra, Courtney Coile and Corina Mommaerts
Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) affects one in ten people aged 65 or older and is the most expensive disease in the United States. We describe the central economic questions raised by AD. While there is overlap with the economics of aging, the defining features of the...
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- 2020
- Article
Making Economics More Useful: How Technological Eclecticism Could Help
By: Amar Bhidé
Keynes thought it would be ‘splendid’ if economists became more like dentists. Disciplinary economics has instead become more like physics in focusing on concise, universal propositions verified through decisive tests. This focus, I argue, limits the practical utility...
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- Spring 2020
- Article
The Basic Economics of Internet Infrastructure
By: Shane Greenstein
The internet's structure and operations remain invisible to most economists. What determines the economic value of internet infrastructure and the incentives to improve it? What are the open research questions for the most salient policy issues? This article reviews...
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- January 2020
- Case
Banorte Móvil: Data-Driven Mobile Growth
By: Ayelet Israeli, Carla Larangeira and Mariana Cal
In mid-2019, Carlos Hank was deliberating over the results for Banorte Móvil—the mobile application for Banorte, Mexico’s most profitable and second-largest financial institution. Hank, who had been appointed as Banorte´s Chairman of the Board in January 2015, had...
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- January 2020
- Teaching Note
Chile: Unrest in the Copper Nation
By: Laura Alfaro and Sarah Jeong
For decades, Chile enjoyed the stability of being the world’s largest producer of copper. Keynes would have advised that this period of growth would have been the time for the government to save, that “the boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity at the...
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- Winter 2020
- Article
The Economics of Maps
By: Abhishek Nagaraj and Scott Stern
For centuries, maps have codified the extent of human geographic knowledge and shaped discovery and economic decision-making. Economists across many fields, including urban economics, public finance, political economy, and economic geography, have long employed maps,...
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- 2019
- Working Paper
Thinking Outside the Box (12): The Benefits of Increased Transparency in Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance for the 180 Million Insured
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Barak D. Richman
Economists have long noted that the tax exclusion of employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) caused workers to purchase health plans that differ in price and other characteristics from those they would otherwise choose for themselves. We explore the short-term and long-term...
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- November 26, 2019
- Article
Veil-of-Ignorance Reasoning Favors the Greater Good
By: Karen Huang, Joshua D. Greene and Max Bazerman
The “veil of ignorance” is a moral reasoning device designed to promote impartial decision-making by denying decision-makers access to potentially biasing information about who will benefit most or least from the available options. Veil-of-ignorance reasoning was...
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- November 2019
- Case
Floating the Exchange Rate: In Pursuit of the Chinese Dream
By: Laura Alfaro and Sarah Jeong
In the decades following 2005, China faced significant financial challenges. Inflation spiraled upwards and China’s economy stagnated in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. The country’s leaders took an interventionist approach to weather the storm, controlling...
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- 2019
- Working Paper
The Great Convergence: Skill Accumulation and Mass Education in Africa and Asia, 1870-2010
By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg
While human capital has gained prominence in new vintages of growth theory, economists have struggled to find the positive externalities of mass education in developing economies. We shed new light on the economic significance of the global 'schooling revolution' by...
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Keywords:
Mass Education;
Skill Premium;
History;
Human Capital;
Education;
Competency And Skills;
Labor;
Cost;
Africa;
Asia
- November 2019
- Teaching Note
Magnus Resch: Transforming the Art Market Through Transparency
By: Henry McGee and Sarah Mehta
Teaching Note for HBS No. 319-002. This teaching note pairs with a case on economist and entrepreneur Magnus Resch, who is on a mission to make the art market more transparent. He has built the Magnus app, which catalogues the price and transaction history of millions...
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- 2019
- Chapter
The Great Divergence and the Great Convergence
By: G. Jones
This chapter provides a new lens to the extensive debate among economists and economic historians concerning why the West grew rich and the rest of the world lagged behind as modern industrialization took hold in the 19th century. The literature has focused heavily on...
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- 2019
- Working Paper
Veil-of-Ignorance Reasoning Favors the Greater Good
By: Karen Huang, Joshua D. Greene and Max Bazerman
The “veil of ignorance” is a moral reasoning device designed to promote impartial decision-making by denying decision-makers access to potentially biasing information about who will benefit most or least from the available options. Veil-of-ignorance reasoning was...
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- 2010
- Article
Fretting About Modest Risks Is a Mistake
By: Matthew Rabin and Max Bazerman
Managers often engage in risk-averse behavior, and economists, decision analysts, and managers treat risk aversion as a preference. In many cases, acting in a risk-averse manner is a mistake, but managers can correct this mistake with greater reflection. This article...
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- January 2019
- Article
Pay Now or Pay Later? The Economics within the Private Equity Partnership
By: Victoria Ivashina and Josh Lerner
The economics of partnerships have been of enduring interest to economists, but many issues regarding intergenerational conflicts and their impact on the continuity of these organizations remain unclear. We examine 717 private equity partnerships and show that (a) the...
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- 2018
- Book
The Academy of Fisticuffs: Political Economy and Commercial Society in Enlightenment Italy
The terms “capitalism” and “socialism” continue to haunt our political and economic imaginations, but we rarely consider their interconnected early history. Even the 18th century had its “socialists,” but unlike those of the 19th, they paradoxically sought to make the...
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Keywords:
Enlightenment;
Political Economy;
Italy;
Commercial Society;
Economic Systems;
Trade;
History;
Markets;
Society;
Italy