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New research on geographic issues from Harvard Business School faculty on topics including location strategy, regional and national economic development, and location-based industry clusters.
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IT Job Wages Are No Longer 'Exceptional'

by Rachel Layne

Wage growth in IT jobs has moderated following the dot-com boom, according to new research by Ruiqing Sam Cao and Shane Greenstein. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Where the Cloud Rests: The Economic Geography of Data Centers

by Shane Greenstein and Tommy Pan Fang

This study quantifies how data center managers make a trade-off between the setup and operational costs of running a facility and capturing local demand.

Digital Labor Market Inequality and the Decline of IT Exceptionalism

by Ruiqing Cao and Shane Greenstein

The experience in five cities accounts for almost all the wage inequality in IT wages in the US between 2000 and 2018. Overall that brought IT wages closer to STEM wages.

Does Apple Anchor a Shopping Mall? The Effect of the Technology Stores on the Formation of Market Structure

by Doug J. Chung, Kyoungwon Seo, and Reo Song

Anchor stores are the key tenants in a mall, occupying most of the gross leasable area and generating much of the foot traffic. This research provides a framework to understand why new and traditional anchor stores join a shopping mall and how their decisions affect mall configuration.

China-based Fuyao Glass Considers Manufacturing in the US

Not many Chinese companies open manufacturing facilities in the US, but automotive glass maker Fuyao is considering just that. In a recent case study, Willy Shih examines factors that go into deciding where companies should locate production centers. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Crowdsourcing Memories: Mixed Methods Research by Cultural Insiders-Epistemological Outsiders

by Tarun Khanna, Karim R. Lakhani, Shubhangi Bhadada, Nabil Khan, Saba Kohli Davé, Rasim Alam, and Meena Hewett

Research on the traumatic 1947 partition of British India has most often been carried out by scholars in the humanities and qualitative social sciences. This article presents mixed methods research and analysis to explore tensions within current scholarship and to inspire new understandings of the Partition, and more generally, mass migrations and displacement.

The Gift of Global Talent: Innovation Policy and the Economy

by William R. Kerr

High-skilled workers in today’s knowledge-based economy are arguably the most important resource to the success of businesses, regions, and industries. This chapter pulls from Kerr’s book The Gift of Global Talent to examine the migration dynamics of high-skilled individuals. He argues that improving our knowledge of high-skilled migration can lead to better policy decisions.

Israel Turns 70: Does it Need a Rebrand?

When market research revealed that many people associated Israel with military and political conflict, the country knew a rebrand was in order. In this podcast, Elie Ofek discusses the campaign's results. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Branding Sells Cereal, Handbags, and Vacations. Can It Sell a Country?

by Danielle Kost

Countries such as Israel now realize they need to engage in public diplomacy as well as foreign diplomacy, and in place branding, not just political advocacy, says Elie Ofek. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Can Miguel McKelvey Build the ‘Culture Operating System’ at WeWork?

How deeply does the culture of a startup matter? Can it be shaped? Professor Jeffrey Rayport discusses WeWork cofounder Miguel McKelvey’s innovative role in building a company culture to support rapid growth. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

The UK Needs a Bold Strategy Around Competition to Survive Brexit

by Michael Blanding

There is little doubt that the United Kingdom’s separation from Europe will reduce its competitiveness for the foreseeable future, argues Michael E. Porter. Here's what can be done about it. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

UK Competitiveness after Brexit

by Michael E. Porter

This paper discusses the UK’s economic performance and policy approach in the run-up to the June 2016 Brexit referendum, analyzes the impact of European Union membership and loss of membership on UK competitiveness, and sets forth a new strategic agenda to enhance UK competitiveness in the post-Brexit era.

Expected Stock Returns Worldwide: A Log-Linear Present-Value Approach

by Akash Chattopadhyay, Matthew R. Lyle, and Charles C.Y. Wang

Over the last 20 years, shortcomings of classical asset-pricing models have motivated research in developing alternative methods for measuring ex ante expected stock returns. This study evaluates the main paradigms for deriving firm-level expected return proxies (ERPs) and proposes a new framework for estimating them.

Using Online Prices for Measuring Real Consumption Across Countries

by Alberto Cavallo, W. Erwin Diewert, Robert C. Feenstra, Robert Inklaar, and Marcel P. Timmer

The increasing availability of big data can improve measurement of real consumption in closer to real time. This study shows that online prices may enhance data of the International Comparisons Program, dramatically improving the frequency and transparency of purchasing power parities compared with traditional data collection methods.

Nowcasting Gentrification: Using Yelp Data to Quantify Neighborhood Change

by Edward L. Glaeser, Hyunjin Kim, and Michael Luca

This study finds that data from digital platforms (in this case, Yelp) can help forecast which neighborhoods are gentrifying and provide new ways to measure business landscape changes that accompany demographic changes.

Where Should We Build a Mall? The Formation of Market Structure and Its Effect on Sales

by Doug J. Chung, Kyoungwon Seo, and Reo Song

In spite of the recent surge in e-commerce, brick-and-mortar retail, specifically in the form of large-scale shopping malls, is still the dominant venue for consumer purchases in the developed world. The construction of mass-scale shopping malls has also experienced tremendous growth in newly industrialized countries such as China. This research provides a rigorous, yet practical, framework to understand and evaluate why retail stores join a shopping mall and how their decisions affect mall revenue. The model can be extended and applied to a number of settings where a decision maker must choose among alternative sites to construct a market, for example, for transportation hubs such as airports or train stations.

Capturing Value from IP in a Global Environment

by Juan Alcácer, Karin Beukel, and Bruno Cassiman

Challenges to capturing value from know-how and reputation through the use of different IP tools is an increasingly important matter of strategy for global enterprises. They will need to combine different institutional, market, and non-market mechanisms, but the precise combination of tools will depend on local and regional institutional and market conditions.

Location Fundamentals, Agglomeration Economies, and the Geography of Multinational Firms

by Laura Alfaro and Maggie Xiaoyang Chen

Understanding the location interdependence of multinational firms and how they agglomerate with one another is critical to designing and improving economic policies. These authors’ analysis, using a worldwide plant-level dataset and a novel index of agglomeration, yields a number of insights into the economic geography of multinational production. In addition to market access and comparative advantage motives, multinationals' location choices are significantly affected by agglomeration economies including not only vertical production linkages but also technology diffusion and capital-market externalities.

Internalizing Global Value Chains: A Firm-Level Analysis

by Laura Alfaro, Pol Antras, Davin Chor & Paola Conconi

Manufacturing activities that used to be performed in close proximity are increasingly fragmented across firms and countries. This paper provides strong evidence that considerations driven by contractual frictions critically shape firms' ownership decisions along their value chains.

Stop Talking About the Weather and Do Something: Three Ways to Finance Sustainable Cities

by John Macomber

How do we ensure that our cities are resilient in the face of inevitable future weather events like Hurricane Sandy? John Macomber offers three ways that the private sector can take action. Open for comment; 6 Comment(s) posted.