Publications

Educators

December 2010
Article

The Case for Professional Boards

By: Robert C. Pozen

When the world's largest financial institutions had to be rescued from insolvency in 2008, many experts laid the blame at the feet of corporate boards. But insufficient board oversight is a problem that had supposedly been solved in 2002. As the United States... View Details

Keywords: Financial Institutions; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Governing and Advisory Boards; Failure; Accounting Audits; Quality; Behavior; Legal Liability; Experience and Expertise; Corporate Governance; Governance Controls; Performance Effectiveness; United States

November 2017 (Revised April 2019)
Case

Summa Equity: Building Purpose-Driven Organizations

By: George Serafeim

In 2015, Reynir Indahl left top Nordic private equity firm Altor Equity Partners to found Summa Equity (Summa). After long contemplation following the financial crisis, Indahl was convinced the financial system was producing negative externalities and that the current... View Details

Educators

2008
Working Paper

Liquidity Needs in Economies with Interconnected Financial Obligations

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

A model is developed where firms in a financial system have to settle their debts to each other by using a liquid asset. The question that is studied is how many firms must obtain how much of this asset from outside the financial system to make sure that all debts... View Details

Keywords: Economy; Borrowing and Debt; Financial Liquidity; Networks

Read Now

August 2015
Article

A Comparative-Advantage Approach to Government Debt Maturity

By: Robin Greenwood, Samuel G. Hanson and Jeremy C. Stein

We study optimal government debt maturity in a model where investors derive monetary services from holding riskless short-term securities. In a setting where the government is the only issuer of such riskless paper, it trades off the monetary premium associated with... View Details

Keywords: Sovereign Finance; Debt Securities

Read Now

Rakesh Khurana is the Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development at the Harvard Business School. He is also Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, co-Master of Cabot House at Harvard College, and the Danoff Dean of Harvard College.

Professor... View Details

Keywords: executive search

February 1998 (Revised October 2002)
Case

Uganda and the Washington Consensus

By: Huw Pill and Courtenay Sprague

Under the direction of President Museveni, much of the world has heaped praise on Uganda for transforming its economy from devastation to growth and managing the ethnic and racial strife that has divided the country in the past. Following a decade of reforms, Uganda is... View Details

Keywords: Macroeconomics; Economy; Policy; Analysis; Development Economics; Borrowing and Debt; Management; Developing Countries and Economies; Uganda

Educators

31 Oct 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Do Measures of Financial Constraints Measure Financial Constraints?

Keywords: by Joan Farre-Mensa & Alexander Ljungqvist

November 2000
Case

Geocast Network Systems, Inc.

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Christina L. Darwall and Elizabeth Kind

Geocast, a venture-backed start-up, had developed innovative technology for "datacasting" broadband information and entertainment content to an external hard drive, where it was cached for later retrieval by a Web-enabled PC. By using terrestrial TV, direct broadcast... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Customer Value and Value Chain; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Information Management; Technological Innovation; Marketing Channels; Corporate Strategy; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Web Services Industry

2012
Article

Mutual Fund Trading Pressure: Firm-Level Stock Price Impact and Timing of SEOs

By: Mozaffar N. Khan, Leonid Kogan and George Serafeim

In tests of the equity market timing theory of external finance, the prior literature has used overvaluation identifiers such as high market-to-book and high prior returns that are likely correlated with other determinants of SEOs. We use price pressure resulting from... View Details

Keywords: Equity; Market Transactions; Valuation; Capital Structure; Market Timing; Mathematical Methods; Acquisition

Forthcoming
Article

Public Disclosure of Private Meetings: Does Observing Peers’ Information Acquisition Affect Analysts’ Attention Allocation?

By: Yi Ru, Ronghuo Zheng and Yuan Zou

We investigate the impact of observing peers’ information acquisition on financial analysts’ allocation of attention. Using the timely disclosure mandate by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange as a setting, we find that, shortly after analysts observe that a firm has been... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Disclosure; Information; Financial Institutions; Accounting; Financial Markets; Financial Services Industry; China

10 Mar 2008
Research & Ideas

Encouraging Entrepreneurs: Lessons for Government Policy

paper, "Cost of External Finance and Selection into Entrepreneurship," Nanda looks at how entrepreneurial activity is affected across various groups of individuals when a tax reform increases the... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

Article

The Effect of Institutional Factors on the Value of Corporate Diversification

By: Venkat Kuppuswamy, George Serafeim and Belen Villalonga

Using a large sample of diversified firms from 38 countries we investigate the influence of several national-level institutional factors or 'institutional voids' on the value of corporate diversification. Specifically, we explore whether the presence of frictions in a... View Details

Keywords: Diversification Discount; Institutions; Labor Market; Competition; Human Capital; Diversification; Value; Capital Markets

SSRN

2017
Chapter

Multinational Activity in Emerging Markets: How and When Does Foreign Direct Investment Promote Growth?

By: Laura Alfaro

Among the prominent economic trends in recent decades is the exponential increase in flows of goods and capital driven by technological progress and a falling number of restrictions. A key driver of this phenomenon has been the cross-border production, foreign... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Activity; Growth; Spillovers; Complementarities; Foreign Direct Investment; Emerging Markets; Growth and Development; Multinational Firms and Management

Web

School Leadership | About

School Leadership Faculty Leadership Srikant M. Datar George F. Baker Professor of Administration, Dean of the Faculty C. Fritz Foley André R. Jakurski Professor of Business Administration, Senior Associate Dean for External Relations... View Details

02 May 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Profits and Economic Development

Keywords: by Dan Schwab & Eric Werker

2010
Chapter

Measuring and Managing Macrofinancial Risk and Financial Stability: A New Framework

By: Dale F. Gray, Robert C. Merton and Zvi Bodie

This paper proposes a new approach to improve the way central banks can analyze and manage the financial risks of a national economy. It is based on the modern theory and practice of contingent claims analysis (CCA), which is successfully used today at the level of... View Details

Keywords: Financial Statements; Economy; Financial Condition; Central Banking; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Management Practices and Processes; Risk Management; Measurement and Metrics; System Shocks

2012
Working Paper

Do Market Leaders Lead in Business Process Innovation? The Case(s) of E-Business Adoption

By: Kristina S. McElheran

This paper explores the relationship between market position and business process innovation. Prior research has focused on the alignment between new technologies and the internal capabilities of firms to pursue them. I extend the investigation to include external... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Technological Innovation; Leadership; Business Processes; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives; Technology Adoption; Manufacturing Industry; United States

SSRN

Read Now

2020
Chapter

Reserve Accumulation, Sovereign Debt, and Exchange Rate Policy

By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk

In the past decade, foreign participation in local-currency bond markets in emerging countries increased dramatically. Additionally, emerging countries are increasingly deviating from inflation targeting regimes, managing their exchange rate and engaging in... View Details

Keywords: Reserves; Exchange Rate; Sovereign Finance; Currency Exchange Rate; Policy