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In May 2020, amid the lockdown in India brought about by COVID-19, P. C. Musthafa, chief executive officer of iD Fresh Food (iD), a food company located in Bengaluru, India, was preparing for a virtual meeting with his co-founders. The company offered customers the value proposition of "freshness" and operated in the ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat segments. iD's flagship product was batter for preparing idlis and dosas, which were popular Indian breakfast dishes. The co-founders had to decide how to address the challenges arising on both the demand and the supply side of the business brought about by the pandemic, including production and logistics challenges on the supply side, a dip in demand, and the growth of competitors in the segments. How should iD plan its production amid the disruption to the supply chains and logistics sector brought on by the pandemic and ensure that its products maintain the promised value proposition of freshness? How could it ensure that customers continued to trust iD? Could iD script a fresh story and reach its vision of becoming a ₹10-billion company by 2023, despite an economy ravaged by the pandemic?

First emerging in China in early January 2020, the lethal COVID-19 virus quickly spread throughout Europe and to the US east coast, with New York City as the epicenter. In March the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Policy makers agreed that a vaccine would be necessary to control the virus, however, interim measures would be necessary until a safe vaccine could be developed, manufactured and distributed. The key initiatives undertaken in "flattening the curve" of the virus's spread included voluntary social distancing, frequent sanitation of hands and surfaces, and, in some instances, mandatory lockdowns. These measures forced many businesses to operate at limited capacity and also reduced the supply of some inputs such as labor. By December 2020 several vaccines had been developed and the world awaited mass distribution, while thousands of people continued to succumb to COVID-19 every day. In this environment, despite regulatory, monetary, and fiscal responses to the crisis, there was both uncertainty about the short-run path to economic recovery as well as the long-term impact of COVID-19 for the global economy. In this case, students will work with a Microsoft Excel-built simulation tool to help understand how disease dynamics work and how it affects the economy.

A government's impact on the economy is not limited to taxes, spending, and monetary policy. As any manager can attest, regulations dramatically impact the way managers think about production. An effective regulatory environment will allow both new and existing firms to grow and innovate. Burdensome regulations can lower economic productivity and employment, and are associated with higher levels of informal economic activity and employment. This technical note addresses the annual Doing Business report published by the World Bank, which aims to capture the differences in regulations between countries. Doing Business summarizes these finding in an absolute score and a relative ranking. The doing business score measures how a given country's regulatory environment compares to the global best practice. Scores can range between 0 to 100, with 100 corresponding to the best performance. Those scores are then sorted to give the final ease of doing business ranking, in which countries are ranked from 1 (best score) to 190 (worst).

This case details the competitive and macroeconomic challenges that faced the automobile giant before and after the onset of the 2008 financial crisis-including continually rising commodity prices, looming declines in demand for its automobiles, high fixed costs, and the financial exposure that resulted from dependence on its financing division to remain profitable. Students are asked to analyze data (provided in a supplementary spreadsheet) to recommend what the best course of action for GM would have been in response to the approaching financial crisis.

By December 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had swept across the globe, creating widespread disruption in all aspects of everyday life. Almost 90 million people had been infected and nearly two million had died from the disease. By this point in the pandemic-a year since the first rumors about the novel virus began, mask-wearing and social-distancing had become routine, and millions of people were working or studying from home. Grief and anxiety were widespread due to the loss of loved ones, financial hardships, and uncertainty about when the pandemic would recede. Hoping to solve the health crisis, governments worldwide were relying on private companies to fast-track the development and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. Meanwhile, the global economy was experiencing the worst output crisis in decades, with a recovery that was uncertain and uneven across countries, coupled with rising concerns about the levels of debt and inflation.

Spreadsheet Supplement for Case CU322

The operating executives of Health and Benefits for Onex Partners, Megan Jackson Frye and Sam Camens, faced a challenge: Healthcare costs for employees of Onex's portfolio companies were continuing to rise above the consumer price index, reflecting broader trends across employer-sponsored health insurance in the U.S. Against this backdrop, Frye and Camens considered recommending that Onex's portfolio companies adopt value-based insurance design (VBID) principles to encourage employees to take high-value medications, for example by reducing copays for drugs managing diabetes or heart conditions. The case encourages students to put themselves in the shoes of Frye and Camens, who were grappling with evidence promoted by VBID's proponents on its potential to simultaneously improve employee health and curb employer costs. The case includes content on employer-provided health insurance in the U.S., as well as the consequences of cost-sharing on consumer behavior, health, and spending.

