Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,916)
- Faculty Publications (281)
- 2010
- Casebook
Global Capital and National Institutions: Crisis and Choice in the International Financial Architecture
By: Laura Alfaro
All managers face a business environment in which international and macroeconomic phenomena matter. International capital flows can significantly affect countries' development efforts and provide clear investment opportunities for businesses. During the 1990s and early... View Details
- Article
Capital Market-Driven Corporate Finance
By: Malcolm Baker
Much of empirical corporate finance focuses on sources of the demand for various forms of capital, not the supply. Recently, this has changed. Supply effects of equity and credit markets can arise from a combination of three ingredients: investor tastes, limited... View Details
- Article
Optimal Taxation in Theory and Practice
By: N. Gregory Mankiw, Matthew C. Weinzierl and Danny Yagan
We highlight and explain eight lessons from optimal tax theory and compare them to the last few decades of OECD tax policy. As recommended by theory, top marginal income tax rates have declined, marginal income tax schedules have flattened, redistribution has risen... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Systemic Risk and the Refinancing Ratchet Effect
By: Amir E. Khandani, Andrew W. Lo and Robert C. Merton
The confluence of three trends in the U.S. residential housing market-rising home prices, declining interest rates, and near-frictionless refinancing opportunities-led to vastly increased systemic risk in the financial system. Individually, each of these trends is... View Details
- August 2009
- Supplement
The TSMC Way: Meeting Customer Needs at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (CW)
By: Willy C. Shih
When L.C. Tu receives an emergency order, he is confronted with a range of production scheduling choices, each of which has unique costs and trade-offs. The case was designed to help students understand job-shop style production and the impact of disruptions and... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Varied Experience, Team Familiarity, and Learning: The Mediating Role of Psychological Safety
By: Bradley R. Staats, Francesca Gino and Gary P. Pisano
Prior work examining the relationship of varied experience (i.e., the concurrent completion of multiple tasks) and learning by groups finds inconsistent results. We hypothesize that team familiarity, i.e, individuals' prior shared work experience, may help explain this... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Banking Deregulations, Financing Constraints and Firm Entry Size
By: William R. Kerr and Ramana Nanda
We examine the effect of US branch banking deregulations on the entry size of new firms using micro-data from the US Census Bureau. We find that the average entry size for startups did not change following the deregulations. However, among firms that survived at least... View Details
- June 2009
- Journal Article
Taxes, Institutions and Foreign Diversification Opportunities
By: Mihir Desai and Dhammika Dharmapala
Investors can access foreign diversification opportunities through either foreign portfolio investment (FPI) or foreign direct investment (FDI). The worldwide tax regime employed by the U.S. potentially distorts this choice by penalizing FDI, relative to FPI, in... View Details
- April 2009 (Revised June 2010)
- Case
U.S. Subprime Mortgage Crisis: Policy Reactions (B)
By: Laura Alfaro and Renee Kim
In March 2009, the U.S. economy was in a severe recession not seen since the Great Depression after the subprime mortgage crisis had spiraled out of control. The situation had dramatically changed in one year since the Federal Reserve Board had helped to bailout... View Details
- March 2009 (Revised May 2013)
- Supplement
Kinyuseisaku: Monetary Policy in Japan (B)
By: Laura Alfaro and Akiko Kanno
Toshihiko Fukui, Governor of the Bank of Japan, faced a complex situation in the fall of 2007. An economic recovery had allowed the central bank to abandon its zero interest rate policy, which had been in place for years, and raise rates to 0.5%. The Bank of Japan was... View Details
- March 2009
- Article
Earnings Management and Corporate Tax Shelters, and Book-Tax Alignment
By: Mihir Desai and Dhammika Dharmapala
This paper reviews recent evidence analyzing the link between earnings management and corporate tax avoidance and considers the implications for how policymakers should evaluate the financial reporting environment facing firms. A real-world tax shelter is dissected to... View Details
- Article
How Well Do Social Ratings Actually Measure Corporate Social Responsibility?
By: Aaron K. Chatterji, David I. Levine and Michael W. Toffel
Ratings of corporations' environmental activities and capabilities influence billions of dollars of "socially responsible" investments as well as some consumers, activists, and potential employees. In one of the first studies to assess these ratings, we examine how... View Details
- February 2009
- Journal Article
Domestic Effects of the Foreign Activities of U.S. Multinationals
By: Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley and James R. Hines Jr.
Do firms investing abroad simultaneously reduce their domestic activity? This paper analyzes the relationship between the domestic and foreign operations of American manufacturing firms between 1982 and 2004 by instrumenting for changes in foreign operations with GDP... View Details
- February 2009
- Article
Optimal Reserve Management and Sovereign Debt
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
Most models currently used to determine optimal foreign reserve holdings take the level of international debt as given. However, given the sovereign's willingness-to-pay incentive problems, reserve accumulation may reduce sustainable debt levels. In addition, assuming... View Details
- January 2009 (Revised October 2011)
- Case
Barack Obama and the Bush Tax Cuts (A)
By: Matthew C. Weinzierl and Eric D. Werker
As his inauguration approached, President-elect Obama faced a financial sector meltdown, a costly bailout, and massive government deficits. With the economy in recession, interest rates near zero, and joblessness on the rise, Obama needed to decide whether, and how... View Details
- May 2009
- Article
Asymmetric Information Effects on Loan Spreads
The paper estimates the cost arising from information asymmetry between the lead bank and members of the lending syndicate. In a lending syndicate, the lead bank retains only a fraction of the loan but acts as the intermediary between the borrower and the syndicate... View Details
- Article
Debt Maturity: Is Long-Term Debt Optimal?
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
We model and calibrate the arguments in favor and against short-term and long-term debt. These arguments broadly include: maturity premium, sustainability, and service smoothing. We use a dynamic equilibrium model with tax distortions and government... View Details
- 2008
- Book
On Competition
By: M. E. Porter
Competition is one of society's most powerful forces for making things better in many fields of human endeavor. The study of competition and the creation of value, in their full richness, have preoccupied me for several decades. Competition is pervasive, whether it... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
The Supply Side of Innovation: H-1B Visa Reforms and U.S. Ethnic Invention
By: William R. Kerr and William F. Lincoln
This study evaluates the impact of high-skilled immigrants on US technology formation. Specifically, we use reduced-form specifications that exploit large changes in the H-1B visa program. Fluctuations in H-1B admissions levels significantly influence the rate of... View Details
- October 2008 (Revised June 2011)
- Case
JetBlue Airways: Managing Growth
By: Robert S. Huckman and Gary P. Pisano
Considers the situation facing David Barger, President and CEO of JetBlue Airways, in May 2007 as he addresses the airline's need to slow its growth rate in the response to increasing fuel costs and the effects of major operational crisis for the airline in February... View Details