Publications

Article

Real Estate Opportunity Funds

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz, Thea C. Hahn and David Geltner

Real estate opportunity funds are one of the fastest-growing segments of the real estate investment industry, similar in some basic respects to other private equity and alternative investment asset classes that seek high returns by taking on more risk in highly... View Details

Keywords: Real Estate; Opportunity Funds; Investment Management; Property; Investment Funds; Management; Performance Consistency

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May 2018 (Revised January 2019)
Teaching Note

Nashton Partners and Its Search Fund Process

By: Richard S. Ruback, Royce Yudkoff and Ahron Rosenfeld

Teaching Note for HBS No. 212-006. In 2008, Jay Davis (HBS’ 08) and Jason Pananos (HBS’ 08) formed Nashton Partners and raised $500,000 from investors to fund their search. After 30 months of searching, and exhausting the money they raised to fund their search, Davis... View Details

Keywords: Search Fund; Acquisition; Capital Structure; Financing and Loans; Investment Funds; Partners and Partnerships

October 2016
Technical Note

Sovereign Wealth Funds

By: Sophus A. Reinert and Julie Kheyfets

Keywords: Sovereign Wealth Funds; Sovereign Finance; Investment Funds

2022
Working Paper

Why Do Index Funds Have Market Power? Quantifying Frictions in the Index Fund Market

By: Zach Y. Brown, Mark Egan, Jihye Jeon, Chuqing Jin and Alex A. Wu

Index funds are one of the most common ways investors access financial markets and are perceived to be a transparent and low-cost alternative to active investment management. Despite these purported virtues of index fund investing and the introduction of new products... View Details

Keywords: Mutual Funds; Passive Investing; Asset Management; Financial Markets; Investment Funds; Financial Management; Financial Services Industry; United States

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March 2015
Case

Pearson Affordable Learning Fund

By: Michael Chu, Vincent Dessain and Kristina Maslauskaite

An in-house venture capital fund for affordable private schools at the base of the pyramid established by Pearson, the world's largest education company, PALF sought to invest in business models providing superior educational outcomes in emerging markets on a... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investment; Low Cost Private Schools; Investment Fund; Business At The Base Of The Pyramid; Transition; Investment; Development Economics; Business Growth and Maturation; Social Entrepreneurship; Emerging Markets; Private Sector; Education; Education Industry; Asia; Africa

August 2021
Article

Don't Take Their Word for It: The Misclassification of Bond Mutual Funds

By: Huaizhi Chen, Lauren Cohen and Umit Gurun

We provide evidence that bond fund managers misclassify their holdings, and that these misclassifications have a real and significant impact on investor capital flows. In particular, many funds report more investment grade assets than are actually held in their... View Details

Keywords: Mutual Funds; Economics; Finance; Measurement and Metrics; Risk and Uncertainty; Financial Services Industry

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2020
Working Paper

Scientific Production: An Exploration into Organization, Resource Allocation, and Funding

By: Jerry Thursby, Marie Thursby, Karim R. Lakhani, Kyle R. Myers, Nina Cohodes, Sarah Bratt, Dennis Byrski, Hannah Cohoon and Maria Roche

Production of scientific knowledge is core to civilizational advancement in economic and material wellbeing of societies. Despite its fundamental importance, however, a systematic effort to quantitatively study the factors underlying scientific production, particularly... View Details

Keywords: Funding; Science; Knowledge; Research; Information Management; Resource Allocation

2017
Working Paper

Learning by Doing: The Value of Experience and the Origins of Skill for Mutual Fund Managers

By: Elisabeth Kempf, Alberto Manconi and Oliver Spalt

Learning by doing matters for professional investors. We develop a new methodology to show that mutual fund managers outperform in industries where they have obtained experience on the job. The key to our identification strategy is that we look "inside" funds and... View Details

Keywords: Fund Managers; Experience and Expertise; Performance; Forecasting and Prediction

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February 2018
Case

Infrastructure in Nigeria: Unlocking Pension Fund Investments

By: John Macomber and Pippa Tubman Armerding

The so-called “infrastructure finance gap” was a problem in Nigeria as in many parts of the world. Infrastructure projects like power plants and dams were very large capital investments that could generate long-term consistent cash flows, but their financing and... View Details

Keywords: Pension Fund Investing; Infrastucture; Power/Energy; Credit Enhancement; Infrastructure; Project Finance; Investment Funds; Emerging Markets; Nigeria; Africa

