Publications

December 1993 (Revised June 2000)
Case

Kochman, Reidt + Haigh, Inc.

By: Richard S. Ruback and Roy Burstin

A small company faces the dilemma of how to finance growth (i.e., internally generated cash flows vs. outside financing sources). An innovative concept positions the company in promoting a niche within the kitchen-cabinet industry and in looking for an optimal way of... View Details

Keywords: Cash Flow; Business Growth and Maturation; Entrepreneurship; Corporate Finance; Growth and Development Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Utilities Industry

March 2002 (Revised May 2003)
Case

Supply Chain Close-Up: The Video Vault

By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem

The owners of the Video Vault struggle to determine the optimal stocking levels of home videos in an industry fraught with new technology, new pricing paradigms, and stiff competitive pressure from large national chains. Teaching Purpose: To demonstrate the role of... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain Management; Competition; Motivation and Incentives; Price; Technological Innovation; Service Delivery; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

2013
Working Paper

Improving Store Liquidation

By: Nathan Craig and Ananth Raman

Store liquidation is the time-constrained divestment of retail outlets through an in-store sale of inventory. The retail industry depends extensively on store liquidation, not only as a means for investors to recover capital from failed ventures, but also to allow... View Details

Keywords: Business Exit or Shutdown; Financial Condition; Operations; Retail Industry

15 Sep 2017
Working Paper Summaries

Debt Redemption and Reserve Accumulation

Keywords: by Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk

2020
Working Paper

Do Lenders Still Discriminate? A Robust Approach for Assessing Differences in Menus

By: David Hao Zhang and Paul Willen

We use a new methodology to assess mortgage pricing discrimination by race. We make four main contributions. First, we show that existing estimates of mortgage pricing differences by race can be confounded by a "menu problem," which is the problem associated with... View Details

Keywords: Mortgages; Financing and Loans; Prejudice and Bias; Race; Measurement and Metrics; Banking Industry; United States

October 2022
Case

Weapons of Self Destruction: Zak Pym Williams and the Cultivation of Mental Wellness

By: Lauren Cohen, Ronnie Stangler and Grace Headinger

Zak Pym Williams, mental health advocate, grappled with the question of how to create a proactive mental health family environment for his children. Having witnessed how mental health challenges such as addiction and depression had impacted the past four generations of... View Details

Keywords: Family; U.S.; Mental Health; Family Business; Entertainment; Values and Beliefs; Ethics; Leading Change; Family and Family Relationships; Well-being; Social Issues; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States; California

2016
Working Paper

Popular Acceptance of Inequality Due to Innate Brute Luck and Support for Classical Benefit-Based Taxation

By: Matthew C. Weinzierl

U.S. survey respondents' views on distributive justice are shown to differ in two specific, related ways from what is conventionally assumed in modern optimal tax research. A large share of respondents, and in some cases a large majority, resist the full equalization... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Attitudes; Taxation; Theory; United States

October 1981 (Revised August 2010)
Case

Quabbin Cablevision Company

By: Henry B. Reiling

Several entrepreneurs are considering the purchase of an existing cable TV business with the financial assistance of several investors. They must decide whether to establish the company as a partnership or a corporation, and how to capitalize the company for an optimal... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Organization; Television Entertainment; Entrepreneurship; Capital Structure; Taxation; Telecommunications Industry; Massachusetts

January 2004 (Revised May 2006)
Case

Yamato Transport: Valuing and Pricing Network Services (A)

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Tarun Khanna and Masako Egawa

Yamato Transport is the leading Japanese parcel delivery company and has dominated its industry for more than two decades. In response to new competitive challenges, Yamato must decide how to reposition itself in the industry and optimize the size of its network. The... View Details

Keywords: Value Creation; Competition; Transportation Networks; Monopoly; Shipping Industry; Japan

January 2023 (Revised January 2023)
Case

Belden and Digital Transformation: From Product Sales to Solutions Sales

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Amy Klopfenstein

This case concerns the industrial automation division at Belden, a hardware manufacturer. While Belden historically sold products such as cables, wires, and other networking devices, EVP of Industrial Automation Ashish Chand recognized that IT vendors were entering the... View Details

Keywords: Implementation; Sales Cycle; Digital Transformation; Sales; Product Positioning; Business Model; Market Entry and Exit; Customer Focus and Relationships; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Supply and Industry; Technology Industry; North America; United States

Research Summary

Customer Management in Business-to-Business Markets

By: Das Narayandas

Das Narayandas is engaged in ongoing research on vendor firms' management of long-term customer relationships. The initial phase of his research involved identifying vendors that stood to benefit from long-term relationships with select sets of customers and... View Details

October 2009
Journal Article

Testing the Commitment Hypothesis in Contractual Settings: Evidence from Soccer

By: Oriol Carbonell and Diego A. Comin

This paper designs and implements an empirical test to discern whether the parties to a contract are able to commit not to renegotiate their agreement. We study optimal contracts with and without commitment and derive an exclusion restriction that is useful to identify... View Details

Keywords: Contracts; Agreements and Arrangements; Research; Sports Industry; Spain

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January 2015
Case

Chevron Under Fire

By: George Serafeim, Rebecca Henderson and Christine Snively

Oil giant, Chevron, faced numerous challenges on environmental, social and governance (ESG) grounds in the first decade of the 21st century, including some major lawsuits and actions by NGOs. The case describes those challenges and raises questions about what is the... View Details

Keywords: Carbon Tax; Oil And Gas; Environment; Drilling; Governance; Business or Company Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Corporate Strategy; Environmental Sustainability; Energy Sources; Mining Industry; Energy Industry

Article

Is Life Nasty, Brutish, and Short? Philosophies of Life and Well-Being

By: Michael I. Norton, Lalin Anik, Lara B. Aknin and Elizabeth W. Dunn

Three studies examine the extent to which laypeople endorse Thomas Hobbes' (1651) view of life as "nasty, brutish, and short" and explore the relationships between this philosophy and well-being. We asked participants to answer two binary choice questions: Is life... View Details

Keywords: Happiness; Satisfaction; Welfare

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November 2007
Background Note

Asset Allocation I

By: Joshua D. Coval, Erik Stafford, Rodrigo Osmo, John Jernigan, Zack Page and Paulo Passoni

The goal of these simulations is to understand the mathematics of mean-variance optimization and the equilibrium pricing of risk if all investors use this rule with common information sets. Simulation A focuses on five to 10 years of monthly sector returns that are... View Details

Keywords: Asset Pricing; Capital; Investment Return; Risk Management; Mathematical Methods