Daniel Raff

Education

PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1987; BPhil, Oxford University, 1978; MPA, Princeton University, 1976; BA, New College, 1973

Recent Consulting

Competitive strategy in manufacturing and services (including financial services); deal design

Academic Positions Held

Wharton: 1994present. Previous appointments: Harvard University; Oxford University. Visiting appointments: Columbia University Schools of Business and Law

Other Positions

Faculty Research Fellow and Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1988present; Sloan Senior Research Fellow, Wharton Financial Institutions Center, 2000present

Professional Leadership

Trustee, Business History Conference, 19982001; Chair, Investment Committee, 2001present; Chair, Audit and Budget Committee and Trustee ex officio, Economic History Association, 2001present

Daniel Raff and Philip Scranton, “Silences, and Beginning to Fill Them”. In The Emergence of Routines, edited by Daniel M. G. Raff and Philip Scranton, (2017),

Daniel Raff, “Learning from History”. In The Emergence of Routines, edited by Daniel M. G. Raff and Philip Scranton, (2017),

Daniel Raff, “The BookoftheMonth Club as a New Enterprise”. In The Emergence of Routines, edited by Daniel M.G. Raff and Philip Scranton, (2016),

Daniel Raff (2013), How to Do Things with Time , Enterprise & Society.

Daniel Raff (2013), The Business of the Press , Oxford University Press, Chapter 5, pp. 190216.

Daniel Raff (2013), Worldwide Expansion and Influence , Oxford University Press, Chapter 19, pp. 583617.

Daniel Raff, Susan Wachter, Se Yan (2013), Real estate prices in Beijing, 1644 to 1840 , Explorations in Economic History, 50, pp. 368386.

Abstract: This paper provides the first estimates of housing price movements for Beijing in late premodern China. We handcollect from archival sources transaction prices and other house attribute information from the 498 surviving house sale contracts for Beijing during the first two centuries of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1840), a long period without major wars, political turmoil, or significant institutional change in the Chinese capital. We use hedonic methods to construct a real estate price index for Beijing for the period. The regression analysis explains a major proportion of the variance of housing prices. We find that house prices grew steadily for the first halfcentury of the Qing Dynasty and declined afterwards in both nominal and real terms through the late eighteenth century. Nominal prices grew starting in the late eighteenth century and declined from the early nineteenth century through 1840. But these price changes occurred with contemporaneous price changes in basic measures of the cost of living: there was little change in real terms to the end of our period. © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Daniel Raff, Naomi R Lamoreaux, Peter Temin (Working), Beyond Markets and Hierarchies: Towards a New Synthesis of American Business History.

Abstract: We sketch a new synthesis of American business history to replace (and subsume) that putforward by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., most famously in his book The Visible Hand (1977). We see the broader subject as the history of the institutions of coordination in the economy, with the management of information and the addressing of problems of informational asymmetries representing central problems for firm and relationship design. Our analysis emphasizes the endogenous adoption of coordination mechanisms in the context of evolving but specific operating conditions and opportunities.  This naturally gives rise both to change and to heterogeneity in the population of coordination mechanisms to be observed in use at any moment in time. In discussing the changes in the population of mechanisms over time, we seek to avoid the tendency, exemplified by Chandler’s work but characteristic of the field, to see history of adoption in teleological rather than evolutionary perspective.  We see a richer set of mechanisms in play than is conventional and a more complex historical process at work, in particular a process in which hierarchical institutions have both risen and, more recently, declined in significance.

Description: Reginald H. Jones Center for Management Policy, Strategy and Organization working paper.

Daniel Raff (2001), Risk Management in an Age of Change , Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Global Financial Services Practice.

Abstract: The environment in which banks and other financial services industry firms operate was once very stable. It is now increasingly permeated with change. Enhanced performance demands make this change salient to highlevel decisionmakers. Many of the opportunities firms now face are pathdependent and this will continue to be so. For firms to make effective choices in such an environment, both competitive strategy and the strategymaking process must come to terms with opportunities which evolve over time. Old decisionmaking systems and attitudes are unhelpful in this and may even be impediments to good outcomes. Risk inevitably features in getting these decisions right. All strategic decisions induce and impose constraints on the types of risk banks traditionally monitor and manage. This needs to be explicitly considered and is generally not. Strategic decisions also impose a new type of risk, detailed here, which also needs to be analyzed, monitored, and controlled. All these activities require changes, discussed in detail, both in decisionmaking protocols and in the organizational structures and routines supporting decisionmaking.

Daniel Raff and C. H. Fine, InternetDriven Innovation and Economic Performance in the American Automobile Industry (2001)

Past Courses

MGMT101 INTRO TO MANAGEMENT

We all spend much of our lives in organizations. Most of us are born in organizations, educated in organizations, and work in organizations. Organizations emerge because individuals can't (or don't want to) accomplish their goals alone. Management is the art and science of helping individuals achieve their goals together. Managers in an organization determine where their organization is going and how it gets there. More formally, managers formulate strategies and implement those strategies. This course provides a framework for understanding the opportunities and challenges involved in formulating and implementing strategies by taking a "system" view of organizations,which means that we examine multiple aspects of how managers address their environments, strategy, structure, culture, tasks, people, and outputs, and how managerial decisions made in these various domains interrelate. The course will help you to understand and analyze how managers can formulate and implement strategies effectively. It will be particularly valuable if you are interested in management consulting, investment analysis, or entrepreneurship but it will help you to better understand and be a more effective contributor to any organizations you join, whether they are large, established firms or startups.

