Publications

June 2013
Article

Are There Too Many Safe Securities? Securitization and the Incentives for Information Production

By: Samuel G. Hanson and Adi Sunderam

We present a model that helps explain several past collapses of securitization markets. Originators issue too many informationally insensitive securities in good times, blunting investor incentives to become informed. The resulting endogenous scarcity of informed... View Details

Keywords: Information; Debt Securities; Financial Crisis

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June 1996 (Revised January 1999)
Case

XcelleNet, Inc. (A)

By: Stephen P. Bradley, Richard L. Nolan and James Leonard

XcelleNet, a $35 million system software company based in Atlanta, was founded in 1986 to address the computing needs of a class of remote and mobile users and data that were rarely connected to a network. Though the clear first mover and leader in the remote... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Opportunities; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Technology Networks; Computer Industry; Atlanta

January 2002 (Revised September 2002)
Case

Corporate Renewal in America

By: Bruce R. Scott and Thomas S. Mondschean

Discusses various macroeconomic, regulatory, technological, and financial forces that led to increased corporate restructuring in the United States beginning in the mid-1980s. The U.S. financial system is often viewed as the most developed in the world and a model for... View Details

Keywords: Performance Evaluation; Corporate Governance; Macroeconomics; Economic Systems; Restructuring; Markets; Private Sector; Corporate Finance; Germany; Japan; United States

31 Mar 2011
Research & Ideas

From SpinPop to SpinBrush: Entrepreneurial Lessons from John Osher

didn't suffer while the Dr. John's team worked out the kinks. The company didn't have a huge war chest, but Osher had raised additional capital after the company's launch in order to pay for additional inventory once the product took off.... View Details

Keywords: by Dennis Fisher; Consumer Products

January 2023 (Revised January 2023)
Case

Belden and Digital Transformation: From Product Sales to Solutions Sales

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Amy Klopfenstein

This case concerns the industrial automation division at Belden, a hardware manufacturer. While Belden historically sold products such as cables, wires, and other networking devices, EVP of Industrial Automation Ashish Chand recognized that IT vendors were entering the... View Details

Keywords: Implementation; Sales Cycle; Digital Transformation; Sales; Product Positioning; Business Model; Market Entry and Exit; Customer Focus and Relationships; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Supply and Industry; Technology Industry; North America; United States

February 2005 (Revised July 2005)
Case

Aluminium Bahrain (Alba): The Pot Line 5 Expansion Project

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Aldo Sesia

In September 2002, Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) needed to decide how to finance its proposed $1.7 billion pot line. The company's financial adviser, Taylor De-Jongh (TDJ), had recommended Alba employ a multisourced financing strategy using as many as five sources of debt... View Details

Keywords: Project Finance; Emerging Markets; Financing and Loans; Investment; Capital; Financial Strategy; Manufacturing Industry; Bahrain

May 2018
Supplement

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe – Speech on Womenomics in Japan: Opening Address to the World Assembly of Women, Tokyo, August 28, 2015

By: Boris Groysberg

This video supplement is a lightly edited 2015 speech by Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe in which he describes Womenomics--policies and aspirations to promote greater economic participation by Japan's women, thereby promoting economic growth, greater work/life... View Details

Keywords: Gender Equality; Japan; Leadership; Government-business Relations; Shinzo Abe; Economic Growth; Aging Society; Womenomics; Abenomics; Labor Market Discrimination; Workplace Culture; Women And Leadership; Change Management; Leading Change; Gender; Business and Government Relations; Growth and Development; Employment; Working Conditions

2009
Case

Mercury Athletic Footwear, Inc.: Valuing the Opportunity: Brief Case No. 4050.

By: Timothy A. Luehrman and Joel L. Heilprin

In January 2007, West Coast Fashions, Inc., a large designer and marketer of branded apparel, announced a strategic reorganization that would result in the divestiture of their wholly owned footwear subsidiary, Mercury Athletic. John Liedtke, the head of business... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Restructuring; Valuation; Apparel and Accessories Industry

2010
Working Paper

Investment Taxation and Portfolio Performance

By: Daniel B. Bergstresser and Jeffrey Pontiff

Taxes have a first-order impact on portfolio returns. Most research mistakenly assumes that portfolios command similar tax burdens, or that tax burdens are proportional to dividend yields. Portfolio strategies differ in the pace of capital gains realization. We use the... View Details

Keywords: Financial Strategy; Investment Return; Investment Portfolio; Taxation; Performance Evaluation

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01 Oct 2015
Blog Post

Why We Recruit: Goldman Sachs

substantial and diversified client base that includes corporations, financial institutions, governments and high-net-worth individuals. We commit people, capital and ideas to help our clients, shareholders and the communities we serve to... View Details

07 Jul 2015
First Look

First Look: July 7, 2015

Successful Products for Emerging Markets By: Winter, Amos, and Vijay Govindarajan Abstract—Multinationals are starting to catch on to the logic of reverse innovation, in which products are designed first for consumers in low-income... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Dutch Leonard

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

Spring 2012
Article

The Need for Sector-Specific Materiality and Sustainability Reporting Standards

By: Robert G. Eccles, Michael P. Krzus, Jean Rogers and George Serafeim

Even though the supply of sustainability information has increased considerably in the last decade, companies are still failing to disclose material information in a comparable format. We believe this has two downsides. On the one hand, companies are not adequately... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Reporting; Standard Setting; Regulation; Environmental Sustainability; Accounting; Standards; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Corporate Disclosure; Competitive Advantage; Capital Markets; Accounting Industry; United States

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21 May 2007
Research & Ideas

Fixing the Marketing-CEO Disconnect

virtually overnight. Poor marketing is largely to blame. Third, and perhaps most important, the fundamental nature of marketing has shifted so rapidly that many companies have not kept pace, making them... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

October 2013 (Revised August 2016)
Case

NOWaccount

By: Ramana Nanda, William A. Sahlman and Lauren Barley

It was September 2013, and NOWaccount Network Corporation (NOW®) co-founders John Hayes and Lara Hodgson were putting the final touches on the presentation deck for their annual shareholders' meeting. Along with co-founder Stacey Abrams, the pair had designed NOW's... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Finance; Entrepreneurship

Meg Rithmire is the James E. Robison Professor in the Business, Government, and International Economy Unit. Professor Rithmire holds a PhD in Government from Harvard University, and her primary expertise is in the comparative political economy of development with a... View Details

Keywords: real estate

2012
Other Unpublished Work

Selection, Reallocation, and Knowledge Spillover: Identifying the Sources of Productivity Gains from Multinational Activity

By: Laura Alfaro and Maggie X. Chen

The impact of multinational activity on host-country productivity has been a major topic of economic research. A positive impact can be attributed to knowledge spillovers from foreign multinational to domestic firms or a less stressed, alternative explanation—firm... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management; Performance Productivity; Supply and Industry; Knowledge; Manufacturing Industry

April 1986 (Revised May 1996)
Background Note

Note on Option Pricing

Develops a simple option pricing model which provides an insight into the foundations of the Black and Scholes model. The Black and Scholes model is next introduced and its relationship to the simple option pricing model discussed. Last, the problem of pricing debt... View Details

Keywords: Price; Capital Markets

March 2022
Case

Metric

By: Christina Wallace, Rebecca Cink and Maria Lappas

Megan Murday, the founder of Metric, an environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) analytics startup, must decide which customer segment to target as a beachhead market. She received positive feedback from a Swiss venture capital (VC) firm, indicating their... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Marketing; Mission and Purpose; Customers