Publications

08 Sep 2010
First Look

First Look: September 8, 2010

determinant of choices than fairness, and iii) agents display a marked propensity to work for principals with similar distributional concerns. Working PapersReport on the State of Available Data for the Study of International Trade and Foreign Direct View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2024
Working Paper

Private Regulation, Institutional Entrepreneurship and Climate Change: A Business History Perspective

By: Ann-Kristin Bergquist and Geoffrey Jones

Private regulatory systems, including voluntary efforts by firms to restrain their own behavior are the primary form of global climate change governance. However, when environmental challenges first rose up on the scientific and political agendas during the 1970s, the... View Details

Keywords: Certification; Climate Change; Environmental Regulation; Business History; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy

Read Now

November 1994 (Revised March 1995)
Background Note

Capital Projects as Real Options: An Introduction

By: Timothy A. Luehrman

Introduces a framework for evaluating corporate investment projects as call options. Presumes readers are familiar with basic option pricing and basic capital budgeting rules. Explains the motivation for viewing projects as options; presents a mapping between a capital... View Details

Keywords: Financial Instruments; Capital Budgeting; Corporate Finance

May 2021
Case

The International Space Station, Principal-Agent Problems, and NASA's Quest to Keep Humans in Space

By: Matthew Weinzierl and Mehak Sarang

In building the International Space Station (ISS), NASA opened the door to the development of a robust in-space economy in low-Earth Orbit, and yet the decision to build the station, and continue to extend its lifetime, placed a huge burden on NASA’s Human Spaceflight... View Details

Keywords: Aerospace; Nasa; Space Economy; Principal-agent Theory; Policy; Commercialization; Aerospace Industry

April 2019
Article

Private Equity and Financial Fragility during the Crisis

By: Shai Bernstein, Josh Lerner and Filippo Mezzanotti

Do private equity firms contribute to financial fragility during economic crises? We find that during the 2008 financial crisis, PE-backed companies increased investments relative to their peers, while also experiencing greater equity and debt inflows. The effects are... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Financial Crisis; Performance; Financial Condition

January 2018 (Revised August 2018)
Supplement

Fair Value Accounting at Noble Group (B)

By: Siko Sikochi, Suraj Srinivasan and Quinn Pitcher

Following a series of reports by Iceberg Research alleging that Noble Group was too aggressive in its fair value accounting for contracts and investments in producers, Noble’s stock price continued to fall and stakeholders began to call for improved transparency in... View Details

Keywords: Fair Value Accounting; Contracts; Valuation

December 2017 (Revised April 2018)
Case

Area One Farms

By: Forest Reinhardt, Jose B. Alvarez and Annelena Lobb

In 2017, Joelle Faulkner, CEO of Area One Farms, a Canadian private-equity fund focused on investing in the best Canadian farms and helping them expand, considered the merits and disadvantages of expanding her business to the U.S. While the markets shared some... View Details

Keywords: Expansion; Decision Choices and Conditions; Private Equity; Canada; United States

November 2011 (Revised February 2012)
Case

China Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research: Building a Sustainable, Globally Integrated Research Enterprise

By: Vicki Sato, Christoph Jaeker and Pooja Mehta Solanki

As the head of the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research in China, En Li was shepherding a $1 billion R&D investment in China. So far he had been able to attract a large number of Chinese-born but US-trained scientists to play a critical role in establishing the... View Details

Keywords: Globalized Firms and Management; Research; Corporate Strategy; Pharmaceutical Industry; Health Industry; China

November 2004 (Revised November 2005)
Case

Musimundo

By: Francisco de Asis Martinez-Jerez and James Robert Dillon

Mario Quintana, managing partner of Pegasus Capital, was preparing for the upcoming Musimundo board of directors meeting. He was satisfied with the investment decisions of the entertainment retailer, as actual performance surpassed the initial budget. However, given a... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Governing and Advisory Boards; Partners and Partnerships; Performance Evaluation; Budgets and Budgeting; Retail Industry; Spain

17 Jul 2013
News

For Global Drug Manufacturers, China Becomes a Perilous Market

04 Jun 2024
Blog Post

Finding Alignment to Make Impact: Layla Ramirez (MBA 2017)

Before becoming a Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging, Layla Ramirez (MBA 2017) was a prospective lawyer, an investment manager, a nonprofit leader, and a tech program manager. Beyond her professional roles, Ramirez is... View Details

Article

New Interest in Incentive Financing

By: Samuel Hayes

The article presents the findings of a study on incentive financings as they apply to institutional investors, particularly life insurance company investors. The author made contact with investment officers in 29 insurance companies, and have collected a considerable... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Financing and Loans; Institutional Investing

Research Summary

STATUS

In his work on status orders, Professor Malter studies the ways in which status orders affect the returns to organizations, the incentives and opportunities in markets, social market structure, and firm decisions. Using data on a highly structured wine region of... View Details

July 2020
Case

Mortgage Backed Securities and the Covid-19 Pandemic

By: Emil N. Siriwardane, Luis M. Viceira and Dean Xu

In April 2020, global financial markets were still reeling as the COVID-19 pandemic spread rapidly across the world. Global equity markets had initially fallen by 30% in response to the pandemic, and high-yield credit markets had dropped by nearly 20%. In contrast,... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Mortgage-backed Securities; Health Pandemics; Financial Markets; Assets; Resource Allocation; Financial Instruments; Decision Making

19 Jan 2016
First Look

January 19, 2016

reasons—and revisits the associated implications for investing and corporate finance, examining asset allocation, high leverage in financial firms, low leverage in industrial firms, private equity, venture capital, and bank capital... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

January 1987 (Revised May 1989)
Case

Merck-Banyu

By: Timothy A. Luehrman

Merck acquired control of Banyu in 1983. This was the first acquisition by outsiders of a major publicly traded Japanese company. This case is focused on valuing strategic investments in an environment of global competition. The case is complex because of the... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Investment; Globalization; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Industry Structures; Negotiation Deal; Public Ownership; Competition; Valuation; Japan

Research Summary

Promoting greater organizational adoption of energy efficiency projects

This research examines why firms fail to capitalize on apparently cost-effective investments in energy efficiency, with particular attention to waste heat recovery projects, in which heat from industrial processes are recovered in the form of thermal or electrical... View Details

January 1993 (Revised November 1995)
Case

AXA: The Global Insurance Company

Claude Bebear, the CEO of AXA, the tenth-largest insurer in Europe, has just completed an acquisition of the Equitable, the seventh-largest insurer in the United States. As part of his strategy to make AXA the first truly global insurance company, Bebear is considering... View Details

Keywords: Market Entry and Exit; Insurance; Global Strategy; Acquisition; Insurance Industry; Asia; North America; Europe