Browsing Harvard Kennedy School by Keyword "MBG - Markets, Business, and Government"
Now showing items 1-20 of 56
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Abuse of Dominance by High-Technology Enterprises: A Comparison of U.S. and E.C. Approaches
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2010)This paper compares how the United States and the European Community dealt with competition policy challenges by two firms operating at the frontiers of technology: Microsoft and Intel. The U.S. Microsoft case was broadly ... -
Access Pricing, Competition, and Incentives to Migrate From "Old" to "New" Technology
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2011)In this paper, we analyze the incentives of an incumbent and an entrant to migrate from an "old" technology to a "new" technology, and discuss how the terms of wholesale access affect this migration. We show that a higher ... -
Addressing Catastrophic Risks: Disparate Anatomies Require Tailored Therapies
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2011)Catastrophic risks differ in terms of their natural or human origins, their possible amplification by human behaviors, and the relationships between those who create the risks and those who suffer the losses. Given their ... -
Are Bilateral Remittances Countercyclical?
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2010)By putting together a relatively large data set on bilateral remittances of emigrants, this paper is able to shed light on the important hypothesis of smoothing. The smoothing hypothesis is that remittances are countercyclical ... -
The Availability and Utilization of 401(k) Loans
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2011)We document the loan provisions in 401(k) savings plans and how participants use 401(k) loans. Although only about 22% of savings plan participants who are allowed to borrow from their 401(k) have such a loan at any given ... -
Behavioral Economics Perspectives on Public Sector Pension Plans
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2011)We describe the pension plan features of the states and the largest cities and counties in the U.S. Unlike in the private sector, defined benefit (DB) pensions are still the norm in the public sector. However, a few ... -
Building Social Capital Through Microfinance
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2010)A number of development assistance programs promote community interaction as a means of building social capital. Yet, despite strong theoretical underpinnings, the role of repeat interactions in sustaining cooperation has ... -
The "CAPS" Prediction System and Stock Market Returns
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2011)We study the predictive power of approximately 2.5 million stock picks submitted by individual users to the “CAPS” website run by the Motley Fool company (www.caps.fool.com). These picks prove to be surprisingly informative ... -
Causes of the Financial Crisis: Many Responsible Parties
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University., 2010)This analysis argues that blame for the financial crisis falls specifically and heavily on a broad range of the private players and public regulators in our financial sector. Wall Street and the government joined hands in ... -
A Centered Index of Spatial Concentration: Axiomatic Approach with an Application to Population and Capital Cities
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University., 2009)We construct an axiomatic index of spatial concentration around a center or capital point of interest, a concept with wide applicability from urban economics, economic geography and trade, to political economy and industrial ... -
The Competitiveness Impacts of Climate Change Mitigation Policies
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2011)The pollution haven hypothesis suggests that unilateral domestic emission mitigation policies could cause adverse “competitiveness” impacts on domestic manufacturers as they lose market share to foreign competitors and ... -
Consumer Learning and Hybrid Vehicle Adoption
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2010)We study the diffusion of hybrid vehicles among consumers. Using data on sales of 11 different models over seven years, we identify the effect of the penetration rate – total cumulative hybrid sales per capita – on new ... -
Consumer Response to Cigarette Excise Tax Changes
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2010)We use a rich dataset of weekly cigarette sales to examine how consumers adapt their behavior before and after excise tax increases - whether by reducing demand, stockpiling, traveling to low-tax jurisdictions, or substituting ... -
Cooperation in Product Development and Process R&D Between Competitors
(Elsevier, 2010)In this paper, we first provide a simple framework for cooperation in product development between competitors. We put forward the tradeoff between the benefits obtained through development cost sharing and the cost of ... -
A Critical Review of the “Ladder of Investment” Approach
(Elsevier, 2010)The “ladder of investment” is a regulatory approach proposed by Cave (2006), which has been widely embraced by national regulatory authorities in the European telecommunications sector. The approach entails providing ... -
Deals Versus Rules: Policy Implementation Uncertainty and Why Firms Hate It
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2010)Firms in Africa report "regulatory and economic policy uncertainty" as a top constraint to their growth. We argue that often firms in Africa do not cope with policy rules, rather they face deals; firm-specific policy actions ... -
Deterring and Compensating Oil Spill Catastrophes: The Need for Strict and Two-Tier Liablility
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2011)The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill highlighted the glaring weakness in the current liability and regulatory regime for oil spills and for environmental catastrophes more broadly. This article proposes a new liability ... -
Disgust Promotes Disposal: Souring the Status Quo
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Uinversiy, 2010)Humans naturally dispose of objects that disgust them. Is this phenomenon so deeply embedded that even incidental disgust – i.e., where the source of disgust is unrelated to a possessed object – triggers disposal? Two ... -
The Dynamics of Capitalism
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2010)This paper, written for a larger compendium edited by Dennis Mueller, examines key dynamic features of capitalistic economies and how prominent economists such as Schumpeter, Marx, Keynes, and von Mises perceived them. The ... -
The Effect of Allowance Allocations on Cap-and-Trade System Performance
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2010)We examine an implication of the “Coase Theorem” which has had an important impact both on environmental economics and on public policy in the environmental domain. Under certain conditions, the market equilibrium in a ...