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- September 2022
- Case
BancoSol: Financial Inclusion in the Perfect Storm
By: Michael Chu and Carla Larangeira
In the pandemic, financial inclusion icon BancoSol faces a government-mandated year-long deferral of all loan payments, followed by the sudden Covid death of its CEO. In a Bolivia mired in political turmoil following a failed presidential election, with clients not...
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- 2022
- Working Paper
A Conceptualization of Sub-Living Wages: Liabilities, Leverage, and Risk
By: Drew Keller, Katie Panella and George Serafeim
Currently the accounting system records employee wages as an expense in the income statement. However, paying below living wages can expose an organization to reputational and operational risks. In this paper, we offer an alternative conceptualization of the issue of...
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- February 2022
- Article
Taxation and Innovation in the 20th Century
By: Ufuk Akcigit, John Grigsby, Tom Nicholas and Stefanie Stantcheva
This paper studies the effect of corporate and personal taxes on innovation in the United States over the twentieth century. We build a panel of the universe of inventors who patent since 1920, and a historical state-level corporate tax database with corporate tax...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
The Incidence of the Corporate Income Tax Is Irrelevant for Its (Benefit-Based) Justification
Robust support for corporate income taxation is a puzzle for standard tax theory because the tax’s incidence is uncertain and unreliable. We propose a resolution: if the corporate tax is seen as a benefit-based tax, its normative appeal depends on the correspondence...
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- December 2021
- Article
Cash-for-Information Whistleblower Programs: Effects on Whistleblowing and Consequences for Whistleblowers
By: Aiyesha Dey, Jonas Heese and Gerardo Pérez Cavazos
We study the effect of financial incentives on whistleblowing and the consequences for whistleblowers under the cash-for-information program of the False Claims Act (FCA). Exploiting appeals-court decisions that increase financial incentives for whistleblowing, we find...
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- October 2021
- Case
Financial Reporting at Mattel
By: Aiyesha Dey, Trung Nguyen, Marshal Herrmann and Julia Kelley
In September 2020, Diana Ferguson was nearing her first Audit Committee meeting as the newly appointed Audit Committee chair of Mattel, Inc. Mattel was just recovering from an accounting scandal which had revealed the company’s poor internal controls and weak board...
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Keywords:
Accounting;
Accounting Audits;
Financial Reporting;
Financial Statements;
Governance;
Corporate Accountability;
Corporate Disclosure;
Corporate Governance;
Governance Compliance;
Governance Controls;
Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms;
Governing and Advisory Boards;
Lawsuits and Litigation;
Business and Shareholder Relations;
Consumer Products Industry;
Entertainment and Recreation Industry;
Financial Services Industry;
North and Central America;
United States;
California
- October 2021 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
The Opioid Settlement and Controversy Over CEO Pay at AmerisourceBergen
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan Ni
In 2020, AmerisourceBergen Corporation, a Fortune 50 company in the drug distribution industry, agreed to settle thousands of lawsuits filed nationwide against the company for its opioid distribution practices that critics alleged had contributed to the nationwide...
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Keywords:
Opioids;
Drug;
Investors;
Shareholder Activism;
Investment Activism;
Executive Compensation;
Corporate Accountability;
Corporate Governance;
Governance Compliance;
Governance Controls;
Risk Management;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Business and Shareholder Relations;
Business and Stakeholder Relations;
Distribution Industry;
Health Industry;
Pharmaceutical Industry;
United States;
West Virginia;
Tennessee;
Ohio;
Pennsylvania
- September 2021 (Revised October 2021)
- Case
Dream: Impact Through Real Estate
By: Michael Chu and John Masko
The Canadian city of Toronto had one of the largest housing affordability problems of any city in the developed world. One company trying to address this problem was Dream, one of the largest real estate groups in Canada. In 2021, Dream had just launched a new system...
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Keywords:
Impact Investing;
Real Estate Development;
Renewable Energy;
Energy Conservation;
Income;
Values and Beliefs;
Borrowing and Debt;
Equity;
Private Equity;
Public Equity;
Financing and Loans;
City;
Government Legislation;
Immigration;
Housing;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Mission and Purpose;
Property;
Business and Government Relations;
Civil Society or Community;
Human Needs;
Sustainable Cities;
Environmental Sustainability;
Social Enterprise;
Real Estate Industry;
Canada;
Toronto
- July 2021
- Article
Invisible Inequality Leads to Punishing the Poor and Rewarding the Rich
By: Oliver P. Hauser, Gordon T. Kraft-Todd, David Rand, Martin A. Nowak and Michael I. Norton
Four experiments examine how the lack of awareness of inequality affects behaviour towards the rich and poor. In Experiment 1, participants who became aware that wealthy individuals donated a smaller percentage of their income switched from rewarding the wealthy to...
