Publications

2007
Text Book

Business Analysis and Valuation: Using Financial Statements

By: Paul M. Healy and Krishna G. Palepu

Financial statements are the basis for a wide range of business analysis. Managers, securities analysts, bankers, and consultants all use them to make business decisions. There is strong demand among business students for course materials that provide a framework for... View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Framework; Decision Choices and Conditions; Financial Statements

June 2018
Teaching Note

ALAC International

By: Richard S. Ruback, Royce Yudkoff and Ahron Rosenfeld

ALAC International (ALAC) was awarded the U.S. distributorship of di-isononyl phthalate (DINP) which provided ALAC an opportunity to increase its sales and profits. But the opportunity required a significant additional investment in working capital. The DINP, shipped... View Details

Keywords: Working Capital; Financing and Loans; Growth Management

March 1995
Case

Donald Salter Communications, Inc.

By: Stuart C. Gilson and Jeremy Cott

A new CEO is hired to manage the turnaround of a family-owned newspaper publisher. In a departure from previous management, he implements a new compensation scheme that explicitly ties executive pay to market-value-based measures of firm performance. Because the... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Transformation; Asset Management; Wages; Balanced Scorecard; Family Ownership; Motivation and Incentives; Valuation; Journalism and News Industry

17 Jan 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Deregulation, Misallocation, and Size: Evidence from India

Keywords: by Laura Alfaro & Anusha Chari

Article

(Mis)perceptions of Inequality

By: Oliver P. Hauser and Michael I. Norton

Inequality is arguably the defining societal issue of the 21st century. The debate over “who gets what’ underlies policy debates ranging from taxation to health care to wages and permeates society at all levels, attracting increasing interest from policymakers,... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Wealth and Poverty; Perception; Society; Policy

11 Dec 2014
News

No silver lining in partisan gridlock

2015
Working Paper

Executives' Financial Preferences and Shareholder Tax Outcomes

By: Gerardo Pérez Cavazos and Andreya M. Perez-Silva

We demonstrate that executives’ personal financial preferences impact both layers of shareholder taxes, corporate taxes and corporate payouts. We reconstruct executives’ insider equity portfolios to quantify their personal incentives and analyze stock sales that reveal... View Details

Keywords: Executives; Capital Gain; Dividends; Effective Tax Rate; Tax Avoidance; Taxation; Management Teams; Business and Shareholder Relations

SSRN

10 Dec 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Vulnerable Banks

Keywords: by Robin Greenwood, Augustin Landier & David Thesmar; Banking; Financial Services

Spring 2016
Article

Performance Responses to Competition Across Skill-Levels in Rank Order Tournaments: Field Evidence and Implications for Tournament Design

By: Kevin J. Boudreau, Karim R. Lakhani and Michael E. Menietti

Tournaments are widely used in the economy to organize production and innovation. We study individual contestant-level data from 2,796 contestants in 774 software algorithm design contests with random assignment. Precisely conforming to theory predictions, the... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Innovation Strategy

February 2010
Article

The Optimal Taxation of Height: A Case Study of Utilitarian Income Redistribution

By: N. Gregory Mankiw and Matthew C. Weinzierl

Should the income tax include a credit for short taxpayers and a surcharge for tall ones? The standard Utilitarian framework for tax analysis answers this question in the affirmative. Moreover, a plausible parameterization using data on height and wages implies a... View Details

Keywords: Taxation; Wages; Personal Characteristics

February 2004
Case

Bradman and Tendulkar, LLC

By: Ananth Raman and Vishal Gaur

An investment firm is trying to project inventory turns for Radio Shack, a chain of consumer electronics stores. The investment firm has access to public financial data but not to internal operational metrics. It needs to project inventory turns because inventory... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Cash Flow; Demand and Consumers; Distribution Channels; Mathematical Methods; Valuation

29 Aug 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Patent Trolls

Keywords: by Lauren Cohen, Umit G. Gurun & Scott Duke Kominers

12 Aug 2014
First Look

First Look: August 12

http://hbr.org/product/aspada-in-search-of-the-right-structure-for-impact-investing/an/314099-PDF-ENG Harvard Business School Case 214-085 Financial Policy at Apple, 2013 (A) By the end of 2013, Apple had $137 billion in View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

February 2023 (Revised February 2024)
Case

Chari: Exploring Fintech in Morocco

By: Karen G. Mills and Ahmed Dahawy

This case examines the challenges and opportunities of doing business in Morocco. It highlights Morocco’s unique economy where cash remains a dominant player in the market despite global advancements in digitalization. The case also explores the various cultural and... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Cultural Entrepreneurship; Social Entrepreneurship; Business History; Business and Government Relations; Technological Innovation; Distribution Industry; Distribution Industry; Morocco

Herman B. ("Dutch") Leonard is Eliot I. Snider and Family Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and the George F. Baker, Jr. Professor of Public Sector Management at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In... View Details

Keywords: education industry; federal government; health care; nonprofit industry; state government

April 2010 (Revised March 2011)
Case

The Auction for Travelport (A)

By: Andrei Hagiu and Misha Sanwal

A senior Blackstone director is deciding how aggressively to bid for Travelport, a travel distribution business containing several key services and platforms. Travelport's most important properties were Galileo, one of the top 3 global distribution systems (GDSs),... View Details

Keywords: Value Creation; Product Positioning; Cost vs Benefits; Private Equity; Leveraged Buyouts; Competitive Advantage; Auctions; Industry Structures; Travel Industry

December 2018
Article

Reserve Design: Unintended Consequences and the Demise of Boston's Walk Zones

By: Umut Dur, Scott Duke Kominers, Parag A. Pathak and Tayfun Sönmez

Admissions policies often use reserves to grant certain applicants higher priority for some (but not all) available seats. Boston’s school choice system, for example, reserved half of each school’s seats for local neighborhood applicants while leaving the other half... View Details

Keywords: Neighborhoods; Equal Access; School Choice; Affirmative Action; Desegregation; Marketplace Matching; Fairness; Local Range; Education; Policy

March 2011
Article

What Do Dividends Tell Us About Earnings Quality

By: Douglas Skinner and Eugene F. Soltes

Over the past 30 years, there have been significant changes in the distribution of earnings (cross-sectional variation has increased, with increasing left skewness) as well as in corporate payout policy, with many fewer firms paying dividends and the emergence of stock... View Details

Keywords: Distribution; Business Earnings; Change; Policy; Stocks; Investment Return; Performance Consistency; Quality