The Emergence of Mafia-like Business Systems in China
This study sheds light on the political pathology of fraudulent, illegal, and corrupt business practices. Features of the Chinese system—including regulatory gaps, a lack of formal means of property protection, and pervasive uncertainty—seem to facilitate the rise of mafia systems.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > PoliticsWhose Job Is It Anyway? Co-Ethnic Hiring in New US Ventures
The impact of immigration has been particularly sharp in entrepreneurship, yet there is remarkably little evidence about how immigration in the workplace connects to the creation and scaling of new firms. The economic consequences of greater workplace and entrepreneurial diversity deserve closer attention.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > PoliticsFairness or Control: What Determines Elected Local Leaders’ Support for Hosting Refugees in Their Community?
Local politicians are not adamantly opposed to setting up host sites for refugees in their municipalities. However, they want a fair process to ensure that interaction between refugees and residents is limited, gradual, and mediated. Most importantly, local politicians want to control those interactions.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > PoliticsThe Political Effects of Immigration: Culture or Economics?
This paper reviews and explains the growing literature focused on the political effects of immigration, and highlights fruitful avenues for future research. When compared to potential labor market competition and other economic forces, broadly defined cultural factors have a stronger political and social impact.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > PoliticsDesigning, Not Checking, for Policy Robustness: An Example with Optimal Taxation
The approach used by most economists to check academic research results is flawed for policymaking and evaluation. The authors propose an alternative method for designing economic policy analyses that might be applied to a wide range of economic policies.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > PoliticsThe European Commission’s Sustainable Corporate Governance Report: A Critique
The European Commission commissioned a report on sustainable corporate governance that purports to find serious problems of corporate short-termism. The report is wholly flawed: it conflates time horizon problems with externality problems, mismeasures investment and its financing, and proposes ineffective, possibly harmful reforms.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > PoliticsAn Executive Order Worth $100 Billion: The Impact of an Immigration Ban’s Announcement on Fortune 500 Firms’ Valuation
President Trump’s executive order restricting entry of temporary foreign workers to the United States negatively affected the valuation of 471 publicly traded Fortune 500 firms by an estimated $100 billion. Closed for comment; Comment(s) posted.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > PoliticsThe Targeting and Impact of Paycheck Protection Program Loans to Small Businesses
Survey data on business owners collected by the Alignable network shows that lending to bank customers in better financial positions may have been prioritized, possibly crowding out less connected firms that would have benefitted more from the loans.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > PoliticsState and Local Government Employment in the COVID-19 Crisis
The COVID-19 crisis has had large impacts on local economies and government budgets. Balanced budget requirements, not mis-management, have generated a fiscal crisis and forced state and local governments to reduce service provision precisely when it is in greatest demand.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > PoliticsInventing the Endless Frontier: The Effects of the World War II Research Effort on Post-War Innovation
Investments made in World War II by the United States Office of Scientific Research and Development powered decades of subsequent innovation and the take-off of regional technology hubs around the country.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > PoliticsInflation with COVID Consumption Baskets
Examining the impact that changes in expenditure patterns are having on the measurement of consumer price indices (CPI) inflation in 17 countries, this study finds that the cost of living for the average consumer is higher than estimated by the official CPI. This implies that real consumption is falling more quickly over time.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > PoliticsGovernment Incentives for Entrepreneurship
Even though many public policy efforts on entrepreneurship are well intentioned, the success rate has been disappointing. This essay explores these policies, focusing on financial incentives to entrepreneurs and the intermediaries who fund them.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > PoliticsThe Seeds of Ideology: Historical Immigration and Political Preferences in the United States
Researchers test the relationship between historical immigration to the United States and political ideology today.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > PoliticsStereotypes and Politics
Stereotypes exaggerate true differences across groups. This study identifies factors that shape and distort individuals’ beliefs about others’ political and social attitudes.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > PoliticsElusive Safety: The New Geography of Capital Flows and Risk
Examining motives and incentives behind the growing international flows of US-denominated securities, this study finds that dollar-denominated capital flows are increasingly intermediated by tax haven financial centers and nonbank financial institutions.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > PoliticsChanging In-group Boundaries: The Role of New Immigrant Waves in the US
How do new immigrants affect natives’ views of other minority groups? This work studies the evolution of group boundaries in the United States and indicates that whites living in states receiving more Mexican immigrants recategorize blacks as in-group members, because of the inflow of a new, “affectively” more distant group.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > PoliticsThe Impact of Technology and Trade on Migration: Evidence from the US
Labor mobility can re-equilibrate local labor markets after an economic shock. Both robot adoption and Chinese import competition between 1990 and 2015 caused large declines in manufacturing employment across US local labor markets (commuting zones, CZs). However, only robots were associated with a decline in CZ population, which resulted from reduced in-migration rather than by increased out-migration.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Politics