Publications

How does an economy behave if (1) fundamentals are truly hump-shaped, exhibiting momentum in the short run and partial mean reversion in the long run, and (2) agents do not know that fundamentals are hump-shaped and base their beliefs on…

Psychological personality has been shown to affect a variety of aspects: preferences for interaction styles in the digital world and for music genres, for example. Consequently, the design of personalized user interfaces and music recommender…

After reading a newspaper article that predicted the spread of HIV through medical syringes, Marc Koska committed himself to addressing the threat of unsafe injections. He spent nearly 10 years in the field, investigating all aspects of the…

After reading a newspaper article that predicted the spread of HIV through medical syringes, Marc Koska committed himself to addressing the threat of unsafe injections. He spent nearly 10 years in the field, investigating all aspects of the…

Last week I witnessed an exceptional example of someone communicating with a group of people not predisposed to agree with her. I’d been called for jury duty in San Francisco. A court employee, Christine Carmichael, had the job of telling about…

As part of its long-term strategic commitment to accelerate economic development in previously excluded markets, in 2009 SAP launched a program leveraging microfinance, education, and technology to improve income of women Shea nut farmers in…

With the best of intentions, companies experiment with isolated efforts to improve sustainability — only to encounter a long string of unanticipated consequences, often in the form of financial, social, or environmental costs. That’s partly…

A significant need exists for new medical technologies that have the potential to expand access to important diagnostics, treatments, and specialty services by reducing costs without sacrificing quality. These technologies have a high social…

Riders for Health had won international acclaim for its novel approach to maintaining health transport vehicles in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet the organization was having trouble scaling its services at its first site: Gambia. Here is how the…

This Article examines whether the cost of complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) contributed to the rise in going-private transactions after its enactment. Prior studies of this issue generally suffer from a mistaken assumption that…

Conventional wisdom concerning the causes of the Financial Crisis posits that insufficient disclosure concerning firms’ exposure to complex credit derivatives played a key role in creating the uncertainty that plagued the financial sector in the…

We describe an experiment conducted in Bangalore, India, for incentivizing a population of commuters to travel at less congested times. The goals were to reduce the travel times and increase the travel comfort of commuters, and to reduce…

Hewlett-Packard’s Supply Chain Social and Environmental Responsibility (SER) program has evolved steadily in recent years. Today, it’s not only about complying with labor, environmental, and health and standards, but also about helping suppliers…

Most companies have more freedom than they imagine to organize their supply chains for maximum efficiency. By rethinking inventory control in terms of who owns the inventory at any point, where it should be located, and who controls it, managers…

In recent years, the electronics industry has made important improvements in social and environmental responsibility (SER) conformance among first-tier suppliers, due in part to the standardization of SER practices set forth in the Electronics…

This article, published in the Center for Social Innovation Newsletter (Spring 2008, Vol. 4), summarizes a white paper that addresses trends in the development of socially and environmentally responsible supply chains with respect to the…

Economic analysis of corporate takeovers has traditionally advocated legal doctrines that ensure a target company in a takeover contest is acquired by the bidder willing to pay the most for it. The reason stems from the conventional assumption…

In a world of globalization and outsourcing, environmental legislation became a main driver for doing eco-design. Eco-innovation and green money are concepts to create marketing advantages and differentiation from their competitors, transforming…

For many years, business process outsourcing (BPO) has been identified as a strategic trend. This study examines the business and technical benefits of global business-to-business e-commerce outsourcing. Areas covered include the elements of…