Publications

July 2016
Article

Do Prices Determine Vertical Integration?

By: Laura Alfaro, Paola Conconi, Harald Fadinger and Andrew F. Newman

What is the relationship between product prices and vertical integration? While the literature has focused on how integration affects prices, this paper provides evidence that prices can affect integration. Many theories in organizational economics and industrial... View Details

Keywords: Price; Vertical Integration; Product

August 2007 (Revised June 2020)
Case

Trouble with a Bubble

By: Tom Nicholas

Examines technology, firm performance, and the stock market during the 1929 Great Crash and the Great Depression of the 1930s. The 1920s was an extraordinary period of technological progress marked by a strong run-up in stock market prices. Firms invested heavily in... View Details

Keywords: Bubble; Stock Market; Great Depression; Irving Fisher; Information Technology; Organizational Change and Adaptation; History; Financial Markets; Performance; Labor and Management Relations; Equity; Financial Crisis; Innovation and Invention; United States

Educators

Purchase

August 2023
Article

Do Rating Agencies Behave Defensively for Higher Risk Issuers?

By: Samuel B. Bonsall IV, Kevin Koharki, Pepa Kraft, Karl A. Muller III and Anywhere Sikochi

We examine whether rating agencies act defensively toward issuers with a higher likelihood of default. We find that agencies' qualitative soft rating adjustments are more accurate as issuers' default risk grows, as evidenced by the adjustments leading to lower Type I... View Details

Keywords: Credit Rating Agencies; Soft Rating Adjustments; Default; Credit; Performance Evaluation; Measurement and Metrics; Financial Institutions; Risk Management

30 Nov 2021
In Practice

What's the Role of Business in Confronting Climate Change?

The 26th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties, also known as COP26, ended with a hard-fought pact that called on businesses and governments to meet their climate change goals faster. The event followed an August report by the Intergovernmental... View Details

Keywords: by Lynn Schenk and Dina Gerdeman

April 2022
Article

Going Out or Opting Out? Capital, Political Vulnerability, and the State in China's Outward Investment

By: Meg Rithmire

How do state-business relations interact with outward investment in authoritarian regimes? This paper examines this question in the context of China’s rapid transformation into a major capital exporter. While most political economy scholarship focuses on firms’... View Details

Keywords: Outward Investment; Capital Controls; Corruption; Foreign Direct Investment; Political Economy; State-owned Enterprises; Investment; Global Range; Capital; Globalization; Policy; Government and Politics; China

2021
Working Paper

Going Out or Opting Out? Capital, Political Vulnerability, and the State in China's Outward Investment

By: Meg Rithmire

How do state-business relations interact with outward investment in authoritarian regimes? This paper examines this question in the context of China’s rapid transformation into major capital exporter. While most political economy scholarship focuses on firms’ economic... View Details

Keywords: Outward Investment; Capital Controls; Investment; Global Range; Capital; Globalization; Policy; Government and Politics; China

Web

2023 Reunion Presentations - Alumni

Behavioral Finance and Financial Stability Project, have made tremendous strides in predicting financial market crashes, panics, and crises. Participants left this session understanding the state of the art... View Details

29 Apr 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Comparing the Cash Policies of Public and Private Firms

Keywords: by Joan Farre-Mensa

05 Feb 2008
First Look

First Look: February 5, 2008

(2) Review prior research on behavioral decision making to identify ideas that may be relevant to the domain of psychological influence; (3) Provide a series of examples of how behavioral decision research... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

March 2014
Article

Cyclicality of Credit Supply: Firm Level Evidence

By: Bo Becker and Victoria Ivashina

Theory predicts that there is a close link between bank credit supply and the evolution of the business cycle. Yet fluctuations in bank-loan supply have been hard to quantify in the time series. While loan issuance falls in recessions, it is not clear if this is due to... View Details

Keywords: Business Cycles; Borrowing and Debt; Credit; Banks and Banking; Bonds; Financial Markets; Financing and Loans; Banking Industry

Article

Are Self-service Customers Satisfied or Stuck?

By: Ryan W. Buell, Dennis Campbell and Frances X. Frei

This paper investigates the impact of self-service technology (SST) usage on customer satisfaction and retention. Specifically, we disentangle the distinct effects of satisfaction and switching costs as drivers of retention among self-service customers. Our empirical... View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Information Technology; Customer Satisfaction; Competition; Cost; Banks and Banking; Behavior; Market Transactions; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques

21 Jul 2010
Research & Ideas

HBS Faculty Debate Financial Reform Legislation

from auto dealers, retail stores, and real estate brokers). Finally, Congress missed the main cause of the financial crisis—Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the housing agencies. Given the fragility of the U.S. housing markets, Congress was unwilling to reform these... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

2011
Working Paper

Cyclicality of Credit Supply: Firm Level Evidence

By: Bo Becker and Victoria Ivashina

Theory predicts that there is a close link between bank credit supply and the evolution of the business cycle. Yet fluctuations in bank-loan supply have been hard to quantify in the time-series. While loan issuance falls in recessions, it is not clear if this is due to... View Details

Keywords: Business Cycles; Borrowing and Debt; Credit; Banks and Banking; Bonds; Financial Markets; Financing and Loans; Banking Industry

13 Apr 2010
First Look

First Look: April 13

behavior and preferences into service cost and productivity standard metrics. Optimal Value and Growth Tilts in Long-Horizon Portfolios Authors:W. Jakub Jurkek and Luis M. Viceira Publication:Review of View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

March 2016
Article

The Role of Investor Gut Feel in Managing Complexity and Extreme Risk

By: Laura Huang

Securing financial resources from investors is a key challenge for many early stage entrepreneurial ventures. Given the inherent uncertainty surrounding a decision to invest in these ventures, prior research has found that experienced investors rely heavily on their... View Details

Keywords: Angel Investors; Gut Feel; Intuition; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Risk and Uncertainty; Complexity; Decision Making

Purchase

Web

Our Team - Impact Investments

Our Team Our Team Principal Investigators Shawn Cole John G. McLean Professor of Business Administration Shawn Cole is a professor in the Finance Unit at Harvard Business School, where he teaches and conducts research on financial... View Details

Article

Optimal Value and Growth Tilts in Long-Horizon Portfolios

By: Jakub W. Jurek and Luis M. Viceira

We develop an analytical solution to the dynamic portfolio choice problem of an investor with power utility defined over wealth at a finite horizon, who faces a time-varying investment opportunity set, parameterized using a flexible vector autoregression. We apply this... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Private Equity; Investment; Investment Portfolio; Asset Pricing; Value

October 2020
Article

IQ from IP: Simplifying Search in Portfolio Choice

By: Huaizhi Chen, Lauren Cohen, Umit Gurun, Dong Lou and Christopher J. Malloy

Using a novel database that tracks web traffic on the SEC’s EDGAR servers between 2004 and 2015, we show that mutual fund managers gather information on a very particular subset of firms and insiders, and their surveillance is very persistent over time. This tracking... View Details

Keywords: Tracked Trades; Return Predictability; Institutional Trading; Insider Trading; Institutional Investing; Information; Investment Portfolio; Decisions; Management

September 2011
Module Note

Orientation to Leadership Intelligence Days, 2011

By: Joshua D. Margolis and Anthony J. Mayo

Julie Bornstein, senior vice president of Sephora Direct, is seeking to double her budget for social media and other digital marketing initiatives for 2011. A number of digital efforts implemented in the past two years seem to be bearing fruit and there is a desire to... View Details

Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Borrowing and Debt; Investment Return; Resource Allocation; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Online Technology; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry