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- January 2023 (Revised March 2023)
- Case
OhmConnect: Energizing the Future
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Jennifer Fonstad and Nicole Tempest Keller
Founded in 2013, OhmConnect was a free consumer web app that alerted customers about peak hours of electricity demand, and paid them to lower their energy use at home during these periods. The company sold the aggregated reductions generated by thousands of households...
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Keywords:
App Development;
Renewable Energy;
Electricity Usage;
Regulations;
VC;
Technology;
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC);
Scalability;
Applications and Software;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms;
Business Model;
Venture Capital;
Energy Industry;
United States;
California;
Texas;
Europe
- 2022
- Working Paper
The Issuance and Design of Sustainability-linked Loans
By: Maria Loumioti and George Serafeim
Sustainability-linked loans (i.e., syndicated loans for which pricing is linked to a sustainability performance indicator) have rapidly evolved into a significant private debt product. We find that sustainability-linked lending has been available mostly to borrowers...
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- 2022
- Other Unpublished Work
Got 'Critical Minerals'? Hooray! But Be Careful
By: Louis T. Wells
When a country has “critical minerals,” certain issues require special attention in the country’s mining legislation or while negotiating contracts with potential mining investors. As well, to obtain maximum benefit the government should prepare for negotiations with...
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- 2022
- Working Paper
The Impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act on the U.S. Economy
By: Joe Long, Carlo Medici, Nancy Qian and Marco Tabellini
This paper studies the impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned Chinese immigration to the United States after 1882, across U.S. counties between 1870 and 1940. We find that the Act reduced labor supply for both the Chinese and other groups (i.e., white and...
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- March 2022 (Revised November 2022)
- Case
Moksha Data: Delivering Insights for Public Service
By: Ashish Nanda and Zack Kurtovich
Moksha Data, a boutique data consulting firm specializing in public sector work, started in January 2017 with a handshake between friends and a shared commitment to the principles of egalitarianism, ownership, and collaboration. Since its inception, the Houston-based...
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Keywords:
Professional Service Firms;
Professional Service Firm;
Strategy Formulation;
Data;
Data As A Service;
Government Contracting;
Consulting;
Consulting Firms;
Consulting Services;
Entrepreneurship;
Public Sector;
Analytics and Data Science;
Growth and Development;
Strategy;
Consulting Industry;
Texas
- Article
Policies to Influence Perceptions about COVID-19 Risk: The Case of Maps
By: Claudia Engel, Jonathan Rodden and Marco Tabellini
Choropleth disease maps have become an important tool for informing the public about the risks posed by COVID-19. In a survey conducted in the U.S. state of Georgia in June 2020, we randomly assigned respondents to view either of two maps. The first one reported...
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- November 2021 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
The Global Great Depression, 1929-1939
By: Alberto Cavallo, Sophus A. Reinert and Federica Gabrieli
The Great Depression was, by far, the worst economic contraction of the twentieth century, and some of the most important ideas about both fiscal and monetary policy in the second half of the century were developed in response to it. The economic collapse, which...
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- October 2021 (Revised November 2022)
- Case
The 2012 Spanish Labor Reform: Lifting All Boats, or Leveling Down?
By: Vincent Pons, Rafael Di Tella, Santiago Botella and Elena Corsi
Since 1978, Spain had struggled to control unemployment. The country’s labor law was protective of employees hired long-term and companies used temporary contracts as buffers. In 2012, amid economic recession and a 23.6% unemployment rate, a center-right government of...
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Keywords:
COVID-19 Pandemic;
Labor Market;
Unemployment;
Recession;
Globalized Markets and Industries;
Government Legislation;
International Relations;
Working Conditions;
Employment;
Labor Unions;
Contracts;
Social Issues;
Public Opinion;
Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms;
Spain;
European Union
- September 2021 (Revised December 2021)
- Case
Spire, the CubeSat Revolution, and the Government as a Space Data Customer
By: Matthew Weinzierl, Mehak Sarang and Brendan L. Rosseau
This case outlines the rise of Spire Global, a young space company using CubeSats to provide weather data and weather prediction services. In addition to tracing the evolution of a space startup from novel idea to publicly-traded company, the case also examines the...
