Publications

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Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Doctoral Students - Faculty & Research

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Overview Faculty Curriculum Seminars & Conferences Awards & Honors Doctoral Students Jennifer Abel Yajun Cao Fiona Chen Cameron Cohen Terry Culpepper Cameron Deal Jo Ellery Aristotle Epanomeritakis... View Details

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Podcast - Business & Environment

Week in May 2023. Moderated by HBS Prof. George Serafeim, the panel includes Carter Roberts, President & CEO of World Wildlife Fund, HBS professor Deb Spar, Bonita Stewart, Board Partner at Gradient Ventures, and View Details

September 2010 (Revised March 2012)
Case

AQR's Momentum Funds (A)

By: Daniel Baird Bergstresser, Lauren H. Cohen, Randolph B. Cohen and Christopher J. Malloy

AQR is a hedge fund based in Greenwich, Connecticut, that is considering offering a wholly new line of product to retail investors, namely the ability to invest in the price phenomenon known as momentum. There is a large body of empirical evidence supporting momentum... View Details

Keywords: Financial Strategy; Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Product Development; Financial Services Industry; Greenwich

June 2018 (Revised January 2019)
Case

Membership Rewards® from American Express

By: Shelle Santana, Frances X. Frei and Lauren G. Pickle

Credit and charge card issuer American Express (Amex) had developed a strong reputation among consumers due in part to its Membership Rewards (MR) loyalty program, first established in 1991. Through MR, all Amex cardholders could accumulate and redeem “points” based on... View Details

Keywords: Financial Services; Customer Loyalty; Credit Cards; Marketing Strategy; Product Marketing; Brands and Branding; Customer Value and Value Chain; Value Creation; Financial Services Industry; Banking Industry; North America; United States

May 2022
Case

Rawbank's Illico Cash: Can 'Fast Money' Overcome Cash Dependency in the DRC?

By: Lauren Cohen and Grace Headinger

Thomas de Dreux-Brézé, the Head of Strategy and Project Management at Rawbank Congo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was perplexed as he reviewed annual adoption rates for the bank’s launch of Illico Cash 2.0. As the bank’s mobile money app, Illico Cash... View Details

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Great American Business Leaders of the 20th Century - Leadership

Electric Company, 1892–1913 Ben Cohen Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, 1978–1994 Wilton D. Cole Crowell-Collier Publishing Company, 1956–1963 Gilbert Colgate Colgate-Palmolive Company, 1920–1928 Samuel B. Colgate Colgate-Palmolive Company,... View Details

2020
Working Paper

Best Ideas

By: Miguel Antón, Randolph B. Cohen and Christopher Polk

We ﬁnd that the stocks in which active mutual fund or hedge fund managers display the most conviction towards ex-ante, their “Best ideas,” outperform the market, as well as the other stocks in those managers’ portfolios, by approximately 2.8 to 4.5 percent per year,... View Details

Keywords: Mutual Funds; Managerial Skill; Market Efficiency; Investment Funds; Management; Investment Portfolio; Decision Making

Web

Video Clips - Creating Emerging Markets

Video Clips This library of video clips enables educators and others to search for relevant interview clips by subject, industry, country, or any combination of all three. Users can also search by name to... View Details

2018
Working Paper

Patent Trolls: Evidence from Targeted Firms

By: Lauren Cohen, Umit G. Gurun and Scott Duke Kominers

We provide the first large-sample evidence on the behavior and impact of non-practicing entities (NPEs) in the intellectual property space. We find that on average, NPEs appear to behave as opportunistic “patent trolls.” NPEs sue cash-rich firms—and target cash in... View Details

Keywords: Patent Trolls; NPEs; PAEs; Innovation; Patents; Ethics; Lawsuits and Litigation; Innovation and Invention; Corporate Finance

September 2023
Case

Diamond Standard

By: Lauren H. Cohen, Zhaoheng Gong and Grace Headinger

Cormac Kinney, Founder and CEO of Diamond Standard, was on a mission to transform the U.S. diamond market through unlocking the precious gems as market-traded assets. As a serial FinTech entrepreneur, he hoped to add an additional service to his vault: Carats. The... View Details

June 2018
Background Note

Introduction to Life Settlements

By: Alexander Braun, Lauren H. Cohen, Christopher J. Malloy and Jiahua Xu

Life insurance is an asset owned by the majority of American adults (61%). Note that this 61% penetration rate is essentially at parity with home ownership (64%) and higher than that of 401(k) retirement account ownership (53%). Life settlements, or life insurance... View Details

Keywords: Insurance; Assets; Value; Markets; Investment Return

December 2016
Article

Industry Window Dressing

By: Huaizhi Chen, Lauren Cohen and Dong Lou

We explore a new mechanism by which investors take correlated shortcuts and present evidence that managers undertake actions—in the form of sales management—to take advantage of these shortcuts. Specifically, we exploit a regulatory provision wherein a firm’s primary... View Details

Keywords: Investor Shortcuts; Industry Classification; Opportunistic Managerial Behavior; Discontinuity; Management Practices and Processes; Investment; Sales

Find at Harvard

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Research - Global

teach students how to compile an income statement, a balance sheet, and a cash flow statement. It focuses on Blank Corporation, an innovative South Korean company that bridged content and commerce by selling products directly through...... View Details

October 2004 (Revised January 2006)
Tutorial

Introduction to Responsibility Accounting Systems

By: David F. Hawkins, V.G. Narayanan, Jacob Cohen and Michele Jurgens

Responsibility accounting systems generate financial and related nonfinancial information about the actual and planned activities of a company's responsibility centers--organizational units headed by managers responsible for a unit's performance. The principal... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Cost Accounting; Governance Controls; Financial Reporting; Performance Evaluation; Budgets and Budgeting; Planning

21 May 2019
News

Meet The Female Physicist Who Sifts Through Corporate Babble For Trades To Beat The Street

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Finance - Faculty & Research

25-057, May 2025. 'Net Zero in Action': Impact Investing at the McKnight Foundation By: Lauren Cohen , Christina R. Wing and Sophia Pan May 2025 | Case | Faculty Research Elizabeth McGeveran, Vice President... View Details

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Entrepreneurship - Faculty & Research

Impact Investing at the McKnight Foundation By: Lauren Cohen , Christina R. Wing and Sophia Pan May 2025 | Case | Faculty Research Elizabeth McGeveran, Vice President of Investments at the McKnight... View Details

2020
Working Paper

The ESG-Innovation Disconnect: Evidence from Green Patenting

By: Lauren Cohen, Umit G. Gurun and Quoc H. Nguyen

No firm or sector of the global economy is untouched by innovation. In equilibrium, innovators will flock to (and innovation will occur where) the returns to innovative capital are the highest. In this paper, we document a strong empirical pattern in green patent... View Details

Keywords: ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Investment; Decision Making; Policy; Energy; Green Technology; Technological Innovation; Patents