Financial Complexity - Publications - Faculty & Research

07 Sep 2021
Research & Ideas

Who Pays For Wildfire and Hurricane Damage? Everyone.

New Mexico homeowners might think their inland location buffers them from the financial toll of climate change, but they’re still paying for climate-related property damage occurring in coastal states. New research finds that homeowners in New Mexico and other states... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Insurance

04 Jan 2012
First Look

First Look: January 4

agreement may represent the culmination of a massive negotiation campaign with multiple, related fronts: financial, shareholder, internal corporate, labor, supplier, political, and regulatory. Complex sales with long cycles and many... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

20 Oct 2010
Op-Ed

Export Competitiveness: Reversing the Logic

the current economic and financial crisis, countries around the globe are looking for ways to reignite economic growth. Traditionally, export-led growth has been perceived as one of the most promising pathways to do so. The experience of... View Details

Keywords: by Christian Ketels

16 Nov 2010
First Look

First Look: November 16, 2010

source of the recent financial crisis. It may be more accurate, however, to say that a deregulatory mindset was an important source of the crisis—a mindset that, to a very significant extent, grew out of profound changes in academic... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

24 Feb 2015
First Look

First Look: February 24

adequacy, actuarial standards, accounting standards, and auditing practice. In these areas, corporate managers and financial experts such as auditors and bankers possess the technical expertise necessary for informed regulation, enjoy... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

01 May 2019
What Do You Think?

What Should the Leadership of YouTube Do?

2014, facing the task of bolstering the Company’s growth and financial performance. Two years earlier she had come up with the controversial insight that a more profitable business model for YouTube should be based not on the number of... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Entertainment & Recreation; Media & Broadcasting

27 Oct 2002
Research & Ideas

Want a Happy Customer? Coordinate Sales and Marketing

even more difficult than in the past. Why the concern about coordination between sales and marketing? Every business exists for financial performance—making money. We know generally how to measure it across different companies and... View Details

Keywords: by Benson Shapiro

July 2018 (Revised July 2018)
Teaching Note

Argentina Power—Don’t Cry for Me Argentina

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Sayiddah Fatima McCree

Teaching Note for HBS No. 218-041. This case concerns a complex potential energy infrastructure investment in Argentina by a global conglomerate shortly after Mauricio Macri (“Macri”) became President of Argentina in 2015. The central issues are (i) why was a country... View Details

Keywords: Argentina; Argentine Exceptionalism; Infrastructure Finance; Investing; Finance; Inflation and Deflation; Government and Politics; Energy Generation; Infrastructure; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Argentina; South America

Citation

Purchase

March 2001 (Revised July 2002)
Case

WingspanBank.com (B): Should This Bird Still Fly?

By: Sandra J. Sucher and Stacy McManus

WingspanBank.com is launched to critical acclaim, but its fate is hardly certain. Bank One's new CEO, Jamie Dimon, must decide what to do with what is now a second Web site for the bank's current and prospective customers. View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Business Startups; Customers; Innovation and Management; Organizations; Complexity; Web Sites; Financial Services Industry

Citation

Find at Harvard

03 May 2010
Research & Ideas

What Is the Future of MBA Education?

Immediately after graduation, a significant majority of the graduates of the leading two-year, full-time MBA programs take jobs in financial services and consulting, driven in part by financial rewards that... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Education

19 Sep 2016
Research & Ideas

Why Isn't Business Research More Relevant to Business Practitioners?

10,000 senior marketing executives based in San Jose, California. “There is often a disconnect between practitioners and academics, who tend to be far removed from operational complexities and market dynamics.” Donovan Neale-May,... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Education

13 Jun 2012
HBS Case

HBS Cases: A Startup Takes On the Credit Ratings Giants

to by assigning overly optimistic ratings to highly complex and opaque mortgage- and asset-backed securities. The high ratings signaled to investors that the financial instruments had little chance of... View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish; Financial Services; Financial Services

06 Dec 2011
Op-Ed

Greater Fiscal Integration Best Solution for Euro Crisis

the European Financial Stability Fund, have been remarkable. Nevertheless, the markets have discounted every announcement and have continued to operate in a state of quasi-panic, as they move at a different speed than the political... View Details

Keywords: by Dante Roscini

05 May 2003
Research & Ideas

How Bank of America Turned Branches into Service-Development Laboratories

configured as "traditional centers," familiar-looking branches that provided conventional banking services, though often supported by new technologies and redesigned processes. The group unveiled its first redesigned branch—a View Details

Keywords: by Stefan Thomke; Financial Services; Financial Services

17 Feb 2014
Research & Ideas

Companies Detangle from Legacy Pensions

difficult question, How are we going to make good on those promises? Pensions are a costly legacy for many companies. Photo: iStockPhoto The question is particularly urgent now, says Viceira, who teaches in the area of investment management and capital markets. For... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Financial Services; Financial Services

12 May 2011
Research & Ideas

The Difficult Transition from For-Profit to Nonprofit Boards

schools and why, appropriately socialized, those with for-profit backgrounds can contribute so much to the nonprofit world. Repeatedly we have seen new trustees and ineffective boards try to wag the mission dog with the financial tail.... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

14 Nov 2012
Research & Ideas

New Agenda for Corporate Accountability Reporting

of life." "The challenges are incredibly complex but also very rewarding to work on," he adds. Three Gold Standards Ramanna's paper outlines how best-practice standards of financial accounting... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Accounting; Energy; Utilities

15 Oct 2001
Op-Ed

Lessons from the Rubble

unfold and at the continued horrors that any response will undoubtedly let loose. We know that the death toll is at least in the thousands, and that the financial toll will soar to tens of billions of dollars. There are other things,... View Details

Keywords: by Debora L. Spar

16 May 2012
Research & Ideas

Can Decades of Military Overspending be Fixed?

virtually mandates changes to contracts as requirements are added or changed; and financial incentives that reward lowball contractor bids and provide negative sanctions for failing to spend all the allocated funds." It doesn't help... View Details

Keywords: by J. Ronald Fox; Service

28 Nov 2012
What Do You Think?

Should Pay-for-Performance Compensation be Replaced?

agrees, of course. Comparing the simplicity of (especially short-term) responses to the complexity of the pay-for-performance challenge, Ravindra Edirisoorlya went so far as to say that "Current P4P model(s) may lead to another... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

Publications