Publications

SSRN

August 2018 (Revised April 2019)
Case

Fair Value Accounting at Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (A)

By: Jonas Heese, Suraj Srinivasan, Francois Brochet and Christine Johnson

In May 2018, Berkshire Hathaway announced an unprecedented loss of more than $1 billion for the first quarter of 2018. Warren Buffett blamed this loss on the new accounting rules for equity securities which he criticized. In the case ‘Fair Value Accounting at Berkshire... View Details

Keywords: Equity Securities; FASB; Fair Value Accounting; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Financial Services Industry

April 2006
Article

Competitive Advantage and the Value Network Configuration: Making Decisions at a Swedish Life Insurance Company

By: Øystein D. Fjeldstad and Christian H.M. Ketels

When the Swedish Life Insurers Förenade Liv found themselves in difficulties in a rapidly changing market, their response was to call in the consultants. And one of the consultant's first suggestions was to use the Value Network, not the Value Chain, as a new... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage; Fluctuation; Networks; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Value; Quality; Decision Making; Market Transactions; Performance Effectiveness; Customers; Insurance Industry; Sweden

19 Jan 2011
Research & Ideas

Activist Board Members Increase Firm’s Market Value

Public company shareholders have long complained that corporate boards don't always act in the best interest of their investors. But does the addition of a shareholder-sponsored board member increase the market value of the firm? The... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

February 2012
Case

Henkel: Building a Winning Culture

By: Robert Simons and Natalie Kindred

This case illustrates a CEO-led organizational transformation driven by stretch goals, performance measurement, and accountability. When Kasper Rorsted became CEO of Henkel, a Germany-based producer of personal care, laundry, and adhesives products, in 2008, he was... View Details

Keywords: Performance Measurement; Performance Appraisals; Human Resource Management; Values; Organizational Transformations; Pay For Performance; Strategy Execution; Values and Beliefs; Work-Life Balance; Organizational Culture; Human Resources; Performance Evaluation; Compensation and Benefits

June 2015
Case

The Valuation and Financing of Lady M Confections

By: Mihir A. Desai and Elizabeth A. Meyer

This case explores the decision-making process that small, private businesses must undertake when considering an expansion and when selling equity to outside investors. In the process, students are asked to complete two exercises: a break-even analysis and a valuation... View Details

Keywords: Lady M; Bakery; Foodservice Industry; Breakeven Analysis; Restaurant Industry; Forecasting; Forecast; Financial Analysis; Borrowing and Debt; Corporate Finance; Equity; Financial Management; Financial Strategy; Finance; Food; Valuation; Food and Beverage Industry; New York (city, NY)

5 Nov 2005 - 8 Nov 2005
Conference Presentation

New Perspectives on the Business Value of IT

By: David James Brunner, Bradley R. Staats and Marco Iansiti

We sought to unravel the link between IT investment and firm performance by examining deployed IT functionality (ITF). First, ITF appears to be an important link in the IT spend to business value chain. Second, ITF does not seem to be a commodity and has... View Details

Keywords: Perspective; Value; Performance; Investment; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Information Technology; Information Technology Industry

2010
Working Paper

The Limits of Nonprofit Impact: A Contingency Framework for Measuring Social Performance

By: Alnoor Ebrahim and V. Kasturi Rangan

Leaders of organizations in the social sector are under growing pressure to demonstrate their impacts on pressing societal problems such as global poverty. We review the debates around performance and impact, drawing on three literatures: strategic philanthropy,... View Details

Keywords: Development Economics; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Leadership; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Performance Expectations; Nonprofit Organizations; Social Issues

June 2016
Article

Understanding Online Hotel Reviews Through Automated Text Analysis

By: Shawn Mankad, Hyunjeong "Spring" Han, Joel Goh and Srinagesh Gavirneni

Customer reviews submitted at Internet travel portals are an important yet underexplored new resource in obtaining feedback on customer experience for the hospitality industry. These data are often voluminous and unstructured, presenting analytical challenges for... View Details

Keywords: Hotel Reviews; Natural Language Processing; Information Technology; Service Operations; Accommodations Industry; Moscow

2017
Working Paper

Creating the Market for Organic Wine: Sulfites, Certification, and Green Values

By: Geoffrey Jones and Emily Grandjean

This working paper examines the history of organic wine, which provides a case study of failed category creation. The modern organic wine industry emerged during the 1970s in the United States and Western Europe, but it struggled to gain traction compared to other... View Details

Keywords: Product Launch; Failure; Problems and Challenges; Complexity; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

SSRN

12 Feb 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Do Bonuses Enhance Sales Productivity? A Dynamic Structural Analysis of Bonus-Based Compensation Plans

Keywords: by Doug J. Chung, Thomas Steenburgh & K. Sudhir

2015
Working Paper

The Business Model: Nature and Benefits

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and John Heilbron

This paper considers the nature of the business model and its strategic relevance to negotiations. We elaborate a substantive definition of the business model as decisions enforced by the authority of the firm; this definition enables the analysis of business models... View Details

Keywords: Business Models; Value Capture; Value-Based Business Strategy; Ambivalent Value; Business Model; Negotiation Deal

SSRN

November 2006 (Revised October 2007)
Background Note

A Brief Note on Deferred Taxes: An Analysis Perspective

Provides an overview of accounting for deferred taxes. The primary objective is to provide external users with a basic understanding of deferred taxes. A simple illustrative example is provided, which is followed by a discussion of several important issues likely to be... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Financial Statements; Taxation; Legal Liability; Valuation

2010
Book

The New Science of Retailing: How Analytics Are Transforming the Supply Chain and Improving Performance

By: Marshall Fisher and Ananth Raman

Retailers today are drowning in data but lacking in insight: They have huge volumes of information at their disposal. But they're unsure of how to sort through it and use it to make smart decisions. The result? They're struggling with profit-sapping supply chain... View Details

Keywords: Profit; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Logistics; Supply Chain Management; Mathematical Methods; Retail Industry

October 2015
Article

The Value of Bosses

By: Edward P. Lazear, Kathryn L. Shaw and Christopher Stanton

How and by how much do supervisors enhance worker productivity? Using a company-based data set on the productivity of technology-based services workers, supervisor effects are estimated and found to be large. Replacing a boss who is in the lower 10% of boss quality... View Details

Keywords: Supervisors; Management Skills; Employees; Performance Productivity

January 1994 (Revised July 2000)
Exercise

Walt Disney Company's Sleeping Beauty Bonds--Duration Analysis

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

Walt Disney Co. issues a 100-year bond. This case describes the terms of the bond and immediate capital market reaction. View Details

Keywords: Capital Markets; Bonds; Valuation; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

Mar 2020
Conference Presentation

A New Analysis of Differential Privacy's Generalization Guarantees

By: Christopher Jung, Katrina Ligett, Seth Neel, Aaron Roth, Saeed Sharifi-Malvajerdi and Moshe Shenfeld

We give a new proof of the "transfer theorem" underlying adaptive data analysis: that any mechanism for answering adaptively chosen statistical queries that is differentially private and sample-accurate is also accurate out-of-sample. Our new proof is elementary and... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning; Transfer Theorem; Mathematical Methods