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- 2021
- Working Paper
Crisis Interventions in Corporate Insolvency
By: Samuel Antill and Christopher Clayton
We model the optimal resolution of insolvent firms in general equilibrium. Absent externalities, the optimal corporate-insolvency system encourages lending by letting banks assign liquidations ex-post. We show that a social planner optimally intervenes in such a system...
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- February 2021
- Article
The Department of Justice as a Gatekeeper in Whistleblower-Initiated Corporate Fraud Enforcement: Drivers and Consequences
By: Jonas Heese, Ranjani Krishnan and Hari Ramasubramanian
We examine drivers and consequences of U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) oversight of whistleblower cases of corporate fraud against the government. We find that the DOJ is more likely to intervene in and conduct longer investigations of cases that have a higher chance...
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- Fall 2020
- Article
Business Credit Programs in the Pandemic Era
By: Samuel G. Hanson, Jeremy C. Stein, Adi Sunderam and Eric Zwick
We develop a pair of models that speak to the goals and design of the sort of business-lending and corporate-bond purchase programs that have been introduced by governments in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. An overarching theme is that, in contrast to the...
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- Article
Conversational Receptiveness: Expressing Engagement with Opposing Views
By: M. Yeomans, J. Minson, H. Collins, H. Chen and F. Gino
We examine “conversational receptiveness”—the use of language to communicate one’s willingness to thoughtfully engage with opposing views. We develop an interpretable machine-learning algorithm to identify the linguistic profile of receptiveness (Studies 1A-B). We then...
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- September 2020
- Article
Regulatory Sandboxes: A Cure for mHealth Pilotitis?
By: Abhishek Bhatia, Rahul Matthan, Tarun Khanna and Satchit Balsari
Mobile health (mHealth) and related digital health interventions in the past decade have not always scaled globally as anticipated earlier despite large investments by governments and philanthropic foundations. The implementation of digital health tools has suffered...
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- September 2020
- Article
The Rise of the Investor State: State Capital in the Chinese Economy
By: Meg Rithmire and Hao Chen
The nature and extent of the role of the Chinese state in the economy is fundamental to many empirical and theoretical debates about that country’s political economy. We document and explain the rise of a novel form of intervention on the part of the Chinese state: the...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
How ESG Issues Become Financially Material to Corporations and Their Investors
By: David Freiberg, Jean Rogers and George Serafeim
Management and disclosure of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues have received substantial interest over the last decade. In this paper, we outline a framework of how ESG issues become financially material, affecting corporate profitability and valuation....
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Keywords:
Materiality;
ESG;
Pharmaceutical Companies;
Business Ethics;
Sustainability;
Environment;
Disclosure;
Disclosure And Access;
Regulation;
Social Impact;
Environmental Sustainability;
Social Issues;
Corporate Governance;
Ethics;
Corporate Disclosure;
Corporate Accountability;
Resource Allocation;
Finance;
Accounting;
Valuation
- September 2019 (Revised August 2020)
- Case
Engineering an Inclusive Bioeconomy
By: Tarun Khanna, Raffaella Sadun and Susie L. Ma
In 2019, entrepreneur Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio was developing a project he hoped could generate and share wealth from the natural resources of the Amazon without destroying those resources. His idea, called Earth Bank of Codes (EBC), would create a library of the...
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Keywords:
Decision Making;
Development Economics;
Entrepreneurship;
Innovation and Invention;
Intellectual Property;
Emerging Markets;
Market Design;
Marketplace Matching;
Science;
Genetics;
Natural Environment;
Environmental Sustainability;
Climate Change;
Social Enterprise;
Strategy;
Strategic Planning;
Technology;
Ownership;
Social Psychology;
Trust;
Society;
Biotechnology Industry;
South America;
Amazon Basin
- July 2019
- Article
Using Behavioral Science to Inform the Design of Sugary Drink Portion Limit Policies: Reply to Wilson and Stolarz-Fantino (2018)
By: Leslie John, Grant E. Donnelly and Christina A. Roberto
In their commentary, Wilson & Stolarz-Fantino argue that specific design features of our research mean that it cannot have policy implications and that researchers “need to consider profit maximization in menu design or studies are likely to suggest ill-informed...
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- 2019
- Working Paper
Labor Market Shocks and the Demand for Trade Protection: Evidence from Online Surveys
By: Rafael Di Tella and Dani Rodrik
We study preferences for government action in response to layoffs resulting from different types of labor-market shocks. We consider the following shocks: technological change, a demand shift, bad management, and three kinds of international outsourcing. Respondents...
