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- June 2025
- Article
Social Security and Trends in Wealth Inequality
By: Sylvain Catherine, Max Miller and Natasha Sarin
Recent influential work finds large increases in inequality in the U.S. based on measures of wealth concentration that notably exclude the value of social insurance programs. This paper shows that top wealth shares have not changed much over the last three decades when... View Details
- April 2025
- Article
The Allocation of Socially Responsible Capital
By: Daniel Green and Benjamin N. Roth
Portfolio allocation decisions increasingly incorporate social values. We develop a tractable framework to study how competition between investors to own socially valuable assets affects social welfare. Relative to the most common social-investing strategies, we... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Lessons from an App Update at Replika AI: Identity Discontinuity in Human-AI Relationships
By: Julian De Freitas, Noah Castelo, Ahmet Kaan Uğuralp and Zeliha Oğuz-Uğuralp
As consumers increasingly interact with AI applications specialized for social relationships, what
is the nature and depth of these relationships among actual users, and can company actions
influence these dynamics? We find that active users of the US-based AI... View Details
- June 2024
- Article
Redistributive Allocation Mechanisms
By: Mohammad Akbarpour, Piotr Dworczak and Scott Duke Kominers
Many scarce public resources are allocated at below-market-clearing prices, and sometimes for free. Such "non-market" mechanisms sacrifice some surplus, yet they can potentially improve equity. We develop a model of mechanism design with redistributive concerns. Agents... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
The Efficiency of Patent Litigation
By: Samuel Antill, Murat Alp Celik, Xu Tian and Toni M. Whited
How efficient is the U.S. patent litigation system? We quantify the extent to which the litigation system shapes innovation using a novel dynamic model, in which heterogeneous firms innovate and face potential patent lawsuits. We show that the impact of a litigation... View Details
- March 2024 (Revised September 2024)
- Case
Norway: An Embarrassment of Riches
By: Sophus A. Reinert, Forest Reinhardt and Jens-Henrik Munthe-Kaas
- February 2024
- Article
An Economic Framework for Vaccine Prioritization
By: Mohammad Akbarpour, Eric Budish, Piotr Dworczak and Scott Duke Kominers
We propose an economic framework for determining the optimal allocation of a scarce supply of vaccines that become gradually available during a public health crisis, such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Agents differ in observable and unobservable characteristics, and the... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Interest-Rate Risk and Household Portfolios
By: Sylvain Catherine, Max Miller, James Paron and Natasha Sarin
How are households exposed to interest-rate risk? When rates fall, households face lower future expected returns but those holding long-term assets—disproportionately the wealthy and middle-aged—experience capital gains. We study the hedging demand for long-term assets... View Details
- August 2023
- Article
Can Security Design Foster Household Risk-Taking?
By: Laurent Calvet, Claire Célérier, Paolo Sodini and Boris Vallée
This paper shows that securities with a non-linear payoff design can foster household risk-taking. We demonstrate this effect empirically by exploiting the introduction of capital guarantee products in Sweden from 2002 to 2007. The fast and broad adoption of these... 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
- June 2023
- Teaching Note
From Cradle to Heaven: Taikang Insurance Group
By: William C. Kirby and Noah B. Truwit
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 320-088. The case explores the rise of Taikang Insurance Group and its quest to be a leader of one of China's fastest-growing industries. Due to China's underdeveloped social welfare state, Taikang saw an opportunity for the private... View Details
- May 2023
- Article
A Public Health Approach to Negative News Media: The 3-to-1 Solution
By: Tyler VanderWeele and Arthur C. Brooks
There is clear evidence that the prevalence of negative media reporting has increased substantially over the past years. There is evidence also that this negative reporting adversely affects social interactions, as well as health and well-being outcomes. Given the wide... View Details
- December 2022
- Article
Conflicting Interests and the Effect of Fiduciary Duty: Evidence from Variable Annuities
By: Mark Egan, Shan Ge and Johnny Tang
We examine the variable annuity market to study conflicts of interest and the effect of fiduciary duty in brokerage markets. Insurers typically pay brokers higher commissions for selling more expensive annuities. Our results indicate that sales are four times as... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Social Protection and Social Distancing During the Pandemic: Mobile Money Transfers in Ghana
