Publications

May 2024 (Revised March 2025)
Case

MStudio and Djoli: Accelerating Startup Growth in Francophone Africa

By: Paul A. Gompers, Pippa Tubman Armerding and Temitayo Lawal

Djoli, a procurement platform, was one of the startups launched and supported by MStudio, a startup studio in Côte d'Ivoire, in 2023. After a year of operations, Djoli must look beyond MStudio, which had supported them financially and in kind in exchange for equity,... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Distribution Industry; Technology Industry; Africa; Côte d'Ivoire

April 2008
Supplement

Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd. (B)

By: Paul W. Marshall, Michael Shih-ta Chen and Keith Chi-ho Wong

In late November 2000, Chung Telecom Co., Ltd., the once-monopolized telecom operator owned by the Taiwanese government, was on its way to privatization. Mr. C.K. Mao, Chairman of the company, was headed the job only three months earlier, after its prior chairman... View Details

Keywords: State Ownership; Jobs and Positions; Monopoly; Privatization; Competition; Decisions; Motivation and Incentives; Labor and Management Relations; Resignation and Termination; Compensation and Benefits; Price; Status and Position; Telecommunications Industry; Public Administration Industry; Taiwan

2017
Working Paper

Diversity in Innovation

By: Paul A. Gompers and Sophie Q. Wang

In this paper we document the patterns of labor market participation by women and ethnic minorities in venture capital firms and as founders of venture capital-backed startups. We show that from 1990-2016 women have been less than 10% of the entrepreneurial and venture... View Details

Keywords: Diversity; Gender; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital

September 21, 2013
Other Article

Redefining Global Health-care Delivery

By: Jim Yong Kim, Paul E. Farmer and Michael E. Porter

Initiatives to address the unmet needs of those facing both poverty and serious illness have expanded significantly over the past decade. But many of them are designed in an ad-hoc manner to address one health problem among many; they are too rarely assessed; best... View Details

Keywords: Health

November 2021
Article

Venture Capitalists and COVID-19

By: Paul A. Gompers, Will Gornall, Steven N. Kaplan and Ilya A. Strebulaev

We survey over 1,000 institutional and corporate venture capitalists (VCs) at more than 900 different firms to learn how their decisions and investments have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. We compare their survey answers to those provided by a large sample of... View Details

Keywords: Investment Decisions; COVID-19 Pandemic; Impact; Health Pandemics; Venture Capital; Investment; Decision Making; Surveys

October 2000 (Revised October 2000)
Case

Off-Balance Sheet Leases in the Restaurant Industry

By: Amy P. Hutton, Paul M. Healy and Jacob Cohen

Amid mounting concern by credit agencies about off-balance sheet liabilities, an analyst for one of the leading credit-rating agencies has been asked to make a presentation about off-balance sheet liabilities, the strategic analysis behind leasing versus purchasing... View Details

Keywords: Fair Value Accounting; Property; Leasing; Financial Statements; Capital Structure; Credit; Financial Services Industry

30 Oct 2012
First Look

First Look: October 30

Michael W. Toffel Publication:Organization Science (forthcoming) Abstract Governments and other organizations often outsource activities to achieve cost savings from market competition. Yet such benefits are often accompanied by poor... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

02 Oct 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, October 2, 2018

farm refers to a complex of rights and duties secured by contract in which a sovereign transferred the temporary exploitation of a holding for rent in advance. It was one of four tenurial complexes under which entitlements fell, the... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

March 2022
Article

Gender Gaps in Venture Capital Performance

By: Paul A. Gompers, Vladimir Muhkarlyamov, Emily Weisburst and Yuhai Xuan

We explore gender differences in performance in a comprehensive sample of venture capital investments in the United States. Investments by female venture capital investors have significantly lower success rates than investments by their male colleagues when controlling... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Investment; Performance; Gender

October 2021
Article

Directors' Perceptions of Board Effectiveness and Internal Operations

By: J. Yo-Jud Cheng, Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and Rajesh Vijayaraghavan

