Business, Government & the International Economy

- November–December 2022
- Article
Your Company Needs a Space Strategy. Now.

By: Matthew Weinzierl, Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury, Tarun Khanna, Alan MacCormack and Brendan Rosseau

Space is becoming a potential source of value for businesses across a range of sectors, including agriculture, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, and tourism. To understand what the opportunities are for your company, the authors advise you to consider the four ways in which using space could create value: data, capabilities, resources, and markets. For most companies thinking about their space strategy over the next five to 10 years, data will be the dominant focus. For instance, many companies are turning to remote-sensing satellites for data that will inform business decisions. Whether it’s tracking the number of cars parked in retail locations, detecting costly and environmentally damaging methane leaks from natural-gas wells, or assessing soil type and moisture content to maximize crop yields, creative uses for data gathered from space abound. Companies looking further ahead will want to explore the value to be gained from conducting activities in space, utilizing space assets, and meeting demand from the new space age. Businesses engaging with commercial space should be willing to experiment and should look for partners.
- November–December 2022
- Article
Your Company Needs a Space Strategy. Now.

By: Matthew Weinzierl, Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury, Tarun Khanna, Alan MacCormack and Brendan Rosseau

Space is becoming a potential source of value for businesses across a range of sectors, including agriculture, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, and tourism. To understand what the opportunities are for your company, the authors advise you to consider the four ways in which using space could create value: data, capabilities, resources, and markets....
- November 2022
- Case
The Dutch East India Company (VOC)

By: Sophus A. Reinert, Paul M. Healy and Robert Fredona
- November 2022
- Case
The Dutch East India Company (VOC)

By: Sophus A. Reinert, Paul M. Healy and Robert Fredona
- November 2022
- Article
Hate Crime Towards Minoritized Groups Increases as They Increase in Sized-Based Rank

By: Mina Cikara, Vasiliki Fouka and Marco Tabellini

People are on the move in unprecedented numbers within and between countries. How does demographic change affect local intergroup dynamics? In complement to accounts that emphasize stereotypical features of groups as determinants of their treatment, we propose the group reference dependence hypothesis: violence and negative attitudes toward each minoritized group will depend on the number and size of other minoritized groups in a community. Specifically, as groups increase or decrease in rank in terms of their size (e.g., to largest minority within a community), discriminatory behavior and attitudes toward them should change accordingly. We test this hypothesis for hate crimes in U.S. counties between 1990 and 2010 and attitudes in the U.S. and U.K. over the last two decades. Consistent with this prediction, we find that, as Black, Hispanic/Latinx, Asian, and Arab populations increase in rank relative to one another, they become more likely to be targeted with hate crimes and more negative attitudes. The rank effect holds above and beyond group size/proportion, growth rate, and many other alternative explanations. This framework makes novel predictions about how demographic shifts may affect coalitional structures in the coming years and helps explain previous findings in the literature. Our results also indicate that attitudes and behaviors toward social categories are not intransigent or driven only by features associated with those groups, such as stereotypes.
- November 2022
- Article
Hate Crime Towards Minoritized Groups Increases as They Increase in Sized-Based Rank

By: Mina Cikara, Vasiliki Fouka and Marco Tabellini

People are on the move in unprecedented numbers within and between countries. How does demographic change affect local intergroup dynamics? In complement to accounts that emphasize stereotypical features of groups as determinants of their treatment, we propose the group reference dependence hypothesis: violence and negative attitudes toward each...

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

Your Company Needs a Space Strategy. Now.

By: Matthew Weinzierl, Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury, Tarun Khanna, Alan MacCormack and Brendan Rosseau

November–December 2022 |
Article |
Harvard Business Review

Space is becoming a potential source of value for businesses across a range of sectors, including agriculture, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, and tourism. To understand what the opportunities are for your company, the authors advise you to consider the four ways in which using space could create value: data, capabilities, resources, and markets. For most companies thinking about their space strategy over the next five to 10 years, data will be the dominant focus. For instance, many companies are turning to remote-sensing satellites for data that will inform business decisions. Whether it’s tracking the number of cars parked in retail locations, detecting costly and environmentally damaging methane leaks from natural-gas wells, or assessing soil type and moisture content to maximize crop yields, creative uses for data gathered from space abound. Companies looking further ahead will want to explore the value to be gained from conducting activities in space, utilizing space assets, and meeting demand from the new space age. Businesses engaging with commercial space should be willing to experiment and should look for partners.