By: Dean Karlan, Matt Lowe, Robert Osei, Isaac Osei-Akoto, Benjamin N. Roth and Christopher Udry
We study the impact of mobile money transfers to a representative sample of low-income
Ghanaians during the COVID-19 pandemic. The announcement of the upcoming transfers
affects neither consumption, well-being, nor social distancing. Once disbursed,... View Details
- June 2022 (Revised November 2022)
- Case
The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Sweden's Utopia at a Crossroads
By: Debora L. Spar and Julia M. Comeau
Sweden’s model of capitalism rests on a unique social contract, in which social welfare priorities can co-exist within a vibrant capitalist system. In 2022, however, contemporary pressures were growing on the traditional Swedish model, including mounting calls for... View Details
- June 2022 (Revised August 2023)
- Case
Strategic Innovation at the United Nations: A Network of Ecosystems
By: Frank Nagle, Elizabeth J. Altman and Amy Klopfenstein
In 2021, Gina Lucarelli, leader of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Accelerator Labs, prepared for a meeting with UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner. The two planned to discuss the future of the Accelerator Labs, a network of social innovation labs located... View Details
Keywords: Change; Disruption; Transformation; Change Management; Education; Learning; Environmental Management; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Geography; Geographic Scope; Global Range; Local Range; Geopolitical Units; Country; Human Resources; Recruitment; Retention; Selection and Staffing; Employees; Employee Relationship Management; Information Technology; Information Management; Innovation and Invention; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Knowledge; Knowledge Acquisition; Knowledge Dissemination; Knowledge Management; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Organizational Design; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Social Enterprise; Non-Governmental Organizations; Social Psychology; Social and Collaborative Networks; Society; Social Issues; Welfare; Strategy; Cooperation; Adaptation; Public Administration Industry; North and Central America
- February 2022
- Teaching Plan
Community Solutions
By: Brian Trelstad and Tom Quinn
Teaching Plan for HBS Case No. 322-021. Community Solutions was an anti-homelessness nonprofit founded in 2011 after protagonist Rosanne Haggerty grew frustrated with the limited impact of traditional housing and outreach strategies. It set an ambitious goal, reached... View Details
- 2022
- Chapter
Key Success Factors in Environmental Entrepreneurship: The Case of Wilderness Safaris
By: James E. Austin, Megan Epler Woods and Herman B. Leonard
This chapter analyzes the entrepreneurial conception and evolution of the Wilderness Safaris (WS) ecotourism enterprise operating in eight African countries. It illuminates a series of factors that contribute to positive environmental impact as well as financial... View Details
- 2022
- White Paper
Building from the Bottom Up: What Business Can Do to Strengthen the Bottom Line by Investing in Front-line Workers
By: Joseph B. Fuller and Manjari Raman
A significant number of American workers—44%—are employed in low wage jobs at the front line of industries. Despite undertaking some of the most tedious, dirtiest, and most dangerous jobs, low-wage workers are—and have long been—the most likely to be overlooked by... View Details
- September 2021 (Revised November 2022)
- Case
Community Solutions
By: Brian Trelstad and Tom Quinn
Community Solutions was an anti-homelessness nonprofit founded in 2011 after protagonist Rosanne Haggerty grew frustrated with the limited impact of traditional housing and outreach strategies. It set an ambitious goal, reached in some partner communities, of ending... View Details
Keywords: Change; Change Management; Disruption; Transformation; Communication; Communication Strategy; Decision Making; Cost vs Benefits; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decisions; Forecasting and Prediction; Social Entrepreneurship; Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Capital Budgeting; Capital Markets; Country; Government Administration; Government Legislation; Housing; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation and Invention; Innovation Strategy; Knowledge Sharing; Leading Change; Resource Allocation; Mission and Purpose; Performance Evaluation; Performance Improvement; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Opportunities; Social Enterprise; Nonprofit Organizations; Human Needs; Public Opinion; Social Issues; Societal Protocols; Poverty; Welfare; Well-being; System; Equality and Inequality; Consulting Industry; Real Estate Industry; United States; New York (city, NY); Florida; Texas