Publications

February 2011
Case

Chegg: Textbook Rental Takes Flight

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, William A. Sahlman and Evan W. Richardson

In late 2010, Silicon Valley-based Chegg, the leading online college textbook rental company, is scaling rapidly. The case recounts Chegg's history from its origins as a distant competitor to Craigslist in college classified listings through a pivot into textbook... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Higher Education; Entrepreneurship; Books; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Service Operations; Renting or Rental; Online Technology; Education Industry; Service Industry; California

Article

The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Investment Recommendations

By: Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim

Using a large sample of publicly traded U.S. firms over 16 years, we investigate the impact of corporate socially responsible (CSR) strategies on security analysts' recommendations. Socially responsible firms received more favorable recommendations in recent years... View Details

Keywords: Public Ownership; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Strategy; Experience and Expertise; Value Creation; Public Equity; Markets; Investment; Perception; United States

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01 Nov 2016
First Look

First Look - November 1, 2016

America Innovation Network By: Acemoglu, Daron, Ufuk Akcigit, and William R. Kerr Abstract— Technological progress builds upon itself, with the expansion of invention in one domain propelling future work in linked fields. Our analysis... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

April 2006 (Revised April 2012)
Background Note

The Company Sale Process

By: William E. Fruhan Jr.

Lays out the steps, the timeline, and the process by which a company is sold. Focuses on the sale of companies with enterprise values greater than $100 million. These transactions are large enough to require the help of a financial adviser and attract both strategic... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Auctions; Bids and Bidding; Agreements and Arrangements; Sales

13 Apr 2010
First Look

First Look: April 13

by deviating frequently and in predictable ways from the recommendations offered by a centralized capacity planning model. Finally, we document that these discretionary capacity supply decisions exhibit a... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

February 2017 (Revised June 2017)
Case

ExxonMobil: Business as Usual? (A)

By: George Serafeim, Shiva Rajgopal and David Freiberg

Climate change was becoming an important societal and business issue as more governments were introducing climate change related regulations and investors became increasibly worried about stranded assets within oil and gas firms. In September 2016, the U.S. Securities... View Details

Keywords: Oil ＆ Gas; Oil Prices; Oil Companies; Asset Impairment; Predictive Analytics; Sustainability; Environmental Impact; Innovation; Disclosure; Accounting; Valuation; Climate Change; Renewable Energy; Environmental Sustainability; Financial Reporting; Energy Industry

April 2008
Article

The Survey of Industrial R&D—Patent Database Link Project

By: William R. Kerr and Shihe Fu

This paper details the construction of a firm-year panel dataset combining the NBER Patent Dataset with the Survey of Industrial R&D conducted by the Census Bureau and National Science Foundation. The dataset constitutes a platform that offers an unprecedented view of... View Details

Keywords: Analytics and Data Science; Patents; Surveys; Research and Development; Innovation and Invention; Performance Productivity; Projects; Management Practices and Processes; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques

08 Nov 2016
First Look

November 8, 2016

Measuring Entrepreneurial Businesses: Current Knowledge and Challenges Immigrant Entrepreneurship By: Kerr, William R., and Sari Pekkala Kerr Abstract—We examine immigrant entrepreneurship and the survival and growth of immigrant-founded... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2022
Working Paper

The Issuance and Design of Sustainability-linked Loans

By: Maria Loumioti and George Serafeim

Sustainability-linked loans (i.e., syndicated loans for which pricing is linked to a sustainability performance indicator) have rapidly evolved into a significant private debt product. We find that sustainability-linked lending has been available mostly to borrowers... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Sustainability Management; Credit Products; Loan Contracts; Loans; Corporate Finance; Credit Risk; Environment; ESG; ESG Ratings; Climate Change; Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Risk and Uncertainty; Credit

SSRN

14 Nov 2017
First Look

New Research and Ideas: November 14, 2017

experts to discuss how researchers can impact a broader audience, by lending their scientific expertise to pressing social issues, current events, and public debates. The landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, in which the Supreme... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

January 2014
Article

The Consequences of Entrepreneurial Finance: Evidence from Angel Financings

By: William R. Kerr, Josh Lerner and Antoinette Schoar

This paper documents that ventures that are funded by two successful angel groups experience superior outcomes to rejected ventures: they have improved survival, exits, employment, patenting, web traffic, and financing. We use strong discontinuities in angel funding... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Financing and Loans; Interests; Employment; Patents; Internet and the Web; Operations; Entrepreneurship; Business Exit or Shutdown

June 2010
Article

What Causes Industry Agglomeration? Evidence from Coagglomeration Patterns

By: Glenn Ellison, Edward Glaeser and William R. Kerr

Why do firms cluster near one another? We test Marshall's theories of industrial agglomeration by examining which industries locate near one another, or coagglomerate. We construct pairwise coagglomeration indices for US manufacturing industries from the Economic... View Details

Keywords: Production; Economics; Industry Clusters; Analytics and Data Science; Labor; Theory; Goods and Commodities; United States; United Kingdom

07 Aug 2007
First Look

First Look: August 7, 2007

interpretable results, and that performance is improved by achieving good results simultaneously along several inter-related dimensions. The Transformation from 'I' to 'We' Authors:Bill George and Andrew N.... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

January 2018 (Revised March 2019)
Case

Autonomous Vehicles: The Rubber Hits the Road...but When?

By: William Kerr, Allison Ciechanover, Jeff Huizinga and James Palano

The rise of autonomous vehicles has enormous implications for business and society. Despite the many headlines and significant investment in the technology by early 2019, it was still unclear when truly autonomous vehicles would be a commercial reality. Students will... View Details

Keywords: Technology Management; Artificial Intelligence; General Management; Robotics; Technological Innovation; Transportation; Disruption; Information Technology; Decision Making; AI and Machine Learning; Auto Industry; Technology Industry

16 Oct 2012
First Look

First Look: October 16

organization profits. Order the book: http://www.amazon.com/Judgment-Calls-Twelve-Stories-Decisions/dp/142215811X From Russia with Love: The Impact of Relocated Firms on Incumbent Survival Authors:Oliver Falck, Christina Guenther, Stephan Heblich, and View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 2022
Article

House Prices, Home Equity and Entrepreneurship: Evidence from U.S. Census Micro Data

By: Sari Pekkala Kerr, William R. Kerr and Ramana Nanda

During 1992-2007, house price growth is strongly correlated with local entrepreneurship. We show with Census Bureau data that most of this entry is related to construction and real estate; these entrants tend to be small and short-lived. Using a 1998 Texas reform that... View Details

Keywords: House Prices; Collateral Channel; Entry; Entrepreneurship; Housing; Real Estate Industry; Construction Industry

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March 2015
Case

West Coast Chill

By: William A. Sahlman, Robert F. White and Stephanie Puzio

The fall of 2010 marked the 20th year that Mitchell Joseph, a fourth generation beverage executive, serial entrepreneur, and the founder of the Joseph Company (the "Company"), had been working on developing the technology for a self-chilling can. Mitchell was at an... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

September 2011
Case

AXA Private Equity: The Diana Investment

By: Michael J. Roberts and William A. Sahlman

The case focuses on an investment made by AXA Private Equity, a French manufacturer of food ingredients. The investment is made at the height of the financial markets, and financed with significant debt. Soon thereafter, the financial crisis impacted the company's... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Ethics; Investment; Financial Crisis