Faculty & Research

Business, Government & the International Economy

Business, Government & the International Economy

Overview Faculty Curriculum Seminars & Conferences Awards & Honors
    • June 2012
    • Editorial

    Why Do Successful Women Feel So Guilty

    By: D. L. Spar

    • March 2021
    • Article

    A Diplomatic Counterrevolution: Indonesian Diplomacy and the Invasion of East Timor

    By: Mattias Fibiger

    This article reinterprets the Indonesian invasion of East Timor as a "diplomatic counterrevolution." Using the central archival records of the Suharto regime for the first time in English-language scholarship, it argues that Indonesian diplomats pursued diplomacy in Southeast Asia, non-aligned and Afro-Asian networks, Western capitals, international institutions, and global capital markets to secure international support for their impending invasion of East Timor. The success of this diplomatic offensive tipped the balance of power in Jakarta away from advocates of restraint like Adam Malik and toward advocates of annexation like Ali Murtopo. The diplomacy behind Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor reveals that the architecture of globalization, lauded by some scholars as inherently liberatory, was far more agnostic—capable of being turned to counterrevolutionary purposes in addition to revolutionary ones. And it suggests that diplomacy itself had been counterrevolutionized, as geopolitical and geoeconomic change combined to make the international system, particularly the states of the Global South, far more hostile to state-making claims and transformative worldmaking projects.

    • March 2021
    • Article

    A Diplomatic Counterrevolution: Indonesian Diplomacy and the Invasion of East Timor

    By: Mattias Fibiger

    This article reinterprets the Indonesian invasion of East Timor as a "diplomatic counterrevolution." Using the central archival records of the Suharto regime for the first time in English-language scholarship, it argues that Indonesian diplomats pursued diplomacy in Southeast Asia, non-aligned and Afro-Asian networks, Western capitals,...

    • 2021
    • Working Paper

    Fairness or Control: What Determines Elected Local Leaders’ Support for Hosting Refugees in Their Community?

    By: Kristin Fabbe, Eleni Kyrkopoulou, Konstantinos Matakos and Asli Unan

    When it comes to successful refugee reception the local level matters. Research overwhelmingly examines host communities' attitudes, but endorsement from local politicians is equally important to resolve conflicts and facilitate harmonious interaction. Yet, the preferences of local leaders and their willingness to support the resettlement process are understudied. We conduct the first-ever conjoint experiment on a representative sample of local elected leaders in Greece, a heavily-impacted country with many active host sites. We elicit elite preferences regarding refugee resettlement and find that local leaders are more likely to support it if they are involved in the process and can control the frequency and intensity of local-refugee interactions. Heterogeneous effects reveal that polarizing tensions around refugee resettlement derive from elites' divergent conceptions of control as opposed to different perceptions of fairness. Over-all, our results suggest that processes to mitigate early impact and exposure, combined with fair-share allocations, can dampen polarized reactions to future resettlement.

    • 2021
    • Working Paper

    Fairness or Control: What Determines Elected Local Leaders’ Support for Hosting Refugees in Their Community?

    By: Kristin Fabbe, Eleni Kyrkopoulou, Konstantinos Matakos and Asli Unan

    When it comes to successful refugee reception the local level matters. Research overwhelmingly examines host communities' attitudes, but endorsement from local politicians is equally important to resolve conflicts and facilitate harmonious interaction. Yet, the preferences of local leaders and their willingness to support the resettlement process...

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

Why Do Successful Women Feel So Guilty

By: D. L. Spar
  • June 2012 |
  • Editorial |
  • The Atlantic
Related

A Diplomatic Counterrevolution: Indonesian Diplomacy and the Invasion of East Timor

By: Mattias Fibiger
  • March 2021 |
  • Article |
  • Modern Asian Studies
This article reinterprets the Indonesian invasion of East Timor as a "diplomatic counterrevolution." Using the central archival records of the Suharto regime for the first time in English-language scholarship, it argues that Indonesian diplomats pursued diplomacy in Southeast Asia, non-aligned and Afro-Asian networks, Western capitals, international institutions, and global capital markets to secure international support for their impending invasion of East Timor. The success of this diplomatic offensive tipped the balance of power in Jakarta away from advocates of restraint like Adam Malik and toward advocates of annexation like Ali Murtopo. The diplomacy behind Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor reveals that the architecture of globalization, lauded by some scholars as inherently liberatory, was far more agnostic—capable of being turned to counterrevolutionary purposes in addition to revolutionary ones. And it suggests that diplomacy itself had been counterrevolutionized, as geopolitical and geoeconomic change combined to make the international system, particularly the states of the Global South, far more hostile to state-making claims and transformative worldmaking projects.
Keywords: Diplomacy; Geopolitics; History; Globalization; Indonesia; Timor-leste
Related

Fairness or Control: What Determines Elected Local Leaders’ Support for Hosting Refugees in Their Community?

