Publications

Article

Audit Quality and Auditor Reputation: Evidence from Japan

By: Douglas Skinner and Suraj Srinivasan

We study events surrounding ChuoAoyama's failed audit of Kanebo, a large Japanese cosmetics company whose management engaged in a massive accounting fraud. ChuoAoyama was PwC's Japanese affiliate and one of Japan's largest audit firms. In May 2006, the Japanese... View Details

Keywords: Audit Quality; Auditor Reputation; Japan; Accounting Audits; Crime and Corruption; Reputation; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Japan

SSRN

Article

Reputation When Threats and Transfers Are Available

By: Ernesto Dal Bo, Pedro Dal Bo and Rafael Di Tella

We present a model where a long-run player is allowed to use both money transfers and threats to influence the decisions of a sequence of short-run players. We show that threats might be used credibly (even in arbitrarily short repeated games) by a long-lived player... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Decision Choices and Conditions; Game Theory; Mathematical Methods; Interests; Power and Influence; Reputation

Read Now

March 2017
Article

Institutional Ownership and Corporate Tax Avoidance: New Evidence

By: Mozaffar N. Khan, Suraj Srinivasan and Liang Tan

We provide new evidence on the agency theory of corporate tax avoidance (Slemrod, 2004; Crocker and Slemrod, 2005; Chen and Chu, 2005) by showing that increases in institutional ownership are associated with increases in tax avoidance. Using the Russell index... View Details

Keywords: Tax Avoidance; Agency Costs; Institutional Ownership; Private Ownership; Crime and Corruption; Taxation; Agency Theory

SSRN

September 1999 (Revised September 2011)
Case

Caselets: Bribery and Extortion in International Business

By: Louis T. Wells Jr.

"Caselets" present several examples of decisions involving bribery or take other actions that could be considered as corrupt. View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Decisions; Trade

Educators

30 Mar 2009
Research & Ideas

Professional Networks in China and America

shock and frustration. For instance, Chinese business people may allow personal considerations to be factored into financial decisions and while that may be construed as View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

September 2007
Article

Related Lending and Economic Performance: Evidence from Mexico

By: Noel Maurer and Stephen Haber

Related lending, a widespread practice in LDCs, is widely held to encourage bankers to loot their banks at the expense of minority shareholders and depositors. We argue that neither looting nor credit misallocation are necessary outcomes of related lending. On... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Developing Countries and Economies; Financial Crisis; Financing and Loans; History; Business and Shareholder Relations; Banking Industry; Mexico

April 2011 (Revised February 2016)
Case

Jamaica's Anemic Growth: The IMF, China and the Debt(th) Trap

By: Rafael Di Tella and Natalie Kindred

This case describes the economic development problems faced by the small Caribbean-island country of Jamaica over most of the past half-century. The Jamaican economy showed relatively strong growth in the 1960s but stagnated in the 1970s. By the end of that decade,... View Details

Keywords: Government Administration; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; International Finance; Crime and Corruption; Poverty; Private Sector; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Economy; Developing Countries and Economies; Borrowing and Debt; Jamaica

Educators

03 Dec 2012
HBS Case

HBS Cases: Against the Grain

Corruption doesn't announce itself with a capital C. It is subtler and thornier than that—as one HBS student found out the hard way during a recent summer internship in Tanzania. In a new case detailing his... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Food & Beverage

March 2004
Article

Do Police Reduce Crime? Estimates Using the Allocation of Police Forces after a Terrorist Attack

By: Rafael Di Tella and Ernesto Schargrodsky

An important challenge in the crime literature is to isolate causal effects of police on crime. Following a terrorist attack on the main Jewish center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in July 1994, all Jewish institutions received police protection. Thus, this hideous event... View Details

Keywords: Law Enforcement; Crime and Corruption; Resource Allocation; National Security

Read Now

Web

Politics and War - Coin and Conscience – Baker Library | Bloomberg Center, Historical Collections

Foreign Secretary Charles James Fox's bill to replace the directors of the East India Company with seven commissioners. Supporters of the bill hoped it would rid the Company of the directors' treachery and View Details

05 May 2003
Research & Ideas

Greed, Fear, and The System Hinder Corporate Reform

Enforcers of regulatory laws are making some headway, particularly since the passage last summer of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, but their work as a whole needs more teeth, according to panelists at the session on regulation and enforcement.... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

19 Mar 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, March 19, 2019

Jorge Tamayo Abstract—Canonical models of criminal behavior highlight the importance of economic incentives and employment opportunities in determining participation in crime (Becker, 1968). Yet, deriving... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

2020
Chapter

Business, Ethics and Institutions. The Evolution of Turkish Capitalism in a Comparative Perspective

By: Asli M. Colpan and Geoffrey Jones

This chapter offers a survey of the evolution of Turkish capitalism from the 19th century Ottoman Empire until the present day. It shows that Turkish business over the last century and a half was shaped in an institutional context similar to those in many developing... View Details

Keywords: Business Groups; Capitalism; Entrepreneurship; Ethics; Government and Politics; History; Religion; Business History; Turkey; Central Asia; Middle East

01 Sep 2018
News

September 2018 Alumni and Faculty Books

19th, they paradoxically sought to make the world safe for “capitalists.” The word “socialists” was first used in northern Italy as a term of contempt for the political economists and legal reformers Pietro Verri View Details

October 1992 (Revised December 1992)
Supplement

Salomon and the Treasury Securities Auction: 1992 Update

By: Dwight B. Crane

Briefly summarizes the events that transpired after the investment bank Salomon Brothers revealed that it had repeatedly violated the rules governing the auction of new U.S. Government securities. Includes a description of the violations, the management shake-up that... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Financial Instruments; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; United States

June 2007 (Revised September 2011)
Case

Caselets: Bribery and Extortion in International Business (Abridged)

By: Louis T. Wells Jr.

"Caselets" present several examples of decisions involving bribery or take other actions that could be considered as corrupt. View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Globalized Firms and Management

Educators