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- May 2021
- Article
Mutual Funds as Venture Capitalists? Evidence from Unicorns
By: Josh Lerner, Sergey Chernenko and Yao Zeng
The past decade saw the rise of both “founder-friendly” venture financings and non-traditional investors, frequently with liquidity constraints. Using detailed contract data, we study open-end mutual funds investing in private venture-backed firms. We posit an...
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- April–May 2021
- Article
Labor Mobility and Antitakeover Provisions
By: Aiyesha Dey and Joshua White
How do firms protect their human capital? We test whether firms facing an increased threat of being acquired strengthen their antitakeover provisions (ATPs) in order to bond with their employees. We use the adoption of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine (IDD) by U.S....
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- 2021
- Other Unpublished Work
Obsolescence of the Obsolescing Bargain: Why Governments Must Get Investor-State Contracts Right
By: Louis T. Wells and Karl P. Sauvant
Gone are the days when governments could easily renegotiate natural resource and other investment contracts if foreign investors, e.g., reaped bonanzas from rising resource prices, surprisingly rich discoveries, or terms that were too favorable. Today, international...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
No-fault Default, Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, and Financial Institutions
By: Robert C. Merton and Richard T. Thakor
This paper analyzes the costs and benefits of a no-fault-default debt structure as an alternative to the typical bankruptcy process. We show that the deadweight costs of bankruptcy can be avoided or substantially reduced through no-fault-default debt, which permits a...
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- December 2020 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
Made In Space, Expectations Management, and the Business of In-Space Manufacturing
By: Matthew C. Weinzierl and Mehak Sarang
After having proven its base technology (3D printing) through NASA solicitations and contracts, Made In Space was searching for a viable commercial application. But the business case for the leading candidate, high-quality fiber optic cable for use on Earth, remained...
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- 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...
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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
- July 2020
- Teaching Note
COVID-19: The Global Shutdown
By: Laura Alfaro and Sarah Jeong
In the first months of 2020, a pandemic overwhelmed the world. COVID-19, commonly known as the coronavirus, spread from China and created a severe public health emergency across countries. While an immediate fear of the disease’s impact on human life permeaacted...
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- June 2020 (Revised February 2023)
- Case
TraceTogether
By: Mitchell B. Weiss and Sarah Mehta
By April 7, 2020, over 1.4 million people worldwide had contracted the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Governments raced to curb the spread of COVID-19 by scaling up testing, quarantining those infected, and tracing their possible contacts. It had taken Singapore’s...
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Keywords:
COVID-19;
Contact Tracing;
Government Administration;
Crisis Management;
Health;
Health Pandemics;
Innovation and Invention;
Innovation Leadership;
Innovation Strategy;
Technological Innovation;
Social Issues;
Information Technology;
Mobile and Wireless Technology;
Applications and Software;
Technology Adoption;
Health Industry;
Public Administration Industry;
Singapore
- 2022
- Working Paper
Complexity in Loan Contracts
By: Victoria Ivashina and Boris Vallée
Using novel data on 1,240 credit agreements from the leveraged loan market, we propose simple measures of contractual complexity based on clauses qualifying negative covenants. We document a high average level of contractual complexity and significant heterogeneity....
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- October 2019
- Article
Partial Deregulation and Competition: Effects on Risky Mortgage Origination
By: Marco Di Maggio, Amir Kermani and Sanket Korgaonkar
We exploit the OCC's preemption of national banks from state laws against predatory lending as a quasi-experiment to study the effect of deregulation and its interaction with competition on the supply of complex mortgages. Following the preemption ruling, national...
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- September 2019 (Revised February 2022)
- Case
Glenn Defense Marine Asia (A)
By: Susanna Gallani, Anja Anliker, Luke Hodges and Amram Migdal
This case describes the growth of Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA) under the leadership of Leonard Glenn Francis. GDMA provided ship husbanding and logistical support services to the United States Navy when Navy ships visited various ports in Southeast Asia. The case...
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Keywords:
Business Ventures;
Business Growth and Maturation;
Crime and Corruption;
Ethics;
Fairness;
Moral Sensibility;
Values and Beliefs;
Governance;
Corporate Accountability;
Governance Controls;
Government and Politics;
Law;
Contracts;
Lawfulness;
Operations;
Shipping Industry;
Service Industry;
Asia;
Southeast Asia;
Malaysia;
Singapore