Funds, Trusts, and Other Financial Vehicles - Publications - Faculty & Research

05 Jul 2006
Research & Ideas

Reinventing the Dowdy Savings Bond

In the family of investment products, a U.S. savings bond might be cast as boring old Uncle Ned, snoozing away in the corner after dinner. There's nothing wrong with that—but HBS professor Peter Tufano envisions a more meaningful role for savings bonds in the View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Financial Services; Financial Services

30 Jun 2008
Research & Ideas

Rethinking Retirement Planning

you to that goal." With that in mind, Merton and a team of financial engineers created SmartNest, an individually tailored pension program that requires just a few simple inputs from employees before... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Financial Services; Financial Services

08 Jul 2002
What Do You Think?

Have We Carried the Concept of Alignment Too Far?

Financial and Accounting Standards Board, new New York Stock Exchange rulings regarding board composition and other matters, View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

12 Aug 2002
Research & Ideas

‘Let the Buyer Beware’ Doesn’t Protect Investors

selling shares. But the banks weren't alone in this conflict of interest—it existed in the mutual funds as well. In the funds, brokerage—the sell side of the financial market, View Details

Keywords: by D. Quinn Mills

22 Jan 2008
Research & Ideas

New Challenges in Leading Professional Services

Professional service firms—law firms, financial services firms, money management firms, private equity firms, hedge funds, management consultants, advertising agencies—are the most challenging View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Consulting; Accounting; Legal Services

08 Sep 2003
Research & Ideas

A Bold Proposal for Investment Reform

availability of high quality information on corporate performance is critical to the effective functioning of the exchanges and maintaining their reputations for listing reliable securities. In this e-mail Q&A, Healy View Details

Keywords: by Ann Cullen; Financial Services

01 Mar 2018
What Do You Think?

Two Decades Later, is the 'New Economy' Finally Here?

discovered that those valuable information assets either lacked value or were, in some cases, nonexistent. Old Economy problems involving misunderstood and overvalued financial instruments appeared, driving... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

23 Aug 2019
Sharpening Your Skills

Has the Corporate Mission Just Been Disrupted?

as important as rewarding investors is using the power of business to build a better society. Roundtable members committed to building up local communities, investing more in employees, fostering diversity and inclusion, embracing... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Green Technology

19 Jan 2011
First Look

First Look: Jan. 18

behavior. We propose that envy and empathy lead employees to discriminate in illicitly helping customers based on customer wealth. We test for this hypothesis in the vehicle emissions testing market, where... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

13 Jun 2017
Research & Ideas

Why Global Investments Are Still a Good Bet

Photo by iStock Investors in global equity markets have traditionally hedged their bets, casting their investments far and wide across the world. That way, if the market in one country or region stagnated (think Japan in the 1990s or... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Financial Services

27 Dec 2010
Research & Ideas

HBS Faculty on 2010’s Biggest Business Developments

where I sit as an economist, it's still all about the economy and the long-term impact of the problems laid bare by the Great Recession. During the financial crisis, the world came to the apparently shocking... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

28 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

Shareholders Key to Corporate Reform

other out and to work in concert on issues on which they share common ground.—Cynthia A. Montgomery and Rhonda Kaufman Reinvigorate Shareholders. As Michael Jensen observed in... View Details

Keywords: by Cynthia A. Montgomery & Rhonda Kaufman

20 Aug 2001
Research & Ideas

Making an Ally of Uncle Sam

on at other levels. Understanding these interactions is critical to devising good influence strategies. 5. Linked games. Many influence games also have both value-net and public interest components. A... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Watkins, Mickey Edwards & Usha Thakrar

11 Oct 2017
Research & Ideas

The House Wants to Squelch Voices of ‘Small’ Shareholders. Research Shows Those Voices Matter.

$2,000 worth of holdings, shareholders who submitted contested proposals had median shareholdings of $39,000, the data showed. The mean amount, meanwhile, was $10.7 million in shares, owing to proposals from pension funds, hedge View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

22 Aug 2007
Research & Ideas

The Hedge Fund as Activist

counterintuitive to us that a portfolio manager with a short investment horizon would be willing to devote time and energy to a task delivering long-term value. After all, there are no guarantees that the effort will pay off, or that... View Details

Keywords: by Robin Greenwood; Financial Services

26 Apr 2011
Op-Ed

HBS Faculty Comment on Environmental Issues for Earth Day

the best of the automobile—private on-demand service to many destinations, no delays for others to get on or off, and great flexibility for later expansion. Add the key advantages of public transit—a... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Energy; Utilities

02 Mar 2010
First Look

First Look: March 2

Working PapersEquity-Debtholder Conflicts and Capital Structure Authors:Bo Becker and Per Strömberg Abstract We use an important legal event as a natural experiment to examine equity-debt conflicts in the... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

29 Apr 2015
Lessons from the Classroom

Use Personal Experience to Pick Winning Stocks

Research.) The premise is simple—there's value out there in those more than 5,000 publicly traded stocks and thousands of other investment instruments, if only you know where to look. "We didn't want... View Details