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- 2019
- Working Paper
Understanding and Overcoming Roadblocks to Environmental Sustainability. Past Roads and Future Prospects
By: Ann-Kristin Bergquist, Shawn A. Cole, John Ehrenfeld, Andrew A. King and Auden Schendler
This working paper examines key barriers to business sustainability discussed at a multidisciplinary conference held at the Harvard Business School in 2018. Drawing on perspectives from both the historical and business literatures, speakers debated the historical...
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- December 2018 (Revised June 2020)
- Case
Creating the French Behavioral Insights Team
By: Michael Luca, Ariella Kristal and Emilie Billaud
This case explores how neuroscientist Mariam Chammat helped set up the first behavioral insights team at the center of the French government, and encouraged French administrations to innovate and create policy initiatives based on psychological theories of influence...
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- October 2018
- Article
A Theory of Intergenerational Mobility
By: Gary Becker, Scott Duke Kominers, Kevin Murphy and Jorg L. Spenkuch
We develop a model of intergenerational resource transmission that emphasizes the link between cross-sectional inequality and intergenerational mobility. By drawing on first principles of human capital theory, we derive several novel results. In particular, we show...
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- 2018
- Chapter
Behavioral Household Finance
By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian
This chapter provides an overview of household finance. The first part summarizes key facts regarding household financial behavior, emphasizing empirical regularities that are inconsistent with the standard classical economic model and discussing extensions of the...
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- July 2018 (Revised July 2018)
- Teaching Note
Argentina Power—Don’t Cry for Me Argentina
By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Sayiddah Fatima McCree
Teaching Note for HBS No. 218-041. This case concerns a complex potential energy infrastructure investment in Argentina by a global conglomerate shortly after Mauricio Macri (“Macri”) became President of Argentina in 2015. The central issues are (i) why was a country...
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- February 2018
- Article
Bank CEO Materialism: Risk Controls, Culture and Tail Risk
By: Robert Bushman, Robert Davidson, Aiyesha Dey and Abbie Smith
We investigate how the prevalence of materialistic bank CEOs has evolved over time and how risk management policies, non-CEO executives’ behavior, and tail risk vary with CEO materialism. We document that the proportion of banks run by materialistic CEOs increased...
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- 2018
- Working Paper
Zig-Zagging Your Way to Transformative Impact
By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Tricia Gregg
Achieving transformative impact has been much discussed by social entrepreneurs, funders, and consultants. These discussions have focused on issues of increasing impact and scale, but often with no clear distinction between the two terms. In order to provide clarity,...
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- November 2017
- Technical Note
21st Century Populism
By: George Serafeim and David Freiberg
While the first decade of the 21st century saw a massive financial crisis that led to significant economic downturn, the second decade saw the rise of political leaders, who built their support upon a political message that championed the common person against the...
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Keywords:
Populism;
Market Efficiency;
Market Liberalization;
Political Influence;
Political Instability;
Capital Controls;
Partnerships;
Coalition;
Inequality;
Role Of Business In Society;
Government Intervention In The Markets;
Labor Market;
Equality and Inequality;
Financial Markets;
Social Issues;
Immigration;
Financial Crisis;
Capital Markets;
Business and Government Relations
- August 2017
- Article
Should Governments Invest More in Nudging?
By: Shlomo Benartzi, John Beshears, Katherine L. Milkman, Cass R. Sunstein, Richard H. Thaler, Maya Shankar, Will Tucker-Ray, William J. Congdon and Steven Galing
Governments are increasingly adopting behavioral science techniques for changing individual behavior in pursuit of policy objectives. The types of “nudge” interventions that governments are now adopting alter people’s decisions without coercion or significant changes...
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Keywords:
Nudge;
Nudge Unit;
Choice Architecture;
Behavioral Science;
Behavioral Economics;
Savings;
Pension Plan;
Education;
College Enrollment;
Energy;
Electricity Usage;
Preventive Health;
Influenza Vaccination;
Flu Shot;
Open Materials;
Behavior;
Governance;
Economics;
Policy;
Power and Influence
- 2017
- Chapter
Gapponshugi in Global Perspective: Debating the Responsibility of Capitalism
By: G. Jones
This chapter places the concepts of ethical capitalism developed by the 19th century Japanese venture capitalist Shibusawa Eiichi in a global historical perspective. The chapter reviews the similarities and differences over time and between countries of proponents of...
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