Publications

Web

Behavioral Finance & Financial Stability

firms lever up, the overall cost of capital falls as leverage increases equity beta, but as debt becomes riskier the marginal benefit of increasing equity beta declines. They find that leverage is inversely related to asset beta,... View Details

December 2001 (Revised April 2003)
Case

Financing PPL Corporation's Growth Strategy

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Carrie Ferman

PPL Corp., an electric utility in Pennsylvania, needs to finance $1 billion of peaking plants as part of its new growth strategy. In February 2001, Steve May, director of finance for PPL's Global Division, is responsible for recommending a finance plan. After... View Details

Keywords: Financial Management; Financial Instruments; Project Finance; Financial Strategy; Corporate Finance; Leasing

July 2019 (Revised April 2021)
Case

Salary Finance

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In April 2019, Asesh Sarkar, co-founder and chief executive of Salary Finance Limited, a London-based FinTech, faced tough choices. Sarkar had founded Salary Finance with Dan Cobley and Daniel Shakhani in 2015. The company’s value proposition was quite simple: partner... View Details

Keywords: Credit; Financing and Loans; Wages; Innovation and Invention; Expansion; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Culture; Decision Choices and Conditions; Financial Services Industry

23 Dec 2014
First Look

First Look: December 23

Publications December 2014 Journal of Political Economy Transition to Clean Technology By: Acemoglu, Daron, Ufuk Akcigit, Douglas Hanley, and William R. Kerr Abstract—We develop a microeconomic model of endogenous growth where clean... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

Forthcoming
Article

The Imperfect Intermediation of Money-Like Assets

By: Jeremy C. Stein and Jonathan Wallen

We study supply-and-demand effects in the U.S. Treasury bill market by comparing the returns on T-bills to the administered policy rate on the Federal Reserve’s reverse repurchase (RRP) facility. In spite of the arguably more money-like properties of an investment in... View Details

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12 Sep 2023
Research & Ideas

How Can Financial Advisors Thrive in Shifting Markets? Diversify, Diversify, Diversify

clients by offering information sessions, teaching them financial principles and such has a much bigger effect” in terms of growth rates, Di Maggio says. You Might Also Like: Buy Now, Pay Later: How Retail's Hot Feature Hurts Low-Income... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Financial Services

Web

Global Impact of the Collapse | Baker Library | Bloomberg Center | Harvard Business School

default swap contracts. As confidence in the banks eroded, borrowing rates rose and home foreclosures continued to spike. Lawrence McDonald, author and a former vice-president... View Details

October 2013 (Revised February 2019)
Teaching Note

Red Hen Baking Company

By: Richard Ruback, Royce Yudkoff and Lisa Paige

The case explores the decision to expand in a small business setting. In 2007, the Red Hen Baking Company (RHB) was deciding whether to move from its cramped and inefficient Duxbury, Vermont facility to a new facility in nearby Middlesex, Vermont. It had been in... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Capital; Risk Management; Expansion

16 Nov 2021
HBS Case

How a Company Made Employees So Miserable, They Killed Themselves

layoffs. By the time Breton left the company in 2005 to serve as French Finance Minister, things were looking up: The company was turning a profit. 22,000 workers must go Didier Lombard stepped in as CEO later that year, promising shareholders revenue growth, View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

April 2002 (Revised February 2003)
Module Note

Teaching Project Finance: An Overview of the Large-Scale Investment Course

By: Benjamin C. Esty

Large-Scale Investment is a case-based course about project finance for second-year MBA students. Project finance involves the creation of a legally independent project company financed with nonrecourse debt for the purpose of investing in a single-purpose industrial... View Details

Keywords: Projects; Financing and Loans

Adi Sunderam is the Willard Prescott Smith Professor of Corporate Finance at Harvard Business School, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Faculty Affiliate of the Harvard Economics department. He teaches Finance 2 in... View Details

Keywords: asset management; banking; brokerage; federal government; financial services; investment banking industry

September 2007
Case

Tetra Pak Argentina

By: Tarun Khanna, Krishna G. Palepu and Gustavo A. Herrero

Deals with the hands-on management of a difficult situation facing the subsidiary of a multinational corporation (Tetra Pak) in a developing country (Argentina). The situation arises from a major economic, social, and institutional breakdown that jeopardizes the... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Financial Crisis; Currency Exchange Rate; Sovereign Finance; Multinational Firms and Management; Crisis Management; Business and Government Relations; Argentina