June 2013 (Revised August 2013)
Background Note

Note on Pension Guarantee Funds

By: Robert C. Pozen and Patricia Bissett Higgins

The United States and the United Kingdom both had quasi-government agencies that provided back-up insurance for individuals participating in defined benefit ("DB") pension plans. This note compares and contrasts the United Kingdom's Pension Protection Fund ("PPF") with... View Details

Keywords: Pensions; Pension Guarantee Funds; Pension Protection Fund; Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation; Employee Retirement Income Security Act; PBGC; ERISA; MAP-21; Legislation; Insurance; Saving; Retirement; Labor; Labor and Management Relations; Employees; Insurance Industry; United States; United Kingdom

August 2015
Article

Dollar Funding and the Lending Behavior of Global Banks

By: Victoria Ivashina, David S. Scharfstein and Jeremy C. Stein

A large share of dollar-denominated lending is done by non-U.S. banks, particularly European banks. We present a model in which such banks cut dollar lending more than euro lending in response to a shock to their credit quality. Because these banks rely on wholesale... View Details

Keywords: Banks; Global Banks; Credit Supply; Dollar Funding; International Finance; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry

December 1996
Case

Common Fund Hedge Fund Portfolio, The

By: Andre F. Perold and William T. Spitz

The Common Fund, a nonprofit consortium of educational institutions, is deciding whether to create a fund of hedge funds for its members, and if it does, which hedge fund managers to select. View Details

Keywords: Measurement and Metrics; Investment Funds

January 2020
Teaching Note

PROOF: Pro Rata Opportunity Fund

By: Josh Lerner, Shai Bernstein and Terrence Shu

This is a teaching note meant to accompany "PROOF: Pro Rata Opportunity Fund," HBS Case No. 820-030. View Details

Keywords: Finance; Venture Capital; Fund Management; Fund Raising; Investing; Investment Banking; Limited Partners

2020
Working Paper

Anchors Aweigh: Analysis of Anchor Limited Partner Investors in Impact Investment Funds

By: Shawn A. Cole, T. Robert Zochowski, Fanele Mashwama and Heather McPherson

This note describes results from a survey of “anchor investors” in impact funds. Anchor investors are described as “generally the first investor to make a substantial capital commitment to a fund,” (according to the Global Impact Investing Network, “GIIN”) and their... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investment Funds; Anchor Investors; Investment; Surveys; Analysis

October 2007 (Revised July 2013)
Case

Vertex Pharmaceuticals and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation: Venture Philanthropy Funding for Biotech

By: Robert F. Higgins, Sophie LaMontagne and Brent Kazan

In 2001, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated acquired the San Diego-based biotech company, Aurora Biosciences. The combination of Vertex's and Aurora's technologies would improve the flow of novel drug candidates into development. However, several questions related to... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy; Philanthropy Funding; Innovation; Funding Model; Venture Capital; Partners and Partnerships; Financing and Loans; Investment Funds; Acquisition; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; San Diego

June 2022
Teaching Plan

GreenLight Fund

By: Brian Trelstad and Mel Martin

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 320-053. As Tara Noland, the Executive Director (ED) of GreenLight Cincinnati, reflected on her first few years on the job. Noland had delivered on what she had been hired to do in the city: work with leading philanthropists and nonprofit... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy; Venture Philanthropy; Replication; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Venture Capital; Social Issues; Decision Making; Cincinnati

March 2020 (Revised June 2022)
Case

GreenLight Fund

By: Brian Trelstad, Julia Kelley and Mel Martin

As Tara Noland, the Executive Director (ED) of GreenLight Cincinnati, reflected on her first few years on the job. Noland had delivered on what she had been hired to do in the city: work with leading philanthropists and nonprofit executives to use data and evidence to... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy; Venture Philanthropy; Replication; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Venture Capital; Social Issues; Decision Making; Analytics and Data Science; Cincinnati

2024
Working Paper

Ponzi Funds

By: Philippe van der Beck, Jean-Philippe Bouchaud and Dario Villamaina

Many active funds hold concentrated portfolios. Flow-driven trading causes price pressure, which pushes up the funds’ existing positions resulting in realized returns. We decompose fund returns into a price pressure (self-inflated) and a fundamental component and... View Details

Keywords: Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Investment Return; Price Bubble; Financial Reporting; Financial Liquidity

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Article

Recovering Investor Expectations from Demand for Index Funds

By: Mark Egan, Alexander J. MacKay and Hanbin Yang

We use a revealed-preference approach to estimate investor expectations of stock market returns. Using data on demand for index funds that follow the S&P 500, we develop and estimate a model of investor choice to flexibly recover the time-varying distribution of... View Details

Keywords: Stock Market Expectations; Demand Estimation; Exchange-traded Funds (ETFs); Demand and Consumers; Investment