Publications

SSRN

February 2002
Article

Market Timing and Capital Structure

By: Malcolm Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler

It is well known that firms tend to raise equity when their market values are high relative to book and past market values. We document that the resulting effects on capital structure are very persistent. As a consequence, current capital structure is strongly related... View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Equity; Capital Structure; Theory; Market Timing; Financial Markets

November 2017
Editorial

Facebook, BlackRock, and the Case for Purpose-Driven Companies

By: George Serafeim

Purpose-driven companies have been shown to outperform their peers over the long term. But purpose-driven companies are also hard to come by. Why is that? Because purpose is costly. At the very least, it requires a credible commitment to that purpose. And credible... View Details

Keywords: Facebook; BlackRock; Purpose; Corporate Purpose; ESG; Short-termism; Mission and Purpose; Corporate Governance; Leadership

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22 Mar 2011
First Look

First Look: March 22

not important at the aggregate level. Hence, our results support the use of PAYT as an effective tool to increase waste sorting. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/11-093.pdf The Consequences of View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Web

Valuing an MBA: Beyond Dollars and “Sense" - MBA

Blog Blog MBA Voices Filter Results Arrow Down Arrow Up Read posts from Author Alumni Author Career and Professional Development Staff Author HBS Community Author HBS Faculty Author MBA Admissions Author MBA Students Topics Topics 1st Year (RC) 2+2 Program 2nd Year... View Details

April 1999 (Revised December 2003)
Case

Al Dunlap at Sunbeam

By: Brian J. Hall, Rakesh Khurana and Carleen Madigan

Al Dunlap was one of the best-known corporate turnaround artists of the 1990s. In 1996, he was hired at Sunbeam to effect a restructuring, but was fired almost two years later when the company's financial performance and stock price began to decline. Many of the... View Details

Keywords: Business and Shareholder Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Restructuring; Stock Shares; Performance Evaluation; Leadership Style; Resignation and Termination; Motivation and Incentives; Executive Compensation; Outcome or Result; Consumer Products Industry; United States

April 2015 (Revised April 2022)
Case

Bankruptcy in the City of Detroit

By: Stuart Gilson, Kristin Mugford and Annelena Lobb

The June 2013 bankruptcy of the city of Detroit, Michigan was, at the time, the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. Detroit had struggled for years with a weakening tax base, high unemployment, a heavy debt load and increasing retiree costs. These... View Details

16 Dec 2008
First Look

First Look: December 16, 2008

variables. The results suggest that individuals bring to the workplace specific, measurable beliefs about speaking up, and that these implicit theories operate largely independently of current leader behaviors and other current work... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

July 2021
Article

Big Data for Social Benefits: Innovation as a Mediator of the Relationship between Big Data and Corporate Social Performance

By: Goran Calic and Maryam Ghasemaghaei

Over the last decade, the use big data in firms has seen a rapid increase. Whilst scholars have begun to unpack the relationship between big data utilisation and financial performance, significant uncertainty exists about the ethical uses of this new asset. Whether... View Details

Keywords: Analytics and Data Science; AI and Machine Learning; Performance Improvement; Organizational Change and Adaptation

19 Dec 2005
Research & Ideas

Public Education Goes to School

challenges facing the education sector. The result was the now three-year-old Public Education Leadership Project (PELP), which works with nine urban public school districts representing over one million students. "Rather than... View Details

Keywords: by Mallory Stark; Education

January 2019
Article

Bubbles for Fama

By: Robin Greenwood, Andrei Shleifer and Yang You

We evaluate Eugene Fama's claim that stock prices do not exhibit price bubbles. Based on U.S. industry returns 1926–2014 and international sector returns 1985–2014, we present four findings: (1) Fama is correct in that a sharp price increase of an industry portfolio... View Details

Keywords: Bubble; Market Efficiency; Predictability; Price Bubble; Stocks; Price; Forecasting and Prediction

Spring 2013
Article

Accounting Quality, Stock Price Delay, and Future Stock Returns

By: Jeffrey Callen, Mozaffar N. Khan and Hai Lu

In frictionless capital markets with complete information and rational investors, stock prices adjust to new information instantaneously and completely. However, a substantial body of research studies information imperfections such as asymmetric information and... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Price; Stocks; Asset Pricing; Accounting

02 Jul 2012
Research & Ideas

Why Good Deeds Invite Bad Publicity

There is next to no evidence that CSR positively adds to a company's bottom line, according to Felix Oberholzer-Gee, the Andreas Andresen Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. "You cannot find a robust direct link between CSR and View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Energy

September 2020
Case

Minerva 2020: Clinical Trials

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In March 2020, Dr. Cynthia Bamdad, founder and CEO of Minerva Biotechnologies Inc. (Minerva), was reviewing the first results of human clinical trials for the company’s novel CAR-T drug therapeutic, one of the first ever to target solid cancer tumors. The results... View Details

Keywords: Biotechnology; Strategic Decision Making; Entrepreneurship; Health Testing and Trials; Decision Choices and Conditions; Strategy

June 2023 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Chipmaking in the Desert: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's Global Expansion

By: William C. Kirby and Noah B. Truwit

On December 6, 2022, in Phoenix, Arizona, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) Executive Chairman Mark Liu outlined the company’s ambitious plans to invest $40 billion to build semiconductor manufacturing plants in Phoenix. The event also celebrated the... View Details

Keywords: Geopolitical Units; Government and Politics; Government Legislation; Expansion; Market Entry and Exit; Semiconductor Industry; Taiwan; United States

July–August 2021
Article

Lowering the Bar? External Conditions, Opportunity Costs, and High-Tech Startup Outcomes

By: Annamaria Conti and Maria P. Roche

We assess the heterogeneous impact of economic downturns on individuals’ decisions to bring high-technology ideas to the market in the form of new ventures. We thereby examine how worsening labor market conditions influence individuals’ opportunity costs of starting... View Details

Keywords: Necessity Entrepreneurship; Economic Conditions; Recessions; High-tech Startups; Opportunity Costs; Entrepreneurship; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Business Startups; Information Technology; Performance; Labor

June 2020
Article

U.S. Monetary Policy and Emerging Market Credit Cycles

By: Falk Bräuning and Victoria Ivashina

Foreign banks’ lending to firms in emerging market economies (EMEs) is large and denominated predominantly in U.S. dollars. This creates a direct connection between U.S. monetary policy and EME credit cycles. We estimate that over a typical U.S. monetary easing cycle,... View Details

Keywords: Global Business Cycle; Monetary Policy; Reaching For Yield; Money; Policy; Credit; Emerging Markets