With frequent water main breaks, leaking pipes, and lead contamination, the water infrastructure of many countries is in bad shape, and improvements are urgent in light of climate change and increasing water stress. Discussion in recent years has focused on the role of private companies in a sector that has traditionally been in public hands. Since the privatization of the United Kingdom's water infrastructure in the late 1980s, a whole range of novel modes of cooperation have been identified, from 100% private to 100% public ownership. This note focuses on the economics of public-private partnerships (PPPs). PPPs offer a contractual approach to the delivery of infrastructure goods and services that are typically provided by the public sector or by heavily regulated private operators such as public utilities. They tend to involve relatively long-term contracts, in which the public sector shares some decision-making authority and property rights with private companies. This overlap of ownership and decision-making powers between the public authorities and private operators is both the appeal and the challenge of water PPPs.

Under the rule of presidents Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela experienced one of the worst economic and political meltdowns in modern history, culminating with a massive hyperinflation. Remarkably, during this dramatic times Automercados Plaza's had grown to become one of the most successful supermarket retailers in the country. Its management team had faced all kinds of challenges, including price indexation, price controls, scarcity and stockouts, informal competitors, and an ever-shifting set of government interventions. Showing resourcefulness and the flexibility needed to quickly adapt, Plaza's had managed to survive and even thrive. The future, however, looked very uncertain. Could Plaza's keep growing in an ever-shrinking economy? Would the (now larger) company manage to continue to avoid clashing with the government? Cheap financing in bolívares was no longer available, and other companies had learned to operate under high inflation conditions as well. While additional growth could help fend off new rivals if the economy improved, it was not clear when (or even if) that would happen. Despite increasing domestic and international pressure, President Maduro refused to resign. Even if he did, could Venezuela's economy recover after more than two decades of Chavismo?

The case describes the efforts of hedge fund Paulson & Co to influence corporate governance and improve performance in the gold industry. In an innovative move, the hedge fund led the creation of the Shareholder Gold Council, a consortium of large investors in gold companies to push gold mining companies to adopt higher levels of corporate governance. The case describes the motivation and process that led to the creation of the SGC and the initial work of the SGC. The case also discusses the variety of techniques that Paulson & Co uses to press for better performance at gold mining companies such as buying majority ownership and pursuing activist proxy contests in addition to its work at the SGC. The case serves as a vehicle for students to discuss how investors can engage with companies to drive their desired corporate governance goals. In particular, the case develops the idea of collective action by investors and the opportunities and challenges in doing so.

For the first half of 2020, the COVID-19 crisis seemed on the verge of spiraling out of control. The business world struggled to figure out what COVID meant for macroeconomics. Extended restrictions limiting human interaction meant an end to normal economic production, and a resulting global economic crisis. France, Germany and the United States tackled the economic side of the COVID crisis through complex fiscal policy measures, with differing levels of success.

In 2015, Mauricio Macri became President of Argentina and declared solving the energy crisis one of his top priorities. When Macri attempted to raise utility tariffs, however, he faced loud protests from citizens. In search of solutions to growing shortages, the government seized on Argentina's still largely untapped, but potentially vast renewable energy sector and created an ambitious program called RenovAr (renew in Spanish). By 2016, the country's share of renewable energy stood at less than 2 percent of the power mix. RenovAr's goal was to raise that percentage to 20 percent by 2025. An ambitious plan for an economy still reeling from the 2001 default. This case describes the business friendly Macri administration's strategy to attract private investment in the nascent renewable energy sector, under challenging macroeconomic conditions. The case package includes a sequel that describes the events between 2018 and 2020, when Argentina faced a crippling economic downturn and Macri lost to the Peronist duo, Alberto Fernandez and Vice President Fernandez de Kirchner. The sequel catches the reader up on the state of the RenovAr program during a period of intense economic tumult and political change.

In March 2020, Jay Powell, Federal Reserve (Fed) chairperson, faced a daunting prospect that only a few months prior seemed like a remote possibility: massive expansion of the Fed's balance sheet. Over the past five years, the economy had experienced steady economic growth, permitting the Fed to reduce its balance sheet. The Fed's economists expected the trend to continue. But the rapidly spreading global coronavirus pandemic (known as COVID-19) had rendered moot all prior forecasts. In addition to the health crisis, the United States-and the world-faced the prospect of another economic crisis-just over 10 years after emerging from the largest recession since the Great Depression. How should Powell and his counterparts who ran fiscal policy respond to the crisis? And to what extent could the policy experiments implemented in response to the Great Recession of 2008 guide the monetary and fiscal policy interventions in response to the pandemic crisis?

