Publications

March 2009 (Revised November 2016)
Case

Washington Mutual's Covered Bonds

By: Daniel Baird Bergstresser, Robin Greenwood and James Quinn

Washington Mutual issued 6 billion euro of covered bonds in 2006. The objective of the case is to ask whether these bonds are mispriced in late 2008. The case is set in September 2008, and Washington Mutual is facing considerable distress due to mounting losses in its... View Details

Keywords: Capital Markets; Financial Liquidity; Bonds; Mortgages; Price; Banking Industry; United States

May 2008 (Revised July 2009)
Case

Sovereign Wealth Funds: For Profits or Politics?

By: Laura Alfaro and Renee Kim

On March 21, 2008, the U.S. government secured an agreement from two leading sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) to adopt a new set of investment principles to govern the Funds' activities. SWFs, broadly defined as an investment fund owned by a national or a government, were... View Details

Keywords: Foreign Direct Investment; Investment Funds; Sovereign Finance; Corporate Disclosure; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; International Relations; State Ownership; United States

December 2006 (Revised December 2007)
Case

The Convention on Biological Diversity: Engaging the Private Sector

By: David E. Bell and Mary L. Shelman

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was a U.N. treaty that by 2006 had been signed by virtually every country in the world except for the United States. The treaty established three main goals: the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Private Sector; Business and Community Relations; Business and Government Relations; Genetics; Environmental Sustainability

07 Oct 2019
News

New Study Shows Adverse Economic Effects of Private Equity Buyouts

August 1990
Case

NASA After Challenger: Restoring an Image

By: Stephen A. Greyser and Norman Klein

In the days following the loss of the space shuttle Challenger and its crew in January of 1986, NASA officials were unwilling to communicate with the media or the public. A siege mentality took hold, and the press and public responded with intense criticism and... View Details

Keywords: Communication Strategy; Policy; Business and Community Relations; Situation or Environment; Conflict Management

04 Sep 2019
News

Does America Care About Care? Not Enough

May 2007
Article

Aspects of Endowment: A Query Theory of Value Construction

By: Eric Johnson, Gerald Häubl and Anat Keinan

How do people judge the monetary value of objects? One clue is provided by the typical endowment study (D. Kahneman, J. L. Knetsch, & R. H. Thaler, 1991), in which participants are randomly given either a good, such as a coffee mug, that they may later sell ("sellers")... View Details

Keywords: Profit; Forecasting and Prediction; Theory; Valuation; Loss; Ownership; Decision Choices and Conditions

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October 2021 (Revised May 2023)
Case

Engine No.1: An Impact Investing Firm Engages with ExxonMobil

By: Mark Kramer, Shawn Cole, Vikram S. Gandhi and T. Robert Zochowski

ExxonMobil, the world's fifth largest source of carbon emissions, remained committed to aggressively expanding its oil & gas business despite global warming. During the COVID pandemic this strategy resulted in massive losses as the price and demand for oil declined. ... View Details

Keywords: Carbon Emissions; Global Warming; Impact Investment Funds; Hedge Fund Activism; Leadership Development; Business Model; Renewable Energy; Resource Allocation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Governing and Advisory Boards

2019
White Paper

Impact-Weighted Financial Accounts: The Missing Piece for an Impact Economy

By: George Serafeim, T. Robert Zochowski and Jennifer Downing

Reimagining capitalism is an imperative. We need to create a more inclusive and sustainable form of capitalism that works for every person and the planet. Massive environmental damage, growing income and wealth disparity, stress, and depression within developed... View Details

Keywords: Impact-Weighted Accounts; IWAI; Background; Economic Systems; Economy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Measurement and Metrics; Financial Statements

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August 2017
Article

Catering to Investors Through Security Design: Headline Rate and Complexity

By: Claire Célérier and Boris Vallée

This paper investigates the rationale for issuing complex securities to retail investors. We focus on a large market of investment products targeted exclusively at households: retail-structured products in Europe. We hypothesize that banks strategically use product... View Details

Keywords: Financial Complexity; Catering; Shrouding; Reaching For Yield; Investment

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August 2023
Article

Can Security Design Foster Household Risk-Taking?

By: Laurent Calvet, Claire Célérier, Paolo Sodini and Boris Vallée

This paper shows that securities with a non-linear payoff design can foster household risk-taking. We demonstrate this effect empirically by exploiting the introduction of capital guarantee products in Sweden from 2002 to 2007. The fast and broad adoption of these... View Details

Keywords: Financial Innovation; Household Finance; Structured Products; Stock Market Participation; Finance; Innovation and Invention; Household; Personal Finance; Risk and Uncertainty; Behavior; Market Participation

21 Apr 2022
News

‘Workcations’ Aren’t an Escape. They’re Practice.

March 2017 (Revised February 2020)
Case

Corey Thomas and the IPO

By: Steven Rogers and Derrick Collins

Corey Thomas, the African American CEO of the company Rapid7, must decide if it is the right time to take the 15-year-old company public, as it stood poised to capitalize on what appeared to be the next frontier for digital technology markets—cybersecurity. In spite of... View Details

Keywords: Business Finance; Capital Markets; Private Equity; Internet and the Web; Initial Public Offering; Decision Making; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; Web Services Industry; United States

2003
Other Unpublished Work

Initiative for a Competitive Milwaukee: A Call to Action

By: Michael E. Porter

The inner city of Milwaukee holds great promise, but is not advancing economically. The inner city has been hard hit by the loss of many of its largest employers as a result of relocation, acquisition and failure. According to the 2000 US Census data, thirty percent of... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Society; Poverty; Economy; Growth and Development; Wisconsin

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30 Nov 2018
News

The Challenges GM Is Facing, and the Reasoning Behind Its Plant Closures

January 2013
Article

'I'll Have One of Each': How Separating Rewards into (Meaningless) Categories Increases Motivation

By: F. Gino and S. Wiltermuth

We propose that separating rewards into categories can increase motivation, even when those categories are meaningless. Across six experiments, people were more motivated to obtain one reward from one category and another reward from another category than they were to... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives