Faculty & Research

Business, Government & the International Economy

Business, Government & the International Economy

Overview Faculty Curriculum Seminars & Conferences Awards & Honors
    • 2021
    • Working Paper

    Faith and Assimilation: Italian Immigrants in the U.S.

    By: Stefano Gagliarducci and Marco Tabellini

    Ethnic religious organizations are often blamed for slowing down immigrants’ assimilation in host societies. This paper offers the first systematic evidence on this topic by focusing on Italian Catholic churches in the US between 1890 and 1920, when four million Italians had moved to America, and anti-Catholic sentiments were widespread. Relying on newly collected data on the presence of Italian Catholic churches across counties over time, we implement a difference-in-differences design. We find that Italian churches reduced the social assimilation of Italian immigrants, lowering intermarriage, residential integration, and naturalization rates. We provide evidence that both stronger coordination within the Italian community and negative stereotyping among natives can explain these effects. Yet, Italian churches had ambiguous effects on immigrants' economic outcomes, and increased literacy and ability to speak English among Italian children.

    • 2021
    • Working Paper

    Faith and Assimilation: Italian Immigrants in the U.S.

    By: Stefano Gagliarducci and Marco Tabellini

    Ethnic religious organizations are often blamed for slowing down immigrants’ assimilation in host societies. This paper offers the first systematic evidence on this topic by focusing on Italian Catholic churches in the US between 1890 and 1920, when four million Italians had moved to America, and anti-Catholic sentiments were widespread. Relying...

    • July 2021
    • Article

    Do Interactions with Candidates Increase Voter Support and Participation? Experimental Evidence from Italy

    By: Enrico Cantoni and Vincent Pons

    We test whether politicians can use direct contact to reconnect with citizens, increase turnout, and win votes. During the 2014 Italian municipal elections, we randomly assigned 26,000 voters to receive visits from city council candidates, from canvassers supporting the candidates’ party list, or to a control group. While canvassers’ visits increased turnout by 1.8 percentage points, candidates’ had no impact on participation. Candidates increased their own vote share in the precincts they canvassed, but only at the expense of their running mates. This suggests that their failure to mobilize nonvoters resulted from focusing on securing the preferences of active voters.

    • July 2021
    • Article

    Do Interactions with Candidates Increase Voter Support and Participation? Experimental Evidence from Italy

    By: Enrico Cantoni and Vincent Pons

    We test whether politicians can use direct contact to reconnect with citizens, increase turnout, and win votes. During the 2014 Italian municipal elections, we randomly assigned 26,000 voters to receive visits from city council candidates, from canvassers supporting the candidates’ party list, or to a control group. While canvassers’ visits...

    • June 2021
    • Case

    The Lunar Gateway, Moon vs. Mars, and the Political Governance of Space Activities

    By: Matthew C. Weinzierl and Mehak Sarang

    In 2017, the Trump Administration made a bold claim – that they would return the next man and the first woman to the lunar surface by 2024, this time to establish a sustainable presence to enable further exploration in the solar system. With the Artemis Program, NASA has demonstrated an interest in bolstering public-private partnerships and developing an international coalition interested in collaborating in lunar exploration. A central piece of infrastructure will be the Lunar Gateway, an orbiting habitat and command module in cislunar space. Should NASA prioritize the Lunar Gateway, especially considering its history managing the International Space Station?

    • June 2021
    • Case

    The Lunar Gateway, Moon vs. Mars, and the Political Governance of Space Activities

    By: Matthew C. Weinzierl and Mehak Sarang

    In 2017, the Trump Administration made a bold claim – that they would return the next man and the first woman to the lunar surface by 2024, this time to establish a sustainable presence to enable further exploration in the solar system. With the Artemis Program, NASA has demonstrated an interest in bolstering public-private partnerships and...

About the Unit

The BGIE Unit conducts research on, and teaches about, the economic, political, social, and legal environment in which business operates. The Unit includes scholars trained in economics, political science, and history; in its work, it draws on perspectives from all three of these disciplines.

The following demonstrates one way of classifying the approaches the Unit takes to learning and teaching.

  • The Unit examines the “rules” and policies established by government and other non-business institutions that affect business in the United States.
  • The Unit turns to history to understand the origins of today’s business environment as well as some of the alternatives that have emerged from time to time.
  • The Unit examines other countries’ business environments and their historical development.
  • The BGIE group is deeply interested in the impact of globalization and the way rules are emerging to govern international economic transactions as globalization proceeds.

Recent Publications

Faith and Assimilation: Italian Immigrants in the U.S.