By: Kristin Fabbe, Eleni Kyrkopoulou, Konstantinos Matakos and Asli Unan
  • 2021 |
  • Working Paper |
  • Faculty Research
When it comes to successful refugee reception the local level matters. Research overwhelmingly examines host communities' attitudes, but endorsement from local politicians is equally important to resolve conflicts and facilitate harmonious interaction. Yet, the preferences of local leaders and their willingness to support the resettlement process are understudied. We conduct the first-ever conjoint experiment on a representative sample of local elected leaders in Greece, a heavily-impacted country with many active host sites. We elicit elite preferences regarding refugee resettlement and find that local leaders are more likely to support it if they are involved in the process and can control the frequency and intensity of local-refugee interactions. Heterogeneous effects reveal that polarizing tensions around refugee resettlement derive from elites' divergent conceptions of control as opposed to different perceptions of fairness. Over-all, our results suggest that processes to mitigate early impact and exposure, combined with fair-share allocations, can dampen polarized reactions to future resettlement.
Keywords: Values; Control
Related

The Chinese Debt Trap Is a Myth: The Narrative Wrongfully Portrays Both Beijing and the Developing Countries It Deals With.

By: Deborah Brautigam and Meg Rithmire
  • February 6, 2021 |
  • Editorial |
  • The Atlantic (website)
Our research shows that Chinese banks are willing to restructure the terms of existing loans and have never actually seized an asset from any country, much less the port of Hambantota. A Chinese company’s acquisition of a majority stake in the port was a cautionary tale, but it’s not the one we’ve often heard. With a new administration in Washington, the truth about the widely, perhaps willfully, misunderstood case of Hambantota Port is long overdue.
Keywords: Financing And Loans; Developing Countries And Economies; International Relations; China
Related

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic and the Global Economy (B)

By: Alberto Cavallo and Christian Godwin
  • February 2021 |
  • Supplement |
  • Faculty Research
By December 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had swept across the globe, creating widespread disruption in all aspects of everyday life. Almost 90 million people had been infected and nearly two million had died from the disease. By this point in the pandemic—a year since the first rumors about the novel virus began, mask-wearing and social-distancing had become routine, and millions of people were working or studying from home. Grief and anxiety were widespread due to the loss of loved ones, financial hardships, and uncertainty about when the pandemic would recede. Meanwhile, the global economy was experiencing the worst crisis in decades, with a recovery that was slow, uncertain, and uneven. By the end of the year, it was clear that the economic crisis would not end until the virus was under control. To accomplish this, governments worldwide were relying on private companies to fast-track the development and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, hoping for a return to normalcy in 2021.
Keywords: Economy
Related

Race and Mass Incarceration in the United States

By: Reshmaan Hussam
  • February 2021 |
  • Teaching Note |
  • Faculty Research
Related

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

By: Stefano Gagliarducci and Marco Tabellini
  • 2021 |
  • Working Paper |
  • Faculty Research
We study the effects of religious organizations on immigrants' assimilation. We focus on the arrival of Italian Catholic churches in the US between 1900 and 1920, when four million Italians had moved to America, and anti-Catholic sentiments were widespread. We combine newly collected Catholic directories on the presence of Italian churches across years and counties with the full count US Census of Population. We find that Italian churches reduced the social assimilation of Italian immigrants, lowering intermarriage rates and increasing ethnic residential segregation. We find no evidence that this was the result of either lower effort exerted by immigrants to ``fit in'' the American society or increased desire to vertically transmit national culture. Instead, we provide evidence for other two, non-mutually exclusive, mechanisms. First, Italian churches raised the frequency of interactions among fellow Italians, likely generating peer effects and reducing contact with other groups. Second, they increased the salience of the immigrant community among natives, thereby triggering backlash and discrimination.
Keywords: Immigration; Religion; Assimilation
Related

Snapp: Scaling Under Sanctions in Iran (A)

By: Meg Rithmire and Gamze Yucaoglu
  • January 2021 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
"The case opens in November 2019 as Eyad Alkassar and Mahmoud Fouz, co-founders of Iran’s first and leading ride-hailing platform, Snapp, find out about Apple’s and Google’s decision to remove all Iranian apps from their respective application stores. The case takes us through the founding story of Snapp in 2014 to how the company grew to reach two million daily rides in Iran servicing 30 million customers through its two million registered drivers in 100 cities in Iran. The case then goes into detail about how the removal of all Iran-based apps from application stores limited Snapp’s operations and its go-to-market channels. Next, the case chronicles how the co-founders focused on finding operational and technological solutions to minimize Snapp’s reliance on U.S. technology following the U.S.’ withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May 2018 and instating the secondary sanctions on Iran. The case highlights the challenges of operating under sanctions and the different ways the co-founders try to find to keep Snapp alive in a market that had been out of reach for Western investors. In 2019, Snapp had become the largest Internet company in the Middle East yet it was increasingly difficult to navigate the operational hurdles. The co-founders could not help but think whether it was now time to reach out to major media outlets and launch a public relations campaign to create awareness around the unexpected decision that had put the very existence of many companies at risk, including Snapp’s. Alkassar and Fouz needed to weigh it against Snapp’s realities. The case then asks: Should they go public with their story, or would it be better to stay under the radar and focus on efficiency and sustainability of operations?"
Keywords: Sanctions; Change Management; Disruption; Volatility; Decision Choices And Conditions; Cross-cultural And Cross-border Issues; Government And Politics; International Relations; National Security; Risk Management; Crisis Management; Transportation Industry; Iran; Middle East
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