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In 2012, the Chicago Teachers' Union went on strike over proposed reforms by the city's mayor, Rahm Emanuel. At the heart of the reforms, and the strike, was frustration over many decades of underperformance in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and a surge of controversial, largely market-based, experimentation in public education in many U.S. cities.

In November 2013, Dr. Jose Pinto, head of Grupo Beta San Miguel (BSM), Mexico's largest private sugar producer, is weighing the future prospects of the Mexican sugar industry as he considers whether BSM should bid on one of the state-owned sugar mills slated for auction. His decision will be informed by dynamics in the North American sugar market-NAFTA affords Mexico unique duty-free access to the U.S.-as well as the world sugar market and other major sugar-producing countries, especially Brazil.

By 2013, the agricultural sector in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) had long suffered from war, political instability, and dilapidated infrastructure. A country with 75 million inhabitants and the second lowest GDP per capita in the world in 2011, the DRC's most pressing task was to grow its agriculture sector and cultivate its 80 million hectares of fertile land. This case explores how a developing country could create a comprehensive strategy to implement the necessary institutional, political, and social frameworks needed to support sustainable agricultural developments and rise out of long-term poverty.

This case examines world fertilizer markets from the perspective of a large Norwegian producer. The global fertilizer industry is critical to food production and to food security, and hence is the object of numerous forms of government intervention. The case analyzes questions of business strategy within this politically charged economic environment.

In late October 2011, after losing 1 billion of dollar reserves in one month, the Argentine government began imposing a series of currency controls, limiting the ability to buy foreign currency. As of October 2011, Argentina's tax collection agency AFIP had been granted the power to approve or reject all requests to buy dollars with pesos in Argentina's banking system. By June 2012, AFIP had removed ""saving"" as a legitimate explanation. While the official exchange rate was approaching six pesos to the dollar, the black market was demanding almost ten pesos to the dollar-a nearly 65% difference. These were not the first currency restrictions that Argentina had imposed on its citizens.

"Shaping the Future of Solar Power: Climate Change, Industrial Policy and Free Trade (Part B)," is the second of a two part case but may also be taught on its own. In May 2013, European Union Trade Commissioner, Karel De Gucht faced a career defining choice. Soon, he would have to announce a decision on the EU's biggest anti-dumping case, initiated by a group of European solar panel makers against Chinese manufacturers. De Gucht was aware that imposing tariffs on Chinese solar companies could set off a wider trade war between two of the world's largest economies. Part B of the case highlights the tensions between the E.U. and China on sale of solar panels, echoing the politically charged solar battles between the U.S. and China in 2012. The negotiated solar trade settlement between the E.U. and China offers insights into the political realities behind industrial policies, action on climate change, and free trade. Case number 2008.0

The numerous gains in health and wealth over the past few centuries have had the unintended effect of widening inequality gaps: Every breakthrough makes some people better off than others. Although some amount of inequality may be necessary for growth, inequality becomes intolerable when the successful use their advantage to pull even further ahead of the rest.

Data about hours worked per employee, productivity per employee, and per capita GDP in several countries around the world. The bad news: Even "hot" emerging markets like Brazil have seen little growth in productivity in recent years, so even if labor markets recover, those gains might not result in much added GDP.

Multinational corporations and wealthy individuals often use so-called tax havens to establish subsidiaries or holding companies in order to rebalance profits across borders with the primary purpose of lowering their effective tax rate. This note describes the use of tax havens, the implications for the financial sector in tax havens, as well as the debate around the effect of tax havens on welfare in other jurisdictions.

One vote in June, 2012, decided the fate of President Barack Obama's crowning first-term achievement: universal health insurance. Chief Justice John Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court cast the deciding vote to uphold the keystone of the reform: the mandate to purchase insurance. That mandate had a convoluted history. Though born in a conservative think-tank and originally adopted by Republican leaders as a necessary component of reform, it was rejected by Republicans when taken on board by the President and Democrats. Roberts' decision rested on an interpretation of the mandate as a tax. Instructors may also obtain a Teaching Note, written by this case's author, that provides suggestions for using this case effectively in the classroom.

