Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(345)
- Faculty Publications (132)
- December 2010
- Article
Nominal versus Indexed Debt: A Quantitative Horse Race
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
The main arguments in favor of and against nominal and indexed debt are the incentive to default through inflation versus hedging against unforeseen shocks. We model and calibrate these arguments to assess their quantitative importance. We use a dynamic equilibrium... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Competing Complements
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Barry Nalebuff and David B. Yoffie
In Cournot's model of complements, the producers of A and B are both monopolists. This paper extends Cournot's model to allow for competition between complements on one side of the market. Consider two complements, A and B, where the A + B bundle is valuable only when... View Details
- March 2010
- Article
Interpersonal Authority in a Theory of the Firm
This paper develops a theory of the firm in which a firm's centralized asset ownership and low-powered incentives give the manager, as an equilibrium outcome, interpersonal authority over employees (in a world with open disagreement). The paper thus provides... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Anger and Regulation
By: Rafael Di Tella and Juan Dubra
We propose a model where voters experience an emotional cost when they observe a firm that has displayed insufficient concern for other people's welfare (altruism) in the process of making high profits. Even with few truly altruistic firms, an equilibrium may emerge... View Details
- February 2009
- Article
Optimal Reserve Management and Sovereign Debt
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
Most models currently used to determine optimal foreign reserve holdings take the level of international debt as given. However, given the sovereign's willingness-to-pay incentive problems, reserve accumulation may reduce sustainable debt levels. In addition, assuming... View Details
- May 2009
- Article
Asymmetric Information Effects on Loan Spreads
The paper estimates the cost arising from information asymmetry between the lead bank and members of the lending syndicate. In a lending syndicate, the lead bank retains only a fraction of the loan but acts as the intermediary between the borrower and the syndicate... View Details
- Article
Debt Maturity: Is Long-Term Debt Optimal?
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
We model and calibrate the arguments in favor and against short-term and long-term debt. These arguments broadly include: maturity premium, sustainability, and service smoothing. We use a dynamic equilibrium model with tax distortions and government... View Details
- March 2008
- Course Overview Note
Dynamic Markets
By: Joshua D. Coval and Erik Stafford
The Dynamic Markets course at Harvard Business School is organized around the hands-on application of financial decision making in a wide variety of capital market settings. The course relies heavily on in-class simulations of a range of market settings where students... 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
- Article
Learning and Equilibrium as Useful Approximations: Accuracy of Prediction on Randomly Selected Constant Sum Games
By: Ido Erev, Alvin E. Roth, R. Slonim and Greg Barron
- September 2007
- Article
(Noisy) Communication
By: Bharat Anand and Ron Shachar
Communication is central to many settings in marketing and economics. A focal attribute of communication is miscommunication. We model this key characteristic as a noise in the messages communicated, so that the sender of a message is uncertain about its perception by... View Details
- July 2007
- Article
A Two-Person Game of Information Transmission
By: Jerry R. Green and Nancy L. Stokey
We consider a statistical decision problem faced by a two player organization whose members may not
agree on outcome evaluations and prior probabilities. One player is specialized in gathering information
and transmitting it to the other, who takes the decision. This... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Correlated Equilibrium and Nash Equilibrium as an Observer's Assessment of the Game
By: John Hillas, Elon Kohlberg and John W. Pratt
Noncooperative games are examined from the point of view of an outside observer who believes that the players are rational and that they know at least as much as the observer. The observer is assumed to be able to observe many instances of the play of the game; these... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Interpersonal Authority in a Theory of the Firm
This paper develops a theory of the firm in which a firm's centralized asset ownership and low-powered incentives give a manager 'interpersonal authority' over employees (in a world with differing priors). The paper derives such interpersonal authority as... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Optimal Reserve Management and Sovereign Debt
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
Most models currently used to determine optimal foreign reserve holdings take the level of international debt as given. However, given the sovereign's willingness-to-pay incentive problems, reserve accumulation may reduce sustainable debt levels. In addition, assuming... View Details
- Article
Finding Lost Profits: An Equilibrium Analysis of Patent Infringement Damages
By: James J. Anton and Dennis A. Yao
We discuss how a seller can appropriate rents when selling knowledge that lacks legal property rights by solving either an expropriation or a valuation problem and then analyze how seller rents increase when a portion of the intellectual property (IP) can be protected.... View Details
- November 2006
- Background Note
Technical Game Theory Note #1: Solving Bi-matrix Games
By: Dennis A. Yao
Explains how to solve bi-matrix games and introduces the Nash Equilibrium concept. View Details
- July 2006
- Article
Dynamic Mixed Duopoly: A Model Motivated by Linux vs. Windows
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Pankaj Ghemawat
This paper analyzes a dynamic mixed duopoly in which a profit-maximizing competitor interacts with a competitor that prices at zero (or marginal cost), with the cumulation of output affecting their relative positions over time. The modeling effort is motivated by... View Details
Keywords: Open Source Software; Demand-side Learning; Network Effects; Linux; Mixed Duopoly; Competitive Dynamics; Business Models; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Information Technology; Applications and Software; Business Model; Mathematical Methods; Digital Platforms; Profit; Balance and Stability; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; SWOT Analysis; Competition; Price; Information Technology Industry
- 2006
- Working Paper
Learning and Equilibrium As Useful Approximations: Accuracy of Prediction on Randomly Selected Constant Sum Games
By: Ido Erev, Alvin E. Roth, Robert L. Slonim and Greg Barron
- 2006
- Working Paper
The Limits of Authority: Motivation versus Coordination
This paper studies the effects of open disagreement on motivation and coordination. It shows how, in the presence of differing priors, motivation and coordination impose conflicting demands on the allocation of authority, leading to a trade-off between the... View Details