Publications
Publications
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(3,424)
- Faculty Publications (507)
- March 2008 (Revised June 2009)
- Case
Actis: January 2008
By: Felda Hardymon, Josh Lerner and Ann Leamon
Paul Feltcher, the CEO of Actis, a leading private equity investor in emerging markets, is preparing for an executive retreat at which the management team will consider how best to position the firm for the future. Actis could move in a number of different directions... View Details
- Article
Coarse Thinking and Persuasion
By: Sendhil Mullainathan, Joshua Schwartzstein and Andrei Shleifer
We present a model of uninformative persuasion in which individuals "think coarsely": they group situations into categories and apply the same model of inference to all situations within a category. Coarse thinking exhibits two features that persuaders take advantage... View Details
- January 2008 (Revised September 2009)
- Case
Financing American Housing Construction in the Aftermath of War
By: David Moss and Cole Bolton
At the start of WWI, the United States faced a significant housing shortage. Public officials feared the spread of disease—and even communism—in the nation's cramped urban centers where vacancy rates held near zero and families often "doubled up" in single-housing... View Details
- January 2008
- Article
How to Change the World
Alan Wilson has a decision to make. The CEO of his company, Grepter, wants him to relocate to Zurich, where he can gain valuable experience for a rise to the top. Karl, his best friend, hopes to lure him to a hedge fund that promises big money fast. Shiori, an enticing... View Details
- November 2007
- Case
AXA MONY
By: Lucy White and Andre F. Perold
AXA's friendly bid for MONY is contested by activist hedge funds suspicious of management's generous change in control contracts. Votes trade after the record date. AXA financed the bid using an unusual conditionally convertible bond which may have affected incentives... View Details
- November – December 2007
- Article
Fundamentally Flawed Indexing
By: Andre F. Perold
A new theory of finance is being advanced as providing definitive proof that holding stocks in proportion to their market capitalizations is an inferior investment strategy. The claim is that capitalization weighting necessarily invests more in overvalued stocks and... View Details
- October 2007 (Revised November 2007)
- Case
Barclays Global Investors and Exchange Traded Funds
By: Luis M. Viceira and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld
Provides an overview of the Exchange Traded Funds (EFT) industry and highlights the leadership role that Barclays Global Investors (BGI) has played in this developing asset class. BGI launched its first ETFs under the iShares brand name in 2000, and by mid-2007 BGI was... View Details
- October 2007 (Revised March 2009)
- Case
Advanced Energy: Programs for Energy Conservation
By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Brooke Barton
Describes the dilemma facing Advanced Energy (AE), a $6 million nonprofit engaged in energy conservation in North Carolina. Most of the money for its programs comes from a Public Benefits Fund (PBF) enacted by the state legislature. With renewed effort by activists in... View Details
- Fourth Quarter 2007
- Article
Contingent Claims Approach to Measuring and Managing Sovereign Credit Risk
By: Dale . F. Gray, Robert C. Merton and Zvi Bodie
This paper proposes a new approach to measure, analyze, and manage sovereign risk based on the theory and practice of modern contingent claims analysis (CCA). The paper provides a new framework for adapting the CCA model to the sovereign balance sheet in a way that can... View Details
- September 2007 (Revised November 2008)
- Case
Sinopec: Refining its Strategy
By: Richard H.K. Vietor and Julia Galef
China's oil industry, with majority ownership vested in the government, had engaged in an "equity oil" strategy for the past few years-acquiring equity interests in oil producing nations including Sudan, Angola, and Iran. Outside critics, however, suggested that the... View Details
- August 2007
- Case
Satelite Distribuidora de Petroleo
By: Lynda M. Applegate and Andrea M.A.F. Minardi
Marcelo Alecrim, the owner of SAT, a gas distribution company in Brazil, envisioned many growth opportunities but lacked financial resources to pursue them. He was approaching an American private equity fund to raise money. Describes Alecrim's challenge in creating SAT... View Details
- August 2007
- Case
Lightspeed Venture Partners -- International Expansion
By: Krishna G. Palepu and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld
Looks at various international expansion models for a venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley. Lightspeed Venture Partners believed that India had tremendous potential for venture capital returns--the question was how best to tap into that potential while also... View Details
- June 2007 (Revised January 2008)
- Case
The Vanguard Group, Inc. in 2006 and Target Retirement Funds
By: Luis M. Viceira
The Vanguard Group is one of the largest asset managers in the U.S., with over $1 trillion in assets, ninety percent of which are mutual fund assets, and more than 12,000 employees at year-end 2006. Vanguard has built a strong reputation as the manager of reference for... View Details
- March 2007 (Revised October 2008)
- Case
The Vancouver 2010 Olympics
By: Anita Elberse, Catherine Anthony and Joshua Callahan
It is February 2007, exactly three years before Vancouver hosts the 2010 Winter Olympics. Judy Rogers, City Manager for the City of Vancouver and a member of the Board of Directors for Vancouver's Organizing Committee (VANOC), is keen to ensure the Games will have a... View Details
- March 2007 (Revised May 2012)
- Case
PRG-Schultz International
By: Paul W. Marshall and James Weber
PRG-Schultz will run out of cash within a couple of months unless the new CEO can reduce costs and restructure the company's debt. PRG was the dominant market leader in the audit recovery industry. The industry consisted of firms which employed accounting professionals... View Details
- February 2007
- Case
Behavioral Finance at JP Morgan
By: Malcolm P. Baker and Aldo Sesia
Following a successful model in Europe, JP Morgan has introduced a set of five U.S. retail mutual funds with an investment philosophy and marketing strategy grounded in behavioral finance. The asset management group believes that understanding investor biases like... View Details
- January 2007
- Exercise
Multifactor Models
By: Malcolm P. Baker
Students evaluate the performance of four mutual funds and compute the cost of capital for two companies using fixed benchmarks, the CAPM, and a multifactor model of returns. View Details
- January 2007 (Revised December 2007)
- Case
PSI: Social Marketing Clean Water
By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Nava Ashraf and Marie Bell
Senior management at PSI, arguably the world's largest and most successful social marketer with impressive achievements in the field of family planning, HIV/AIDS, and malaria prevention must determine what to do about their slow-to-take-off clean water initiative.... View Details
- December 2006 (Revised February 2009)
- Case
China Merchants Bank: Here Just For You
By: F. Warren McFarlan, GuoQing Chen, HengYuan Zhu, Bin Yang, Michael Shih-ta Chen, G.A. Donovan, Waishun Lo and Yan Yang
Founded in 1987, China Merchants Bank (CMB) is a pioneer in the use of technical innovation and IT as a competitive tool in the rapidly evolving Chinese banking sector. With a relatively small branch network when compared to its larger competitors, CMB uses an... View Details
- December 2006 (Revised March 2008)
- Case
Prosper Marketplace, Inc.
By: William A. Sahlman and Elizabeth Kind
Describes a set of financial and strategic decisions confronting the founding management team of a new online financial services company. Prosper Marketplace is an internet-based market for individuals to borrow money from other individuals who wish to invest in such... View Details