By: Stefano Gagliarducci and Marco Tabellini
  • 2021 |
  • Working Paper |
  • Faculty Research
Ethnic religious organizations are often blamed for slowing down immigrants’ assimilation in host societies. This paper offers the first systematic evidence on this topic by focusing on Italian Catholic churches in the US between 1890 and 1920, when four million Italians had moved to America, and anti-Catholic sentiments were widespread. Relying on newly collected data on the presence of Italian Catholic churches across counties over time, we implement a difference-in-differences design. We find that Italian churches reduced the social assimilation of Italian immigrants, lowering intermarriage, residential integration, and naturalization rates. We provide evidence that both stronger coordination within the Italian community and negative stereotyping among natives can explain these effects. Yet, Italian churches had ambiguous effects on immigrants' economic outcomes, and increased literacy and ability to speak English among Italian children.
Keywords: Assimilation; Religious Organizations; Immigration; Religion; History; United States
Related

Do Interactions with Candidates Increase Voter Support and Participation? Experimental Evidence from Italy

By: Enrico Cantoni and Vincent Pons
  • July 2021 |
  • Article |
  • Economics & Politics
We test whether politicians can use direct contact to reconnect with citizens, increase turnout, and win votes. During the 2014 Italian municipal elections, we randomly assigned 26,000 voters to receive visits from city council candidates, from canvassers supporting the candidates’ party list, or to a control group. While canvassers’ visits increased turnout by 1.8 percentage points, candidates’ had no impact on participation. Candidates increased their own vote share in the precincts they canvassed, but only at the expense of their running mates. This suggests that their failure to mobilize nonvoters resulted from focusing on securing the preferences of active voters.
Keywords: Campaigns; Candidates; Elections; Experiment; Political Parties; Turnout; Voting Behavior; Voting; Political Elections; Behavior; Interpersonal Communication; Italy
Related

The Clean Network and the Future of Global Technology Competition

By: Meg Rithmire
  • June 2021 |
  • Teaching Note |
  • Faculty Research
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 721-045.
Keywords: 5G; Technology; China
Related

The Lunar Gateway, Moon vs. Mars, and the Political Governance of Space Activities

By: Matthew C. Weinzierl and Mehak Sarang
  • June 2021 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
In 2017, the Trump Administration made a bold claim – that they would return the next man and the first woman to the lunar surface by 2024, this time to establish a sustainable presence to enable further exploration in the solar system. With the Artemis Program, NASA has demonstrated an interest in bolstering public-private partnerships and developing an international coalition interested in collaborating in lunar exploration. A central piece of infrastructure will be the Lunar Gateway, an orbiting habitat and command module in cislunar space. Should NASA prioritize the Lunar Gateway, especially considering its history managing the International Space Station?
Keywords: Space; Space Economy; Aerospace; Nasa; Policy
Related

Designing, Not Checking, for Policy Robustness: An Example with Optimal Taxation

By: Benjamin B. Lockwood, Afras Sial and Matthew C. Weinzierl
  • 2021 |
  • Article |
  • Tax Policy and the Economy
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 ranges into account. We modify the standard optimal income tax model to include the policymaker’s subjective uncertainty over parameter values, and we characterize robust optimal policy as that which maximizes expected social welfare. After calibrating uncertainty over the elasticity of taxable income from past empirical work and novel survey data on economists’ beliefs, we compare the implied robust optimal marginal tax rates to the alternative benchmark policy based on the best point estimates of relevant parameters. Our results suggest that robust optimal marginal tax rates are typically more progressive than benchmark analyses, raising top marginal tax rates by 5–7 percentage points and generating modest expected welfare gains.
Keywords: Optimal Taxation; Income Tax; Social Welfare; Elasticity; Income; Taxation; Policy
Related

The International Space Station, Principal-Agent Problems, and NASA's Quest to Keep Humans in Space

By: Matthew Weinzierl and Mehak Sarang
  • May 2021 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
In building the International Space Station (ISS), NASA opened the door to the development of a robust in-space economy in low-Earth Orbit, and yet the decision to build the station, and continue to extend its lifetime, placed a huge burden on NASA’s Human Spaceflight budget. Should NASA continue to invest in the ISS? Or is it possible for the agency to facilitate the commercialization of the Station and move beyond low-Earth Orbit?
Keywords: Aerospace; Nasa; Space Economy; Principal-agent Theory; Policy; Commercialization; Aerospace Industry
Related

NuScale - Commercializing the First Small Modular Reactor in the World

By: Jurgen Weiss and Richard H.K. Vietor
  • May 2021 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
Keywords: Nuclear
Related

Capitalism and the Party-State: The People’s Republic of China at 70

By: Meg Rithmire
  • May 2021 |
  • Teaching Note |
  • Faculty Research
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 721-040.
Related
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Contact Information

Business, Government & the International Economy Unit
Harvard Business School
Morgan Hall
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
BGIE@hbs.edu