Publications

22 May 2017
Lessons from the Classroom

A Luxury Industry Veteran Teaches the Importance of Aesthetics to Budding Business Leaders

former MTV VJ) Sian-Pierre Regis, founder of the online publication Swagger and a frequent pop culture contributor to CNN Headline News and Men’s Journal; Michelle Goldman, a partner at the venture capital... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Beauty & Cosmetics; Apparel & Accessories; Auto; Tourism

April 1999 (Revised March 2002)
Case

Aluminum Smelting in South Africa: Alusaf's Hillside Project

With prices at all-time lows at the beginning of 1994, South Africa's sole primary aluminum producer--Alusaf--is considering building the world's largest greenfield smelter. Using cost estimates in this case, students can evaluate the relative cost position of this... View Details

Keywords: Metals and Minerals; Analysis; Markets; Profit; Capital; Industrial Products Industry; South Africa

November 1991 (Revised December 1996)
Case

Pressco, Inc.--1985

By: William E. Fruhan Jr.

A capital budgeting problem is viewed from the context of a marketing representative attempting to make a sale of energy saving heavy industrial equipment. Tax law changes promise to have a significant impact on the customer's decision process. Teaching purpose: To... View Details

Keywords: Capital Budgeting; Machinery and Machining; Valuation; Taxation; Customer Value and Value Chain; Cost vs Benefits; Inflation and Deflation; Cost Management; Product Marketing; North and Central America

07 Nov 2016
Research & Ideas

Corporate Tax Strategies Mirror Personal Returns of Top Execs

influence over the corporate tax strategy. They then reconstructed insider holdings portfolios and built-in capital gains in order to get a precise estimate of their incentives. There were three measures for... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland

18 Aug 2011
Lessons from the Classroom

Business Plan Contest: 15 Years of Building Better Entrepreneurs

to get good feedback that would help us understand how VCs would be looking at our business model," adds Weng. (Battery Ventures and a few private investors bought into FashionStake's vision early on.) FashionStake and other consumer Internet companies have benefited... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Education

12 Jan 2004
What Do You Think?

How Should We Think About the Exportation of Jobs?

"In India, we are creating two different societies with a large disparity in income as well as access to knowledge and information." In large part, the comments seemed to reflect reactions to both differences in the fluidity of... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

24 Sep 2014
Op-Ed

The ABCs of Addressing Climate Change (From a Business Perspective)

pricing, and more. The annual capital budget for New York City alone is about in excess of $5 billion. In London it is £6.3 billion, or more than $10 billion. Add up the major cities View Details

Keywords: by John Macomber; Energy; Utilities

Awards

Gerry Feldman Prize for the Best Research Article Published by a Young Scholar

Winner of the 2012 Gerry Feldman Prize for the Best Research Article Published by Young Scholars in the Financial History Review during 2010–2011, sponsored by the European Association of Banking and Financial History, for the paper with André C. Martínez... View Details

22 Feb 2016
Research & Ideas

The ‘Mother of Fair Trade’ was an Unabashed Price Protectionist

effort to strengthen “reasonable price” provisions in California law, pushing for standardized prescription compounding and pricing, as well as price schedules set by manufacturers. “The history of American View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Retail; Health; Legal Services

Large Shocks Travel Fast

We leverage the inflation upswing of 2022 and various granular datasets to identify robust price-setting patterns following a large supply shock. We show that the frequency of price changes increases dramatically after a large shock. We set up a parsimonious New... View Details

23 Jun 2014
Research & Ideas

In Venture Capital, Birds of a Feather Lose Money Together

To illustrate the old adage that birds of a feather flock together, there may be no better example than the venture capital industry. A recent study finds that venture capitalists have a strong tendency to... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Financial Services

01 Feb 1999
News

Q&A: Camille Tang Yeh of the Asia-Pacific Research Office

information and financial and other intermediaries. How will the Asia-Pacific region benefit from the presence of the HBS research office? The intellectual capital created by the exchange View Details

Keywords: Educational Support Services; Educational Services

08 Jan 2015
News

Healthcare strategy 2015 — Back to the basics: 12 key thoughts

April 2023
Article

Are Intermediary Constraints Priced?

By: Wenxin Du, Benjamin Hebert and Amy Wang Huber

Violations of no-arbitrage conditions measure the shadow cost of intermediary constraints. Intermediary asset pricing and intertemporal hedging together imply that the risk of these constraints tightening is priced. We describe a “forward CIP trading strategy” that... View Details

Keywords: Asset Pricing; Investment Return; Risk and Uncertainty; International Finance

Find at Harvard

Web

Corporate Governance and Boards of Directors - Course Catalog

students. Many of you will be entrepreneurs building and working with a board of directors as you create and grow your company. Others will join private equity or venture View Details

September 2009 (Revised June 2011)
Case

Mercury Athletic: Valuing the Opportunity

By: Timothy A. Luehrman and Joel L. Heilprin

In January 2007, West Coast Fashions, Inc., a large designer and marketer of branded apparel, announced a strategic reorganization that would result in the divestiture of their wholly owned footwear subsidiary, Mercury Athletic. John Liedtke, the head of business... View Details

Keywords: Mergers ＆ Acquisitions; Sensitivity Analysis; Cost of Capital; Restructuring; Valuation; Cash Flow; Mergers and Acquisitions; Corporate Finance; Apparel and Accessories Industry

08 Jul 2002
What Do You Think?

Have We Carried the Concept of Alignment Too Far?

restoring common sense to compensation schemes and holding officers and directors responsible for their actions. All of which implies greater transparency in information, education for non-officer directors,... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

27 Nov 2000
Research & Ideas

The Dynamics of Standing Still: Firestone Tire & Rubber and the Radial Revolution

production equipment, and Firestone increased its capital spending in tires in 1968 and 1969, retooling its factories to accommodate belted bias production.9 The records of Firestone's board meetings... View Details

Keywords: by Donald N. Sull; Manufacturing; Transportation

June 2025
Article

Who Benefits from Online Gig Economy Platforms?

By: Christopher T. Stanton and Catherine Thomas

Online labor platforms for short-term, remote work have many more job seekers than available jobs. Despite their relative abundance, workers capture a substantial share of the surplus from transactions. We draw this conclusion from demand estimates that imply workers'... View Details

Keywords: Gig Economy; Knowledge Workers; Online Platforms; Job Search; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Wages; Demand and Consumers