Publications

SSRN

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April 2006 (Revised November 2006)
Case

Livedoor

By: Robin Greenwood and Michael Schor

The president of Fuji Television must decide how to respond to a competing bid for the shares of Nippon Broadcasting Systems (NBS). Livedoor, the other bidder, is a highly valued Internet company that has been accused of financial wizardry to keep its stock price high. View Details

Keywords: Stock Shares; Internet and the Web; Ethics; Television Entertainment; Behavioral Finance; Corporate Finance; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Japan

05 Mar 2019
Working Paper Summaries

The Impacts of Increasing Search Frictions on Online Shopping Behavior: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Keywords: by Donald Ngwe, Kris J. Ferreira, and Thales Teixeira; Retail; Apparel & Accessories; Consumer Products

December 2012 (Revised July 2015)
Supplement

Nalli Silk Sarees (B)

By: V.G. Narayanan, Namrata Arora and Vidhya Muthuram

Presents the company's perspective using an interview format. Ramnath K. Nalli, vice chairman of Nalli Silk Sarees Private Limited, and his daughter, Lavanya Nalli (HBS MBA 2011), the fifth generation entrepreneur to be involved in the family business, discuss customer... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Consumer Behavior; Entrepreneurship; Apparel and Accessories Industry

2025
Working Paper

Heterogeneous Beliefs and Stock Market Fluctuations

By: Odhrain McCarthy and Sebastian Hillenbrand

This paper examines the role of heterogeneous investor beliefs in explaining stock market puzzles. Using survey data, we show that individual investors and investment professionals, such as equity analysts and strategists, form distinct beliefs. These groups rely on... View Details

Keywords: Financial Markets; Valuation; Stocks; Asset Pricing; Investment; Behavioral Finance

SSRN

November 2017 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Brandless: Disrupting Consumer Packaged Goods

By: Jill Avery

Brandless, an online direct-to-consumer seller of upscale private-label consumer packaged goods, offered consumers a limited assortment of values-conscious products delivered directly to their homes with the simplicity of one fixed $3 price point that promised an... View Details

April 2021 (Revised July 2021)
Case

StockX: The Stock Market of Things (Abridged)

By: Chiara Farronato, John J. Horton, Annelena Lobb and Julia Kelley

Founded in 2015 by Dan Gilbert, Josh Luber, and Greg Schwartz, StockX was an online platform where users could buy and sell unworn luxury and limited-edition sneakers. Sneaker resale prices often fluctuated over time based on supply and demand, creating a robust... View Details

August 2013
Article

Customer-Driven Misconduct: How Competition Corrupts Business Practices

By: Victor Manuel Bennett, Lamar Pierce, Jason A. Snyder and Michael W. Toffel

Competition among firms yields many benefits but can also encourage firms to engage in corrupt or unethical activities. We argue that competition can lead organizations to provide services that customers demand but that violate government regulations, especially when... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Crime and Corruption; Management Practices and Processes; Ethics; Consumer Behavior; Customer Satisfaction; Auto Industry; Service Industry

02 Mar 2016
Working Paper Summaries

Extrapolation and Bubbles

Keywords: by Nicholas Barberis, Robin Greenwood, Lawrence Jin, and Andrei Shleifer

14 Jul 2006
Op-Ed

The Case for Consumer-Driven Medicaid

The Medicaid program provides a much needed health insurance safety net for 52 million of our nation's poor and medically needy, but its price tag threatens the financial stability of the states, growing 9.5 percent in 2004 alone—far in... View Details

Keywords: by Regina E. Herzlinger

2016
Book

Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice

By: Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon and David S. Duncan

The foremost authority on innovation and growth presents a path-breaking book every company needs to transform innovation from a game of chance to one in which they develop products and services that customers want to buy and are willing to purchase at a premium price.... View Details

Keywords: Disruptive Innovation; Consumer Behavior

Find at Harvard

2021
Working Paper

The Health Costs of Cost-Sharing

By: Amitabh Chandra, Evan Flack and Ziad Obermeyer

We use the design of Medicare’s prescription drug benefit program to demonstrate three facts about the health consequences of cost-sharing. First, we show that an as-if-random increase of 33.6% in out-of-pocket price (11.0 percentage points (p.p.) change in... View Details

Keywords: Cost-sharing; Impact; Health Care and Treatment; Insurance; Health; Consumer Behavior

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April 2019 (Revised October 2020)
Case

Kraft Heinz: The $8 Billion Brand Write-Down

By: Jill Avery

On Friday, February 22, 2019, following an unexpected and disappointing earnings report, The Kraft Heinz Company’s stock price fell 27%, wiping out $16 billion in market value. CEO Bernardo Hees had announced that the company had taken a $15.4 billion asset write-down,... View Details

2024
Working Paper

Finance Without Exotic Risk

By: Pedro Bordalo, Nicola Gennaioli, Rafael La Porta and Andrei Shleifer

We address the joint hypothesis problem in cross-sectional asset pricing by using measured analyst expectations of earnings growth. We construct a firm-level measure of Expectations Based Returns (EBRs) that uses analyst forecast errors and revisions and shuts down any... View Details

Keywords: Investment Return; Financial Markets; Behavioral Finance; Risk and Uncertainty