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    Small BusinessRemove Small Business →

    Page 1 of 18 Results
    • 06 Sep 2022
    • Cold Call Podcast

    Reinventing an Iconic Independent Bookstore

    Re: Ryan L. Raffaelli

    In 2020, Kwame Spearman (MBA 2011) made the career-shifting decision to leave a New York City-based consulting job to return to his hometown of Denver, Colorado, and take over an iconic independent bookstore, The Tattered Cover. Spearman saw an opportunity to reinvent the local business to build a sense of community after the pandemic. But he also had to find a way to meet the big challenges facing independent booksellers amid technological change and shifting business models. Professor Ryan Raffaelli and Spearman discuss Spearman’s vision for reinventing The Tattered Cover, as well as larger insights around how local businesses can successfully compete with online and big box retailers in the case, “Kwame Spearman at Tattered Cover: Reinventing Brick-and-Mortar Retail.”

    • 21 Sep 2020
    • Working Paper Summaries

    The Targeting and Impact of Paycheck Protection Program Loans to Small Businesses

    by Alexander Bartik, Zoë B. Cullen, Edward L. Glaeser, Michael Luca, Christopher Stanton, and Adi Sunderam

    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.

    • 07 Sep 2020
    • Research & Ideas

    How to Help Small Businesses Survive COVID's Next Phase

    by Danielle Kost

    For small businesses that have survived the coronavirus so far, what's next? Karen Mills outlines steps that business owners and government should take immediately. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 28 May 2020
    • Research & Ideas

    Coronavirus Could Create a 'Bankruptcy Pandemic'

    by Dina Gerdeman

    An expected explosion in bankruptcy proceedings over the coming months could overwhelm the courts, says Stuart Gilson. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 18 Apr 2020
    • Working Paper Summaries

    How Are Small Businesses Adjusting to COVID-19? Early Evidence From a Survey

    by Alexander Bartik, Marianne Bertrand, Zoë B. Cullen, Edward L. Glaeser, Michael Luca, and Christopher Stanton

    This survey of 5,819 small businesses in the United States shows that the pandemic has already caused massive dislocation among small businesses. Many businesses think they will not be able to survive if the crisis persists for the coming months. The immediacy of new funding will likely impact medium-term outcomes.

    • 13 Apr 2020
    • Research & Ideas

    Small Businesses Are Worse Off Than We Thought

    by Kristen Senz

    A survey of small-business owners shows that lack of liquidity and skepticism of government programs are compounding COVID crisis recovery efforts. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 24 Mar 2020
    • Working Paper Summaries

    Free Riding in Loan Approvals: Evidence From SME Lending in Peru

    by Irani Arraiz, Miriam Bruhn, Benjamin N. Roth, Claudia Ruiz-Ortega, and Rodolfo Stucchi

    Using data from a large Peruvian bank trying to expand credit access to small and medium enterprises, this study shows that competing lenders use one another’s loan approvals as an input into their own approval process. Such “free riding” has great impact on market outcomes and might warrant policy intervention.

    • 20 Mar 2020
    • Research & Ideas

    How Small Businesses Can Survive the Coronavirus Outbreak

    by Danielle Kost

    COVID-19 will put many small businesses on life support. Karen G. Mills, who has been advising policymakers on aid options, offers guidance to owners on the brink of ruin. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 20 Mar 2019
    • Working Paper Summaries

    In the Shadows? Informal Enterprise in Non-Democracies

    by Kristin Fabbe, Allison Spencer Hartnett, and Steve L. Monroe

    With the informal economy representing a third of the GDP in an average Middle East and North African country, why do chronically indebted regimes tolerate such a large and untaxed shadow economy? Among this study’s findings, higher rates of public sector employment correlate with greater permissibility of firm informality.

