Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,005)
- Faculty Publications (349)
- 2012
- Working Paper
Earnings Management from the Bottom Up: An Analysis of Managerial Incentives Below the CEO
By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Julie Wulf
Performance-based pay is an important instrument to align the interests of managers with the interests of shareholders. However, recent evidence suggests that high-powered incentives also provide managers with incentives to manipulate the firm's reported earnings. The... View Details
- October 2011
- Case
Levendary Cafe: The China Challenge
By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Arar Han
Just weeks into her new job, Mia Foster, a first time CEO with no international management experience, is faced with a major challenge at Levendary Cafe, a $10 billion US-based fast food chain. Strategically, many of her corporate staff have become concerned that the... View Details
Keywords: Globalization; International Management; Foreign Subsidiaries; General Managers; Strategy; Management Style; Strategic Planning; Business Subsidiaries; Multinational Firms and Management; Adaptation; Entrepreneurship; Relationships; Standards; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; China; United States
- October 2011 (Revised July 2013)
- Case
Delta/Signal Corp.
By: V.G. Narayanan, Lisa Brem and Matthew Packard
This auto parts company has just ousted its longtime CEO and founder, and the new, professional CEO is badly in need of a coherent strategy, clear objectives and metrics, and initiatives that are aligned with the strategy and objectives. Will the balanced scorecard... View Details
- Article
Marketing Complex Financial Products in Emerging Markets: Evidence from Rainfall Insurance in India
By: Sarthak Gaurav, Shawn A. Cole and Jeremy Tobacman
Recent financial liberalization in emerging economies has led to the rapid introduction of new financial products. Lack of experience with financial products, low levels of education, and low financial literacy may slow adoption of these products. This article reports... View Details
- September – October 2011
- Article
The Rise and Consequences of Corporate Sustainability Reporting
By: Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim
For many decades the cornerstone of corporate reporting has been financial information that is presented in a company's annual, semi-annual, and quarterly reports. These comprehensive financial reports—required by law for public companies in most countries... View Details
- August 2011 (Revised July 2012)
- Case
Mike Mayo Takes on Citigroup (A)
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Amy Kaser
The case details the conflict between Mike Mayo, an influential banking analyst and Citigroup about what Mayo considers aggressive accounting policies. Mike Mayo questions Citigroup's lack of a valuation allowance against their Deferred Tax Assets despite Citi's recent... View Details
- July 2011 (Revised September 2011)
- Case
CEO Compensation at GE: A Decade with Jeff Immelt
By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem
When ISS, a large shareholder advisory group, recommended a "no" vote on Jeff Immelt's award of 2 million stock options in April 2011, GE's compensation committee had to decide whether to rescind or amend the award or ignore the ISS recommendation. Was Immelt's 2010... View Details
- 2011
- Working Paper
Non-Audit Services and Financial Reporting Quality: Evidence from 1978-1980
By: Kevin Koh, Shiva Rajgopal and Suraj Srinivasan
We provide evidence for the long-standing concern on auditor conflicts of interest from providing non-audit services (NAS) to audit clients by using rarely explored NAS fee data from 1978 to 1980. Using this earlier setting, we find cross-sectional evidence of improved... View Details
- June 2011 (Revised February 2013)
- Case
Mandatory Environmental, Social, and Governance Disclosure in the European Union
By: George Serafeim
In 2011, the European Commission was deciding on how to best modify the existing European Union policy on corporate disclosure of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information. Previous directives had recommended that European companies report ESG... View Details
- May 2011
- Article
Consequences and Institutional Determinants of Unregulated Corporate Financial Statements: Evidence from Embedded Value Reporting
By: George Serafeim
I analyze Embedded Value (EV) reporting by firms with life insurance operations to assess the impact of unregulated financial reporting on transparency and to examine the institutional characteristics that promote unregulated reporting. Under EV accounting the present... View Details
- March 2011
- Article
Accounting Scholarship That Advances Professional Knowledge and Practice
By: Robert S. Kaplan
Recent accounting scholarship has used statistical analysis on asset prices, financial reports and disclosures, laboratory experiments, and surveys of practice. The research has studied the interface among accounting information, capital markets, standard setters, and... View Details
- 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
- February 2011
- Article
Welfare Payments and Crime
By: C. Fritz Foley
Analysis of daily reported incidents of major crimes in twelve U.S. cities reveals an increase in crime over the course of monthly welfare payment cycles. This increase reflects an increase in crimes that are likely to have a direct financial motivation like burglary,... View Details
- January 2011
- Supplement
ISS A/S (D): Goldman's 2011 Business Standards Report
By: Clayton S. Rose
The (D) case describes aspects of the Jan 2011 report by the Goldman Sach's Business Standards Committee on how the firm might strengthen its practices with respect to clients and other stakeholders. View Details
- January 2011 (Revised August 2011)
- Supplement
Kanebo Ltd. (C)
By: David F. Hawkins, Suraj Srinivasan and Akiko Kanno
The exposure of the Kanebo Ltd. fraud raises questions of Japan's preparedness to adopt International Financial Reporting Standards. View Details
- January 2011 (Revised January 2012)
- Case
The Case of the Unidentified Healthcare Companies2010
By: Richard Bohmer, Ethan Bernstein, Margarita Krivitski and Srinidhi Reddy
This case presents financial statements and selected ratios for 14 unidentified healthcare organizations and asks that each set of financial information be matched with one of the following healthcare companies: a biotechnology firm, a community nursing company, a... View Details
- January 2011
- Case
Sidoti & Company: Launching a Micro-Cap Product
By: Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and Sarah Abbott
It is 2010 and Sidoti & Company, a New York-based brokerage firm specializing in small capitalization stocks, has just launched a new product- micro cap stock research. The firm has hired a group of five analysts who will produce written research reports on micro-cap... View Details
- 2011
- Article
'Deprival Value' vs. 'Fair Value' Measurement for Contract Liabilities: How to Resolve the 'Revenue Recognition' Conundrum
By: Joanne Horton, Richard H. Macve and George Serafeim
Revenue recognition and measurement principles can conflict with liability recognition and measurement principles. We explore here under different market conditions when the two measurement approaches coincide and when they conflict. We show that where entities expect... View Details
- December 2010 (Revised June 2018)
- Case
The Pecora Hearings
By: David Moss, Cole Bolton and Eugene Kintgen
In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, the Senate Banking Committee began a much-publicized investigation of the nation's financial sector. The hearings, which came to be known as the Pecora hearings after the Banking Committee's lead counsel Ferdinand Pecora,... View Details
- November 2010
- Teaching Note
Citigroup 2007: Financial Reporting and Regulatory Capital (TN)
By: Edward J. Riedl, Suraj Srinivasan and Sharon Katz
Teaching Note for 111041. View Details