Publications

March 2017
Case

Swagbucks

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Matthew G. Preble

In early 2016, Chuck Davis, chairman and CEO of Prodege LLC, parent company of the brand promotion business Swagbucks, and Josef Gorowitz, Prodege’s founder and president, must decide whether to acquire MyPoints, a competitor to Swagbucks, after the company’s... View Details

2013
Working Paper

Is a VC Partnership Greater Than the Sum of Its Partners?

By: Michael Ewens and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

This paper investigates whether individual venture capitalists have repeatable investment skill and to what extent their skill is impacted by the VC firm where they work. We examine a unique dataset that tracks the performance of individual venture capitalists'... View Details

Keywords: Investing; Persistence; Performance Persistence; Theory Of The Firm; Venture Capital; Organizations; Human Capital; Performance Evaluation

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22 May 2012
First Look

First Look: May 22

Publisher's Link: http://hbr.org/product/sleeping-with-your-smartphone-how-to-break-the-24-/an/10816-HBK-ENG Assessing Country Competitiveness: The Case of Spain Authors:Mercedes Delgado and Christian H.M. Ketels Publication:In Innovation, Global Change and Territorial... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

15 Oct 2008
First Look

First Look: October 15, 2008

cross-sectional and pooled data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau for quinquenial censuses conducted between 1982 and 2002 support the key predictions of the model. We find that advertising agency establishments are more likely to... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

29 May 2012
First Look

First Look: May 29

will adopt the change. By contrast, strong ties to potentially influential organization members who disapprove of a change outright (resistors) are an effective means of affective cooptation only when a change diverges little from... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

December 2004
Article

Market Valuation and Merger Waves

By: Matthew Rhodes-Kropf and S. Viswanathan

Does valuation affect mergers? Data suggest that periods of stock merger activity are correlated with high market valuations. The naïve explanation that overvalued bidders wish to use stock is incomplete because targets should not be eager to accept stock. However, we... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Valuation; Market Transactions; Value; Cash; Stocks; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Bids and Bidding; Market Design; Stock Shares; Accounting Audits; Performance Evaluation

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June 2020
Case

MOD Pizza: A Winning Recipe? (Abridged)

By: Boris Groysberg, John D. Vaughan and Matthew Preble

This is an abridged version of “MOD Pizza: A Winning Recipe?” HBS Case No. 416-004. Scott and Ally Svenson, the founders of MOD Pizza, had to make a number of decisions in planning how to scale their small company. They wanted to grow MOD from 45 stores as of May 2015... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Employees; Employee Relationship Management; Selection and Staffing; Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing; Service Delivery; Organizational Culture; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Service Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

November 2017
Case

The 'Wonder Drug' That Killed Babies

By: Joshua Lev Krieger, Tom Nicholas and Matthew Preble

In the early 1960s, a popular drug taken by patients worldwide for a range of maladies was found to cause severe birth defects and other health problems in babies born to mothers who had taken it during a certain stage of fetal development. As many as 10,000 children... View Details

Keywords: Regulation; Business and Government Relations; Business and Community Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Product Marketing; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business History; Health; Government Legislation; Corporate Accountability; Ethics; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Pharmaceutical Industry; Public Administration Industry; United States; United Kingdom; Australia; Germany; Europe

17 Nov 2009
First Look

First Look: Nov. 17

Working PapersUser, and Open Collaborative Innovation: Ascendent Economic Models Authors:Carliss Y. Baldwin and Eric von Hippel Abstract In this paper we assess the economic viability of innovation by producers relative to two... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

03 Aug 2010
First Look

First Look: August 3

substantial information about GMO products, they positively affect approval rates of GMOs by threatening the reputation of the regulatory agency. Our study further shows that firm and product uncertainty increases the impact of the social... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

07 Jul 2015
First Look

First Look: July 7, 2015

Publications June 2015 Science Financing Experiments By: Nanda, Ramana, and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf Abstract—No abstract available. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=49313 July-August 2015 Harvard Business... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

10 Jan 2012
First Look

First Look: January 10

within markets: When sentiment is high, future returns are low on relatively difficult to arbitrage and difficult to value stocks. Private capital flows appear to be one mechanism by which sentiment spreads across markets and forms global... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2015 (Revised March 2023)
Case

Immigration Policy in Germany (A)

By: Matthew Weinzierl, Katrina Flanagan and Alastair Su

Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel faced economic and moral pressure to encourage greater immigration from struggling European, and especially Eurozone, countries after the economic downturn that began in 2008. In fact, it was possible that both the Euro currency union... View Details

Keywords: Citizenship; Optimal Currency Unions; Globalized Economies and Regions; Immigration; Policy; Germany; European Union

2021
Article

Venture Capital Booms and Startup Financing

By: William Janeway, Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

We review the growing literature on the relationship between venture capital booms and startup financing, focusing on three broad areas: First, we discuss the drivers of large inflows into the venture capital asset class, particularly in recent years—which are related... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Business Startups; Innovation and Invention; Policy

01 Feb 2011
First Look

First Look: Feb. 1

When information is asymmetric (the quality of a potential partner is known only to himself), it may seem that partner choice is not possible without signaling. Many mutualisms, however, exist without signaling, and the mechanisms by... View Details

January 2019 (Revised July 2019)
Case

New Balance: Managing Orders and Working Conditions

By: Michael W. Toffel, Eileen McNeely and Matthew Preble

New Balance Athletics, Inc., a major U.S.-based athletic footwear and apparel brand, sources most of its footwear products from independent suppliers whose factories are located in China, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Monica Gorman, vice president of responsible leadership... View Details

Keywords: Footwear; Athletic Footwear; Manufacturing; CSR; Sustainability; Quality Management; Supply Chains; Operations; Management; Production; Working Conditions; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Labor and Management Relations; Supply Chain Management; Supply Chain; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Consumer Products Industry

2014
Working Paper

Corporate Financial Policies in Misvalued Credit Markets

By: Jarrad Harford, Marc Martos-Vila and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

We theoretically and empirically investigate the repercussions of credit market misvaluation for a firm's borrowing and investment decisions. Using an ex-post measure of the accuracy of credit ratings to capture debt market misvaluation, we find evidence that firms... View Details