    • 22 Apr 2018
    • Working Paper Summaries

    Immigrant Entrepreneurship in America: Evidence from the Survey of Business Owners 2007 & 2012

    by Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr

    How do businesses created by immigrants differ from those of natives? This study using the 2007 and 2012 Survey of Business Owners records finds that while immigrant-owned businesses have a modestly different industry composition than native-owned businesses, there are ten-fold differences across states in terms of the share of businesses owned by immigrants.

    • 20 Nov 2017
    • Research & Ideas

    How Independent Bookstores Have Thrived in Spite of Amazon.com

    by Carmen Nobel (with video by Amelia Kunhardt)

    Ryan Raffaelli set out to discover how independent bookstores managed to survive and even thrive in spite of competition from Amazon and other online retailers. His initial findings reveal how much consumers still value community and personal contact. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 16 Oct 2017
    • Research & Ideas

    The Most Successful Startups Have Hands-On Founders

    by Dina Gerdeman

    Research by Rembrand Koning and colleagues says the best-performing startups are those where the founder is hands-on with people management. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 12 Oct 2017
    • Working Paper Summaries

    The Decline of Big-Bank Lending to Small Business: Dynamic Impacts on Local Credit and Labor Markets

    by Brian S. Chen, Samuel G. Hanson, and Jeremy C. Stein

    Between 2008 and 2014, the Top 4 banks sharply decreased their lending to small business. This paper examines the lasting economic consequences of this contraction, finding that a credit supply shock from a subset of lenders can have surprisingly long-lived effects on real activity.

    • 31 Jul 2017
    • HBS Case

    It’s Hard to Fix the Family Business Without Offending the Family

    by Julia Hanna

    Navigating complex relationships and understanding unwritten processes are among the many challenges of transitioning a family-owned business to the next generation. Len Schlesinger, Michael Raiche, and Roger Zhu discuss the dilemmas of a small Vietnamese restaurant in the case study “Pho Hoa Dorchester.” Open for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 22 Dec 2016
    • Op-Ed

    The Small Business Administration is a Model for How to Drive Economic Growth

    by Karen Mills

    Responding to a recent editorial in the Washington Post, Karen Mills argues that the Small Business Administration is an effective public-private partnership model that fuels economic growth, access, and opportunity for all Americans. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 02 Nov 2016
    • Op-Ed

    Government and Financial Tech Can Fix Cash Woes for Small Businesses

    by Karen Mills

    Cash flow is a major concern for small businesses, which, on average, hold only 27 days’ reserve. Karen Mills looks at how "fintech" and government policies can pull companies off the cash flow edge. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 17 Oct 2016
    • Working Paper Summaries

    Self-Employment Dynamics and the Returns to Entrepreneurship

    by Eleanor W. Dillon and Christopher T. Stanton

    Why do workers turn to entrepreneurship when many entrepreneurs appear to earn less than what they could earn in paid employment? This is the first paper to characterize how the value of resolving uncertainty about entrepreneurial earnings varies over the lifecycle after adjusting for tax differences between entrepreneurs and paid workers. Findings suggest that helping people learn about their potential earnings in entrepreneurship, either by learning from other's experiences in self-employment or by experimenting themselves, can improve the efficiency of sorting workers across sectors.

    • 10 Jan 2011
    • Research & Ideas

    Is Groupon Good for Retailers?

    by Carmen Nobel

    For retailers offering deals through the wildly popular online start-up Groupon, does the one-day publicity compensate for the deep hit to profit margins? A new working paper, "To Groupon or Not to Groupon," sets out to help small businesses decide. Harvard Business School professor Benjamin G. Edelman discusses the paper's findings. Key concepts include: Discount vouchers provide price discrimination, letting merchants attract consumers who would not ordinarily patronize their business without a major price incentive. These vouchers also benefit merchants through advertising, simply by informing consumers of a merchant's existence via e-mail. For some merchants, the benefits of offering discount vouchers are sharply reduced if individual customers buy multiple vouchers. As a marketing tool, discount vouchers are likely to be most effective for businesses that are relatively unknown and have low marginal costs. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

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