Framing in business is frequently found in the digital economy with dramatic and innovative new products and disruptive value propositions. However, framing in business is not an exclusively digital economic strategy. Creating or revising frames of reference, value propositions, and pricing based on either new or newly framed offerings is a basic strategy skill that brings new differential value creation to customers and new price-setting models to firms. In this article, I define framing and explain its influence on managerial cognition as well as its application to value-based marketing and price setting. Using economic value theory and behavioral economics, I propose steps managers and decision makers can take in an effort to achieve framing innovation as a way to leverage the disruptive competitive advantages that flow from strategic frames of reference in the marketplace.

The case "Wild Herbs Grow Tall - Mastering Structural Change in Lusatia" describes how entrepreneur Christina Grätz carves out a niche in the re-cultivation of landscapes in post-mining areas in her native region of Lusatia in Eastern Germany. After having established a thriving B2B business with wild herbs, she explores the possibility of entering the B2C market with a new business line. After several iterations and pivoting, she and her partners set up an online platform for direct web-based sales of organic herbal salts. However, the new company shows a lackluster performance - potentially due to the lack of experience in the online B2B marketing strategy.

The case "Wild Herbs Grow Tall - Mastering Structural Change in Lusatia" describes how entrepreneur Christina Grätz carves out a niche in the re-cultivation of landscapes in post-mining areas in her native region of Lusatia in Eastern Germany. After having established a thriving B2B business with wild herbs, she explores the possibility of entering the B2C market with a new business line. After several iterations and pivoting, she and her partners set up an online platform for direct web-based sales of organic herbal salts. However, the new company shows a lackluster performance - potentially due to the lack of experience in the online B2B marketing strategy.

In the first months of 2020, a pandemic overwhelmed the world. COVID-19, commonly known as the coronavirus, spread from China and created a severe public health emergency across countries. While an immediate fear of the disease's impact on human life permeated society, the world battled another concern for the severe economic downturn that was brought about by attempts to suppress the virus. World trade, tourism, capital flows, remittances, and commodity prices collapsed. Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, the global GDP growth rate for 2020 was expected to be close to 2.3%. As of April 2020, multilateral organizations estimated that GDP would contract by 3% - way worse than the 0.1% contraction of 2009, and the deepest dive since the Great Depression. What policy options existed to mitigate the financial and economic distress of containment, and what factors did different countries weigh in deciding which paths to choose? Was there a terrible choice - either damage livelihoods through extended lockdowns, or sacrifice thousands or even millions of lives to the virus - or were policies reinforcing? What was the role of government, businesses, communities and individuals? After the worst of the health crisis was mitigated, what kind of shape would world economies take?

In 2020, Chileans would head to the ballot box to decide their country's future. Many international observers credited Chile's decades of neoliberal governance with turning the country into Latin America's "Tiger," a prosperous, diversified economy on its way to becoming the continent's first developed country. But in October of 2019, a mass protest movement ground the country to a halt and shocked its political class, showing the world a different Chile-one defined by inequality, social distrust, and a young generation of political activists. As Chile prepared to vote in the fall of 2020 on whether to adopt a new constitution, could it sculpt a more equitable society while remaining "the exception" on a continent known for its political instability? Or would Chile's prosperity go the same way as its neoliberal experiment?

Hoping to get ahead of potential digital disruption at Klöckner & Co. - one of the world's largest steel and metal distributors - CEO Gisbert Rühl set up both kloeckner.i (KCI), an internal transformation arm, and XOM Materials (XOM), an independent industry platform. KCI and XOM sought to digitize the $350 billion materials supply and service chain, and promote greater price transparency and efficiency. However, the materials market traditionally resisted digitalization, making the process longer, harder, and more expensive than expected. As 2020 opened, Rühl and his teams wondered how they could dramatically increase uptake.

Countries facing the greatest risk from automation are those that have labor economies in which many jobs involve manual or routine tasks that can be easily automated. Analyzing occupations in terms of their component parts provides a much richer way of looking at jobs than estimating the effects of automation more broadly.