Keywords: Space Strategy; Emerging Markets; Natural Resources; Analytics and Data Science; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Adaptation; Competition; Aerospace Industry

Citation

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The Dutch East India Company (VOC)

By: Sophus A. Reinert, Paul M. Healy and Robert Fredona

November 2022 |
Case |
Faculty Research

Citation

Educators

Hate Crime Towards Minoritized Groups Increases as They Increase in Sized-Based Rank

By: Mina Cikara, Vasiliki Fouka and Marco Tabellini

November 2022 |
Article |
Nature Human Behaviour

People are on the move in unprecedented numbers within and between countries. How does demographic change affect local intergroup dynamics? In complement to accounts that emphasize stereotypical features of groups as determinants of their treatment, we propose the group reference dependence hypothesis: violence and negative attitudes toward each minoritized group will depend on the number and size of other minoritized groups in a community. Specifically, as groups increase or decrease in rank in terms of their size (e.g., to largest minority within a community), discriminatory behavior and attitudes toward them should change accordingly. We test this hypothesis for hate crimes in U.S. counties between 1990 and 2010 and attitudes in the U.S. and U.K. over the last two decades. Consistent with this prediction, we find that, as Black, Hispanic/Latinx, Asian, and Arab populations increase in rank relative to one another, they become more likely to be targeted with hate crimes and more negative attitudes. The rank effect holds above and beyond group size/proportion, growth rate, and many other alternative explanations. This framework makes novel predictions about how demographic shifts may affect coalitional structures in the coming years and helps explain previous findings in the literature. Our results also indicate that attitudes and behaviors toward social categories are not intransigent or driven only by features associated with those groups, such as stereotypes.

Keywords: Prejudice; Minority; Hate Crimes; Reference Dependence; Prejudice and Bias; Attitudes; Demographics

Citation

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Are the West’s Sanctions on Russia Working?

By: Rawi Abdelal and Alexandra Vacroux

Fall 2022 |
Article |
Just Money Roundtables

Russia invaded Ukraine, first in 2014 and then again in February 2022. The United States and Europe—the West—imposed waves of sanctions on Russian individuals, firms, and the country itself. Six months into the West’s efforts to isolate Russia, it is reasonable to ask if sanctions are working. But this the wrong question. What does "working" mean here? To assess the effectiveness of sanctions, we need to understand first what they were meant to accomplish—and then evaluate whether they have accomplished these goals, at least better than the available alternatives.

Keywords: Russia; Sanctions; War; International Relations; Trade; Russia; Ukraine; Europe; United States

Citation

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Spaceport America, Public Sector Risk-Taking, and Political Accountability (B)

By: Matthew Weinzierl, Dava Newman, Rebecca Browder and Angela Acocella

October 2022 |
Supplement |
Faculty Research

Citation

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Spaceport America, Public Sector Risk-taking, and Political Accountability (A)

By: Matthew Weinzierl, Dava Newman, Rebecca Browder and Angela Acocella

October 2022 |
Case |
Faculty Research

Sitting quietly in the heart of the New Mexico desert in the summer of 2014, Spaceport America (SA) housed little of the activity its supporters anticipated when opening its hangar doors in 2011. Despite $1 million in annual rent from Virgin Galactic, British billionaire Richard Branson’s space tourism company and SA's anchor tenant, the spaceport was still heavily reliant on government funds. Flight delays and a crash on Halloween of 2014 that left one pilot dead and stalled Virgin Galactic’s testing and development meant that the New Mexico Spaceport Authority (NMSA) was not receiving critical user fees to run spaceport operations. As a result, state and local taxpayers were bearing much of the cost of the underutilized spaceport, even after having invested $218 million from local and state funds. With the 2015 session of New Mexico’s congress looming, the fate of the world’s first "purpose-built" spaceport was in question.

Keywords: Funding Sources; Risk and Uncertainty; Public Sector; Business and Government Relations; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Aerospace Industry; New Mexico

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Educators

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Indonesia and the Third Indochina War: The End of Containment

By: Mattias Fibiger

2022 |
Article |
Journal of American-East Asian Relations

The Third Indochina War called forth dramatic changes in the international relations of Southeast Asia. Foremost among these changes was a shift in the geopolitical orientation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The organization’s founders established ASEAN in 1967 to contain Chinese influence in Southeast Asia. But in the wake of the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in late 1978, ASEAN forged a tacit alliance with the People’s Republic of China to pursue a campaign of rollback against Vietnam. This article argues that ASEAN's volte-face and China’s reentry into networks of regional diplomacy depended upon a shift in Indonesian threat perceptions. As political Islam displaced Chinese communism as the key threat fixating Indonesian policy, the Suharto regime abandoned its longstanding attempts to integrate Vietnam into the architecture of regional order and instead accommodated itself to a Thai-led effort to enlist China as a counterweight against Vietnam. The reorientation of Indonesian diplomacy reveals the dynamics of a phenomenon that anthropologist Heonik Kwon has called the “decomposition” of the Cold War – the geographically and temporally uneven erosion of the Cold War as a social reality and the gradual elaboration of a post-Cold War era.

Keywords: Cold War; War; National Security; Southeast Asia; Indonesia; China

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