We contribute to the growing literature on the effectiveness of corporate boards by examining the effect of two insights that have been largely unexplored in prior studies that use public data. First, since boards’ responsibilities are wide-ranging, more holistic... View Details

Keywords: Boards Of Directors; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Performance Effectiveness; Perception

2017
Working Paper

And the Children Shall Lead: Gender Diversity and Performance in Venture Capital

By: Paul A. Gompers and Sophie Q. Wang

With an overall lack of gender and ethnic diversity in the innovation sector documented in Gompers and Wang (2017), we ask the natural next question: Does increased diversity lead to better firm performances? In this paper, we attempt to answer this question using a... View Details

Keywords: Diversity; Gender; Venture Capital; Performance Improvement; Capital Markets

SSRN

October 2013 (Revised December 2015)
Case

Alcoa's Bid for Alcan (A)

By: Paul Healy and Penelope Rossano

In spring 2007, Alcoa CEO Alain Belda was concerned about the company's market position in light of increased competition from developing markets. China's recent entry into the aluminum market was affecting both supply and demand. Furthermore, downstream and upstream... View Details

Keywords: Acquisitions; Strategy; Aluminum; Accounting; Financials; Alcoa; Rio Tinto; Alcan; Metals and Minerals; Competition; Consolidation; Emerging Markets; Acquisition; Financial Statements; Manufacturing Industry; Canada; China; Russia

10 Jan 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research: January 10, 2017

forthcoming HarperCollins Kissinger the Negotiator: Lessons from Dealmaking at the Highest Level By: Sebenius, James K., R. Nicholas Burns, and Robert H. Mnookin (with a forward by Henry A. Kissinger) Abstract—As professors and... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Article

Improved Bounds on the Sizes of S.P Numbers

By: Paul Myer Kominers and Scott Duke Kominers

A number which is S.P in base r is a positive integer which is equal to the sum of its base-r digits multiplied by the product of its base-r digits. These numbers have been studied extensively in The Mathematical Gazette. Recently, Shah Ali... View Details

Keywords: Mathematical Methods

2023
Working Paper

The Market for CEOs: Evidence from Private Equity

By: Paul A. Gompers, Steven N. Kaplan and Vladimir Mukharlyamov

Most research on the CEO labor market studies public company CEOs while largely ignoring CEOs in private equity (PE) funded companies. We fill this gap by studying the market for CEOs among U.S. companies purchased by PE firms in large leveraged buyout transactions.... View Details

Keywords: CEOs; Jobs and Positions; Ownership; Recruitment

01 Feb 2011
First Look

First Look: Feb. 1

When information is asymmetric (the quality of a potential partner is known only to himself), it may seem that partner choice is not possible without signaling. Many mutualisms, however, exist without signaling, and the mechanisms by... View Details

03 Sep 2013
First Look

First Look: September 3

developed between analysts and managers by investigating analyst coverage decisions in the context of CEO and CFO moves between publicly listed firms. We find that top executive moves from an origin firm to a destination firm trigger... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

11 Nov 2014
First Look

First Look: November 11

implementing a national evaluation system of green GDP, and before forming the system complexity model, the easiest issues first can be taken to establish the evaluation system of economic, environmental, and social responsibility respectively, which will be integrated... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2024 (Revised June 2024)
Case

Kashat: Navigating the Uncertainties of the Egyptian Fintech Market

By: Paul A. Gompers and Ahmed Dahawy

Karim Nour, the founder of Kashat, an Egyptian nano-lending fintech company, is contemplating how to manage the growth of his startup. Over the summer of 2022, Kashat's loan disbursements had grown by nearly 40%, fueled by macroeconomic instability in Egypt. However,... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; Business Model; Developing Countries and Economies; Acquisition; Business Exit or Shutdown; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Financing and Loans; Capital; Financial Services Industry; Banking Industry; Egypt