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Keywords:
Income Transparency;
Income;
Wealth;
Equality and Inequality;
Knowledge;
Behavior;
Outcome or Result;
Society;
Policy
- June 15, 2021
- Article
Cutting the Gordian Knot of Employee Health Care Benefits and Costs: A Corporate Model Built on Employee Choice
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Barak D. Richman
President Joe Biden’s promise to give every American access to affordable health insurance is well-intentioned, but his plan’s policy elements—a public option, a permanent expanded tax credit—require congressional approval and would expend significant political and...
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- 2021
- Article
Designing, Not Checking, for Policy Robustness: An Example with Optimal Taxation
By: Benjamin B. Lockwood, Afras Sial and Matthew C. Weinzierl
Economists typically check the robustness of their results by comparing them across plausible ranges of parameter values and model structures. A preferable approach to robustness—for the purposes of policymaking and evaluation—is to design policy that takes these...
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- 2021
- Book
Global Goliaths: Multinational Corporations in the 21st Century Economy
By: C. Fritz Foley, James R. Hines Jr. and David Wessel
Globalization and multinational corporations have long seemed partners in the enterprise of economic growth: globalization-led prosperity was the goal, and giant corporations spanning the globe would help achieve it. In recent years, however, the notion that all...
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- December 2020 (Revised April 2021)
- Case
Arcos Dorados: A QSR Recovery Plan
By: Forest Reinhardt, José B. Alvarez, Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago and Mariana Cal
Arcos Dorados—McDonald’s largest independent franchisee, covering Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)—faced a pandemic that was disrupting the entire consumer foodservice business in 2020. With the exclusive right to own, operate, and sub-franchise McDonald’s...
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Keywords:
Agribusiness;
Animal-Based Agribusiness;
Plant-Based Agribusiness;
Customer Value and Value Chain;
Income;
Macroeconomics;
Environmental Management;
Environmental Sustainability;
Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues;
Food;
Health Pandemics;
Crisis Management;
Logistics;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Strategic Planning;
Food and Beverage Industry;
Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry;
Retail Industry;
Latin America;
Aruba;
Guadeloupe;
Martinique;
Mexico;
Panama;
Costa Rica;
Argentina;
Brazil;
Chile;
Colombia;
Ecuador;
French Guiana;
Peru;
Uruguay;
Venezuela;
Puerto Rico;
Trinidad and Tobago
- 2020
- Working Paper
Designing, Not Checking, for Policy Robustness: An Example with Optimal Taxation
By: Benjami Lockwood, Afras Y. Sial and Matthew C. Weinzierl
Economists typically check the robustness of their results by comparing them across plausible ranges of parameter values and model structures. A preferable approach to robustness—for the purposes of policymaking and evaluation—is to design policy that takes these...
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- November 2020
- Article
The Role of Taxes in the Disconnect Between Corporate Performance and Economic Growth
By: Urooj Khan, Suresh Nallareddy and Ethan Rouen
We investigate the relation between the growth in corporate profits and the overall U.S. economy, focusing on the impact of the U.S. corporate tax regime on this relation. We document that the growth of corporate profits, on average, has outpaced the growth of the...
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- October 2020
- Case
HOPE and Transformational Lending: Netflix Invests in Black Led Banks
By: John D. Macomber and Janice Broome Brooks
Following the killing of George Floyd on Memorial Day in 2020, the large US corporation Netflix elected to make a "transformational deposit" of $10 million into Hope Credit Union (HCU), a small Black led community development finance institution (CDFI) based in...
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- July 2020
- Case
Super 30: Educating the Elite Poor
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Tarun Khanna and Shreya Ramachandran
In the summer of 2019 in New Delhi, S K Shahi and his daughter, Meenakshi, faced a difficult problem. India had 19 centers of their non-profit, the Center for Social Responsibility and Leadership. Also called the 'Super 30' program, this offered free training for...
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- 2020
- Book
Capitalism at Risk: How Business Can Lead
Who should take the lead in fixing market capitalism? Business—not government alone. The spread of capitalism worldwide has made people wealthier than ever before. But capitalism's future is far from assured. Pandemics, income inequality, resource depletion, mass...
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- December 2019 (Revised May 2020)
- Case
Income Inequality and the CEO Pay Ratio at TJX Cos
By: Ethan Rouen and Akari Furukawa
TJX Companies reported a CEO pay ratio of 1,596-to-1 in 2019, leaving board chair Carol Meyrowitz with a host of questions about whether, and how, she could take action to address concerns raised by having one of the highest pay ratios in the S&P 500. As a retail...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Cutting the Gordian Knot of Employee Health Care Benefits and Costs: A Corporate Model Built on Employee Choice
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Barak D. Richman
The U.S. employer-based health insurance tax exclusion created a system of employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) with limited insurance choices and transparency that may lock employed households into health plans that are costlier or different from those they prefer to...
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