Publications

2022
Working Paper

High-Yield Debt Covenants and Their Real Effects

By: Falk Bräuning, Victoria Ivashina and Ali Ozdagli

High-yield debt including leveraged loans is characterized by incurrence financial covenants, or “cov-lite” provisions. A traditional loan agreement includes maintenance covenants, which require continuous compliance with the covenant threshold, and their violation... View Details

Keywords: Debt Covenants; Incurrence Covenants; Borrowing and Debt; Banks and Banking

Summer 2017
Article

Measuring Consumer Preferences for Video Content Provision via Cord-Cutting Behavior

By: Jeffrey Prince and Shane Greenstein

The television industry is undergoing a generational shift in structure; however, many demand-side determinants are still not well understood. We model how consumers choose video content provision among over-the-air (OTA), paid subscription to cable or satellite, and... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Service Delivery; Consumer Behavior; Television Entertainment; Service Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry

08 Jan 2008
First Look

First Look: January 8, 2008

corporations is prevalent but rarely creates any wedge (a pyramid). The primary sources of the wedge are dual-class stock, disproportional board representation, and voting agreements. Each control-enhancing mechanism has a different... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Fall 2024
Article

The Problem of Good Conduct among Financial Advisers

By: Mark Egan, Gregor Matvos and Amit Seru

Households in the United States often rely on financial advisers for investment and savings decisions, yet there is a widespread perception that many advisers are dishonest. This distrust is not unwarranted: approximately one in fifteen advisers has a history of... View Details

2023
Working Paper

Advances in Power-to-Gas Technologies: Cost and Conversion Efficiency

By: Gunther Glenk, Philip Holler and Stefan Reichelstein

Widespread adoption of hydrogen as an energy carrier is widely believed to require continued advances in Power-to-Gas (PtG) technologies. Here we provide a comprehensive assessment of the dynamics of system prices and conversion efficiency for three currently prevalent... View Details

Keywords: Clean Tech; Decarbonization; Carbon Emissions; Learning By Doing; Environment; Energy; Environmental Management; Sustainable Cities; Price; Energy Industry; Utilities Industry; Industrial Products Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Transportation Industry; Europe; North America; South America; Africa; Asia

SSRN

2006
Working Paper

Male Circumcision and AIDS: The Macroeconomic Impact of a Health Crisis

By: Amrita Ahuja, Brian Wendell and Eric D. Werker

Theories abound on the potential macroeconomic impact of AIDS in Africa, yet there have been surprisingly few empirical studies to test the mixed theoretical predictions. In this paper, we examine the impact of the AIDS epidemic on African nations through 2005 using... View Details

Keywords: Macroeconomics; Health Disorders; Welfare or Wellbeing; Poverty; Research; Education; Nutrition; Risk Management; Africa

08 Nov 2012
HBS Seminar

Avi Goldfarb, University of Toronto

Price Bargaining and Competition in Online Platforms: An Empirical Analysis of the Daily Deal Market

The prevalence of online platforms opens new doors to traditional businesses for customer reach and revenue growth. This research investigates platform competition in a setting where prices are determined by negotiations between platforms and businesses. We compile a... View Details

2023
Working Paper

Accountability of Corporate Emissions Reduction Targets

By: Xiaoyan Jiang, Shawn Kim and Shirley Lu

Firms are increasingly announcing targets to reduce their carbon emissions, but it is unclear whether firms are held accountable for these targets. In this paper, we examine emissions targets that ended in 2020 to investigate the prevalence of missed targets, how firms... View Details

Keywords: Carbon Emissions; Corporate Disclosure; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Climate Change

SSRN

2018
Working Paper

Do We See the Same Hierarchy? Status Disagreement in Multicultural Teams and Its Impact on Team Performance

By: Catarina Fernandes and Sujin Jang

This paper develops and tests a theory of status disagreement in multicultural teams. We posit that, in multicultural teams, the diversity of members’ cultural backgrounds will lead to implicit disagreements about who has how much status in the team. More specifically,... View Details

Keywords: Status; Social Hierarchies; Multicultural Teams; Team Performance; Team Diversity; Status and Position; Groups and Teams; Diversity; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Performance

2016
Working Paper

Shareholder Activism on Sustainability Issues

By: Jody Grewal, George Serafeim and Aaron Yoon

Shareholder activism on sustainability issues has become increasingly prevalent over the years, with the number of proposals filed doubling from 1999 to 2013. We use recent innovations in accounting standard setting to classify 2,665 shareholder proposals that address... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Activism; Activist Investors; Activist Shareholder; Corporate Social Responsibility; Environment; Corporate Performance; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Performance; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Governance; Business and Shareholder Relations; Investment Activism

SSRN

2012
Working Paper

Pay Dispersion and Work Performance

By: Alessandro Bucciol and Marco Piovesan

The effect of intra-firm pay dispersion on work performance is controversial and the empirical evidence is mixed. High pay dispersion may act as an extra incentive for employees' effort or it may reduce motivation and team cohesiveness. These effects can also coexist... View Details

Keywords: Performance; Wages; Motivation and Incentives; Groups and Teams; Italy

October 2003
Article

Capture by Threat

By: Ernesto Dal Bo and Rafael Di Tella

We analyze a simple stochastic environment in which policy makers can be threatened by “nasty” interest groups. In the absence of these groups, the policy maker’s desire for reelection guarantees that good policies are implemented for every realization of the shock.... View Details

Keywords: Political Parties; Politicians; Nash Equilibrium; Political Elections

2023
Working Paper

How People Use Statistics

By: Pedro Bordalo, John J. Conlon, Nicola Gennaioli, Spencer Yongwook Kwon and Andrei Shleifer

We document two new facts about the distributions of answers in famous statistical problems: they are i) multi-modal and ii) unstable with respect to irrelevant changes in the problem. We offer a model in which, when solving a problem, people represent each hypothesis... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Microeconomics; Mathematical Methods; Behavioral Finance

Purchase

April 2012
Article

Finding the Right Mix: How the Composition of Self-managing Multicultural Teams' Cultural Value Orientation Influences Performance Over Time

By: Chi-Ying Cheng, Roy Y.J. Chua, Michael W. Morris and Leonard Lee

This research investigates a new type of team that is becoming prevalent in global work settings, namely, self-managing multicultural teams. We argue that challenges that arise from cultural diversity in teams are exacerbated when teams are leaderless, undermining... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Performance; Problems and Challenges; Groups and Teams; Risk and Uncertainty; Culture; Value

Research Summary

Dawn Matsumoto's research investigates managers' financial reporting decisions including the incentives driving these decisions and the impact of these decisions on capital market participants. She is interested in the role of financial intermediaries (such as... View Details

2019
Working Paper

Migrant Inventors and the Technological Advantage of Nations

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury

We investigate the relationship between the presence of migrant inventors and the dynamics of innovation in the migrants’ receiving countries. We find that countries are 25% to 50% more likely to gain advantage in patenting in certain technologies given a twofold... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Migration; Patent; Immigration; Innovation and Invention; Patents; Information Technology; Knowledge Dissemination