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- July 2023
- Case
Raymond Jefferson: Trial by Fire
By: Anthony Mayo and Carin-Isabel Knoop
In the spring of 2021, Raymond (Ray) Jefferson applied for a job in President Joseph Biden’s administration. Ten years earlier, false allegations were used to force him to resign from his prior U.S. government position as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Veterans’...
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- June 12, 2023
- Article
The Limits of Capacity Building for Investment Contract Negotiations
By: Karl P. Sauvant, Vanessa Sze Wai Tsang and Louis T. Wells
Developing countries must negotiate the best possible investment contracts with foreign investors at the outset. Donor organizations regularly push for “capacity building” to create technical expertise for negotiations within host country governments. But building and...
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- March 2022
- Article
Revealing Corruption: Firm and Worker Level Evidence from Brazil
By: Emanuele Colonnelli, Spyridon Lagaras, Jacopo Ponticelli, Mounu Prem and Margarita Tsoutsoura
We study how the disclosure of corrupt practices affects the growth of firms involved in illegal interactions with the government using randomized audits of public procurement in Brazil. On average, firms exposed by the anti-corruption program grow larger after the...
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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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- 2022
- Case
Polarizing Government Work: McKinsey & Co. and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
When Donald Trump announced his run for president in 2015, he placed immigration front and center in his campaign. He promised to drastically expand U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and build a border...
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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
- Article
Fundraising for Stigmatized Groups: A Text Message Donation Experiment
By: Katerina Linos, Laura Jakli and Melissa Carlson
As government welfare programming contracts and NGOs increasingly assume core aid functions, they must address a long-standing challenge—that people in need often belong to stigmatized groups. To study other-regarding behavior, we fielded an experiment through a...
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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