The unelected Federal Reserve Chairman exerts exceptional influence over the U.S., in fact global, economy. As Janet Yellen prepared to take over the position, she would look back on Chairman Bernanke's tenure during the Great Recession. During that time, Bernanke was attacked by critics from both the left and the right for guiding monetary policy into dangerous territory. Their criticisms echoed arguments Bernanke himself had made with regard to past downturns in Japan and Europe. Were the critics right, or was the Bernanke Fed charting a wise middle course? Instructors may also obtain a Teaching Note, written by this case's author, that provides suggestions for using this case effectively in the classroom.

In 2013, Rio Tinto was expected to begin commercial shipments from Oyu Tolgoi, a copper and gold mine in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. Oyu Tolgoi was one of the last great unmined deposits in the world, and, once operations were in full swing, was expected to constitute around a tenth of Rio Tinto's profits and over a quarter of Mongolia's GDP. But the terms of the deal were being threatened by elections in Mongolian and a change in voter sentiment towards the project. With around $6 billion invested, Rio Tinto had to figure out how to make its investment work out. Meanwhile the Mongolian government, facing scorching economic growth rates, had to lead the country through its most significant transformation since the time of Ghengis Khan nine centuries earlier.

This course is about one question: What is the proper role of the government in the market economy? We study the role of government as it plays out in the real world, using vivid case studies from many countries, decades, and policy angles. At the same time, we align these cases with a rigorous theoretical framework that clarifies the circumstances under which government intervention in the market can improve outcomes.

For nearly two decades, the leading evidence on hormone therapy was based on findings from observational studies like the Nurses' Health Study. In 1985, researchers at Nurses' Health Study confirmed that postmenopausal women who took estrogen had lower rates of heart disease than women who had never taken the hormone. These influential findings helped drive the surge in hormone prescriptions in the 1980s and 1990s. But in 2002, in a stunning turnaround, researchers for a randomized clinical trial called the Women's Health Initiative reported that hormone therapy, in fact, increased the risk of heart disease and stroke among postmenopausal women. Almost overnight, prescriptions for hormone treatment plummeted. For millions of women who were either abruptly taken off hormones or denied treatment, though, the feeling of confusion and anguish remained. At the heart of the hormone therapy controversy was the fact that two different research approaches-observational studies and randomized experiments-had arrived at diametrically opposite results, once again raising questions about what constituted reliable evidence. Case Number 2005.0

Despite its reputation as the engine of the modern economy, the information industry shed more jobs in the United States from 2001 to 2011 than any other sector except manufacturing.

CEOs often complain that the financial markets simply don't understand their companies' strategy. The author's recent findings show that they may well have a point. Many good strategies are complex and thus hard to understand. A proper analysis of Monsanto, for example, requires expertise in pharmaceuticals, agricultural chemicals, and agricultural biotechnology--but on Wall Street those three industries are analyzed separately. Back in 1999 one analyst wrote, "Monsanto will probably have to change its structure to be more properly analyzed and valued." Zenger was intrigued by the possibility that complex or unique strategies are systematically ignored by analysts or undervalued by capital markets. He and two colleagues undertook to investigate the question, by examining all 7,630 companies that were publicly traded in U.S. capital markets from 1985 through 2007. They devised a way to measure uniqueness and complexity and counted the number of analysts covering each company. Their analysis determined that although many factors--such as company size and trade volume--influence analysts' decisions about what companies to cover, the greater effort required for a complex or unusual strategy discourages coverage. And although their uniqueness measure is actually associated with higher market value, this premium is, on average, lower than it would be if the company got more coverage. CEOs who face the uniqueness challenge have two options: They can make strategic information more accessible--by issuing tracking stocks, marketing directly to investment banks, or paying for independent equity research--or they can find sympathetic investors who believe in the company, which may mean taking it private.

For decades, the basic idea that governed economic thinking was that markets work: The right price will always find a buyer and a seller, and millions of buyers and sellers are far better than a few government officials at determining the right price. But then came the Great Recession, when the global financial system seemed on the verge of collapse--as did prevailing notions about how the economic and financial world is supposed to function. The author has followed academic economics and finance as a journalist since the mid-1990s. To him, three shifts in thinking stand out: (1) Macroeconomists are realizing that it was a mistake to pay so little attention to finance. (2) Financial economists are beginning to wrestle with some of the broader consequences of what they've learned over the years about market misbehavior. (3) Economists' extremely influential grip on a key component of the economic world--the corporation--may be loosening. In the early 1930s, he concludes, policy errors by governments and central banks turned a financial crisis into a global economic disaster. In 2008 the financial shock was at least as big, but the reaction was smarter and the economic fallout less severe.