MGMT225 VALUE CREATION & VAL CAP

This course concerns the history of capitalism in America viewed from the perspective of the people who operated (and in some cases owned) the firms. Its focus is on the activities of value creation and value capture and on how evolving opportunities and selection pressures have conditioned the historic development of competition, strategic analysis and initiatives, organizational structures, mergerandacquisition activity, entrepreneurship, and the like. Accounting and control are also part of the story: the course in fact considers issues arising in a variety of different management disciplines and shows off their interrelationships. The maintenance (or otherwise) of value capture over the cycle and over time is a running theme. ,The course has a narrative element (running from Franklin's days through the early twentyfirst century) but its deeper purpose is to give students some idea of how to think about the future evolution of firms and industries. It proceeds through a consideration of actual business decisions and performance in a series of challenging and otherwise interesting moments in the evolution of the American business environment. The materials are unusual for the Wharton Schoolthey are often caselike and when possible draw on documents contemporary to the decisions such as correspondence, memoranda, minutes of meetings, old newspaper and magazine stories, and eyewitness accounts. They require thoughtful preparation. This course is much more focused on the students than many and a successful experience of its demands that the students both engage with the materials and take an active role in the class discussion. The largest single element in the grading is a substantial term paper on a topic agreeable to both the student and the instructor. For more information, please contact the instructor: raff@wharton.upenn.edu.

MGMT714 VALUE CREATION & VAL CAP

This course examines how the kind of firms in which most Wharton students will spend the next stage of their careers came to be as they are today. At a superficial level, the course's objectives are descriptive and narrative. Its deeper purpose is to give students some idea of how to think about the future evolution of firms and industries. The course will discuss the historical development of the business enterprise as an institution. It will also cover the evolution of competition and strategy and of corporate finance. The focus will be on American developments, since many of the innovations took place here, but there is scope for comparison with institutions in Japan and the leading European economies if there is student interest. The course considers issues arising in anumber of different management disciplines and shows off their interrelationships. In terms of the Wharton curriculum and of recent research, strategy issues,and in particular the set of issues concerning how value can be created and captured at the enterprise level, are a running theme. ,Format: There will be occasional lecturing but this is principally a discussioncourse. The readings are predominantly primary source documents, supplanted when helpful by background notes from the instructor, with occasional readings from secondary sources. Evaluation is based on class participation, weekly brief written responses to the readings, and a term paper, with the great bulk of thegrade weight on the last of these.

Bad News for Borders – and for Publishing 07/19/2011 More Wizardry in the Book World 06/24/2011 Getting a Read on Amazon’s New Kindle 12/12/2007

Knowledge @ Wharton

How Amazon Could Reinvent the Brickandmortar Store Experience, Knowledge @ Wharton 02/09/2016 Can Amazon Deliver the Goods in Privatelabel Groceries?, Knowledge @ Wharton 06/09/2015 Is Amazon Set to Hit Its Prime?, Knowledge @ Wharton 02/05/2015 Will Amazon Succeed in Selling Local Services?, Knowledge @ Wharton 12/03/2014 Amazon’s Future: Looking Beyond the Balance Sheet, Knowledge @ Wharton 10/28/2014 Amazon vs. Hachette: The Battle for the Future of Publishing, Knowledge @ Wharton 06/18/2014 Will the Next ‘Golden Age of Television’ Take Place Online?, Knowledge @ Wharton 10/18/2013 Can Jeff Bezos Bring Amazon Innovation to The Washington Post?, Knowledge @ Wharton 08/06/2013 Barnes & Noble, the Last Big Bookseller Standing: But for How Long?, Knowledge @ Wharton 01/16/2013 Will Buying a Hospice Keep the Washington Post Co. Off Life Support?, Knowledge @ Wharton 10/24/2012 All the World’s a Kindle, Knowledge @ Wharton 10/18/2011 Get Me Rewrite: What’s Next for Murdoch’s Media Empire?, Knowledge @ Wharton 07/20/2011 Bad News for Borders — and for Publishing, Knowledge @ Wharton 07/19/2011 Is Quality Control Lacking in Business Books?, Knowledge @ Wharton 07/18/2011 More Wizardry in the Book World, Knowledge @ Wharton 06/24/2011 A Better Way to Buy Books?, Knowledge @ Wharton 05/09/2011 Latest Buzz in the Book Business, Knowledge @ Wharton 02/14/2011 Etextbooks: The New Bestsellers, Knowledge @ Wharton 03/03/2010 Wanted: A President Who Can Lead During a Time of ‘Daunting’ Challenges, Knowledge @ Wharton 10/01/2008 Will the Online Book Publishing Flap Rewrite Copyright Law?, Knowledge @ Wharton 02/08/2006 U.S. Steel Users Claim Tariffs “Protect a Few at the Expense of the Majority”, Knowledge @ Wharton 02/12/2003 Stormy Skies, and a Silver Lining, for Boeing, Knowledge @ Wharton 07/03/2002 Webvan Finds that Shopping for Food Online Hasn’t Clicked with Consumers, Knowledge @ Wharton 03/19/2001 Texaco Hitches Its Star to Chevron, Knowledge @ Wharton 11/08/2000 How Borders and Barnes & Noble Pursued Separate Paths to Profitability, Knowledge @ Wharton 08/30/2000