Publications

April 2005
Case

The University of Chicago Investment Office: Investing in Timber

In 2005, the University of Chicago Investment office was deciding how much capital to allocate toward timber investing. Explores the challenges associated with optimal portfolio construction when one of the invested assets is illiquid with limited historical price... View Details

Keywords: Investment Portfolio; Decision Choices and Conditions; Financial Services Industry; Education Industry

Research Summary

Investment Management

Professor Chacko's research looks into the portfolio choice decisions of individuals and institutions. He is particularly concerned with optimal portfolio choice and consumption decisions in a dynamic framework. His work looks at how economic agents make these... View Details

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

2020
Working Paper

Best Ideas

By: Miguel Antón, Randolph B. Cohen and Christopher Polk

We ﬁnd that the stocks in which active mutual fund or hedge fund managers display the most conviction towards ex-ante, their “Best ideas,” outperform the market, as well as the other stocks in those managers’ portfolios, by approximately 2.8 to 4.5 percent per year,... View Details

Keywords: Mutual Funds; Managerial Skill; Market Efficiency; Investment Funds; Management; Investment Portfolio; Decision Making

Teaching Interest

Investment Management Workshop

By: Luis M. Viceira

Investing and Strategic Decision-Making for Principals, Portfolio Managers, and Executives of Asset Management Firms

For nearly 50 years, the Investment Management Workshop (IMW) has convened the world's top principals, portfolio managers, and... View Details

2015
Working Paper

What Do Private Equity Firms Say They Do?

By: Paul A. Gompers, Steven N. Kaplan and Vladimir Mukharlyamov

We survey 79 private equity investors with combined assets under management (AUM) of over $750 billion about their practices in firm valuation, capital structure, governance, and value creation. Investors rely primarily on internal rate of return (IRR) and multiples to... View Details

Keywords: Governance; Value Creation; Private Equity; Capital Structure; Valuation; Management Practices and Processes

SSRN

May 2021
Article

Preparing for a Pandemic: Accelerating Vaccine Availability

By: Amrita Ahuja, Susan Athey, Arthur Baker, Eric Budish, Juan Camilo Castillo, Rachel Glennerster, Scott Duke Kominers, Michael Kremer, Jean Lee, Canice Prendergast, Christopher M. Snyder, Alex Tabarrok, Brandon Joel Tan and Witold Wiecek

Vaccinating the world’s population quickly in a pandemic has enormous health and economic benefits. We analyze the problem faced by governments in determining the scale and structure of procurement for vaccines. We analyze alternative approaches to procurement, arguing... View Details

Keywords: Vaccines; Procurement; Health Pandemics; Health Care and Treatment; Acquisition; Cooperation

Article

What Do Private Equity Firms Say They Do?

By: Paul A. Gompers, Steven N. Kaplan and Vladimir Mukharlyamov

Keywords: Private Equity; Valuation; Capital Structure; Value Creation

December 2019
Article

Brokers and Order Flow Leakage: Evidence from Fire Sales

By: Andrea Barbon, Marco Di Maggio, Francesco Franzoni and Augustin Landier

Using trade-level data, we study whether brokers play a role in spreading order flow information. We focus on large portfolio liquidations, which result in temporary drops in stock prices, and identify the brokers that intermediate these trades. We show that these... View Details

Keywords: Predatory Trading; Back Running; Fire Sales; Brokers; Stocks; Price; Information; Knowledge Dissemination; Ethics

March 2013
Article

The Client Is King: Do Mutual Fund Relationships Bias Analyst Recommendations?

By: Michael Firth, Chen Lin, Ping Liu and Yuhai Xuan

This paper investigates whether the business relations between mutual funds and brokerage firms influence sell-side analyst recommendations. Using a unique data set that discloses brokerage firms' commission income derived from each mutual fund client as well as the... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment Funds

Research Summary

Working Hard and Investing for an Early Retirement

I examine consumption, leisure, and portfolio choices made over the life-cycle using a model allowing for semi-flexible leisure and an endogenously chosen retirement date. Under a Cobb-Douglas utility specification, I present closed-form expressions for optimal... View Details

December 2020
Article

Stock Market Returns and Consumption

By: Marco Di Maggio, Amir Kermani and Kaveh Majlesi

This paper employs Swedish data containing security level information on households' stock holdings to investigate how consumption responds to changes in stock market returns. We exploit households’ portfolio weights in previous years as an instrument for actual... View Details

Keywords: Capital Gain; Dividend Income; Consumption; Near-rational Behavior; Investment Return; Household; Spending; Behavior

SSRN

July 2021 (Revised December 2021)
Case

Pershing Square's Pandemic Trade (A)

By: Emil N. Siriwardane, Luis M. Viceira, Dean Xu and Lucas Baker

This case explores the decision that Bill Ackman, CEO and founder of the hedge fund Pershing Square Capital, was considering in late February 2020 about hedging the exposure of the fund’s portfolio from the potential financial fallout ensuing from an extreme event like... View Details

Keywords: Health Pandemics; Financial Liquidity; Cost Management; Decision Choices and Conditions; Risk Management

19 Jan 2016
First Look

January 19, 2016

new roles for user innovators; user interactions with firms; and user innovation in practice, describing experiments, toolkits, and crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=42312 forthcoming Journal of View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2011
Working Paper

When Smaller Menus Are Better: Variability in Menu-Setting Ability

Are large menus better than small menus? Recent literature argues that individuals' apparent preference for smaller menus can be explained by choosers' behavioral biases or informational limitations. These explanations imply that absent behavioral or informational... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment; Investment Portfolio; Size; Quality

15 Nov 2016
First Look

November 15, 2016

Case 517-021 Brand Portfolio Strategy and Brand Architecture While companies choose to brand their products and services in many different ways, there are some central tenets that help define an optimal... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

November 2007
Background Note

Bayesian Estimation & Black-Litterman

By: Joshua D. Coval and Erik Stafford

Describes a practical method for asset allocation that is more robust to estimation errors than the traditional implementation of mean-variance optimization with sample means and covariances. The Bayesian inspired Black-Litterman model is described after introducing... View Details

Keywords: Asset Management; Investment Portfolio; Mathematical Methods

December 2018
Case

Corporate Transformation at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany

By: Joseph B. Fuller, Amy C. Edmondson, Daniela Beyersdorfer and Tonia Labruyere

When Stefan Oschmann became CEO and chairman of the executive board of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, in 2016, the company had started its transformation from a mid-tier traditional German industry player to a global modern science and technology player. The... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance With Family Ownership; Transformation; Change Management; Restructuring; Corporate Governance; Family Ownership