Publications

SSRN

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24 Feb 2011
Research & Ideas

What’s Government’s Role in Regulating Home Purchase Financing?

has evolved dramatically over the last 30 years with a greater reliance on markets rather than banks, and our regulatory regime has not kept up with those changes. That is one of the reasons we had a subprime crisis. The second is that... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Financial Services

October 2023 (Revised May 2024)
Case

JSW Steel: Balancing Growth While Decarbonizing

By: Vikram S Gandhi and Radhika Kak

Sajjan Jindal, Chairman & Managing Director of JSW Steel, India's largest steel producer by market capitalization, was facing a dilemma. Steel demand in India was expected to grow exponentially over the next decade. However, given its traditional reliance on carbon,... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Environmental Sustainability; Investment; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Growth and Development; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Pollutants; Pollution; Production; Steel Industry; India

June 2016
Supplement

FANUC Corporation: Reassessing the Firm's Governance and Financial Policies Spreadsheet Supplement

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Akiko Kanno

In February 2015, Daniel Loeb (a US-based activist investor) announced his firm had a large investment in FANUC Corporation, a leading producer of industrial robots and software for machine tools. Loeb was demanding that the Japanese firm change its financial and... View Details

Keywords: Financial Management; Valuation; Investment Funds; Policy; Corporate Governance; Macroeconomics; Investment Activism; Change Management; Financial Strategy; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Japan; United States

12 Mar 2019
Blog Post

What I Learned in the Africa Rising Short Intensive Program

forced to scale back their plans or exit markets entirely. Because of a combination of cultural context and a lack of robust systems to ascertain the trustworthiness of unknown market participants,... View Details

16 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

Angels Face the Innovator’s Dilemma

The venture capital industry is ripe for disruption: just like other leading mainstream companies have been for years, according to HBS professor Clayton M. Christensen. As a keynote speaker at the conference and author of the managerial... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Financial Services

November – December 2011
Article

Explaining Influence Rents: The Case for an Institutions-Based View of Strategy

By: Gautam Ahuja and Sai Yayavaram

Research in strategy has identified and tried to explain four types of rents: monopolistic rents, efficiency rents, quasi rents, and Schumpeterian rents. Building on previous work on political and institutional strategies, we add a fifth type of rent: influence rents.... View Details

Keywords: Institutions; Influence Rents; Generic Strategies; Strategy; Organizations; Renting or Rental; Economics

Find at Harvard

Program

Managing Health Care Delivery

your organization's performance Identify and address gaps in your health care delivery organization Evaluate and create flexible strategies for ensuring more effective care Respond to new market forces, payment models, and consumer... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Health Care

14 Feb 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Laws vs. Contracts: Legal Origins, Shareholder Protections, and Ownership Concentration in Brazil, 1890-1950

Keywords: by Aldo Musacchio

April 2018 (Revised June 2020)
Case

Tesla's CEO Compensation Plan

By: Krishna G. Palepu and Sarah Mehta

Tesla’s board of directors proposed an unusual compensation plan for the company’s CEO Elon Musk. The plan payouts were entirely contingent on achieving very ambitious market value, sales, and EBIT targets over the next ten years. If all the targets were achieved,... View Details

Keywords: CEO Compensation; Compensation Committee; Corporate Governance; Executive Compensation; Governing and Advisory Boards; Business and Shareholder Relations; Auto Industry; United States

November 2007
Background Note

Event Arbitrage

By: Joshua D. Coval and Erik Stafford

The event arbitrage module includes two simulation sessions. The first simulation focuses on analyzing and evaluating individual merger transactions, while the second simulation emphasizes managing a portfolio of individual positions and the limitations of arbitrage... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Capital Markets; Financial Management; Investment Portfolio; Risk Management

February 1999 (Revised May 1999)
Case

Onsale, Inc.

By: Youngme E. Moon

Onsale has been a pioneer in electronic commerce, offering excess and refurbished goods using an online auction format. The company is now planning to become a player in the highly competitive world of first-run computer merchandise as well. However, unlike other... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Transformation; Customers; Brands and Branding; Auctions; Network Effects; Strategic Planning; Competitive Strategy; Internet and the Web; Retail Industry

August 2024 (Revised November 2024)
Case

Mercado Bitcoin: M&A, IPO, or Series B?

By: Raymond Kluender, Emanuele Colonnelli, Sabrina T. Howell and Karina Souza

In April 2021, Brazilian cryptocurrency platform Mercado Bitcoin had to decide how to scale: go public, M&A with a bank, or take a VC big check. In a highly volatile market, Roberto Dagnoni, chairman of the board, viewed the unprecedent crypto momentum as a window of... View Details

2021
Working Paper

International Evidence on the Effects of a Local Presence by U.S. Credit Rating Agencies

By: Liran Eliner, Michael Machokoto and Anywhere Sikochi

Major U.S. credit rating agencies are criticized for failing to understand developments in other economies and thereby impeding capital access by assigning lower ratings. Consistent with this, we find that Moody's and S&P credit ratings are more favorable after the... View Details

Keywords: Credit Rating Agencies; Credit Ratings; Rating Adjustments; Rating Disagreement; Geographic Proximity; Soft Information; Credit; Geographic Location; Local Range

SSRN

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October 2012 (Revised August 2014)
Case

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board: October 2012

By: Josh Lerner, Matthew Rhodes-Kropf and Nathaniel Burbank

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) is one of the largest and fastest-growing pools of investment capital in the world and follows an unusually active program of investment management. In October of 2012, Mark Wiseman was just 12 weeks into his role as... View Details

Keywords: Canada; CPPIB; Pensions; Private Equity; Financial Services Industry; Canada

The report commends the broad-based governmental actions initially taken to support the economy, citizens, and the corporate sector during the Covid pandemic. However, structural changes in our economies due to the pandemic, and growing corporate... View Details

May 2010 (Revised July 2010)
Case

Bank of America Acquires Merrill Lynch (A)

By: Robert C. Pozen and Charles E. Beresford

On December 22, 2008, Bank of America (BofA) chairman and CEO Ken Lewis convened a special board of directors meeting to review his company's pending acquisition of investment bank Merrill Lynch. Negotiations for the acquisition had begun a few months earlier, during... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Decision Choices and Conditions; Financial Crisis; Corporate Governance; Government Legislation; Crisis Management; Business and Government Relations; Banking Industry