Publications

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March 2016 (Revised August 2016)
Case

CreditEase: Taking Inclusive Finance Online

By: Michael Chu, John S. Ji and Nancy Hua Dai

The world’s largest peer-to-peer (P2P) lender annually disbursing over a million loans totaling $10 billion, China’s CreditEase, must decide whether to IPO in the NYSE its online lending platform, Yirendai, before the year-end window closes in 2015. Yirendai sought to... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Internet and the Web; Financing and Loans; Credit; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry; China

2010
Working Paper

Employee Selection as a Control System

By: Dennis Campbell

Theories from the economics, management control, and organizational behavior literatures predict that when it is difficult to align incentives by contracting on output, aligning preferences via employee selection may provide a useful alternative. This study... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Decision Making; Governance Controls; Employees; Selection and Staffing; Management Systems; Financial Services Industry

2015
Working Paper

The Probability of Rare Disasters: Estimation and Implications

By: Emil Siriwardane

I analyze a rare disasters economy that yields a measure of the risk neutral probability of a macroeconomic disaster, p*t. A large panel of options data provides strong evidence that p*t is the single factor driving option-implied jump risk measures in the cross... View Details

Keywords: Financial Markets; Forecasting and Prediction; Financial Crisis; Macroeconomics

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April 2017 (Revised August 2020)
Case

The U-Turns of National Truck Stops

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Alexander W. Schultz

Raj Makam had spent months trying to restructure a 2006 investment he had made in National Truck Stops, Inc. (NTS) as a senior member of Oaktree Capital Management’s (Oaktree) Mezzanine finance business within their Corporate Debt platform. It was the first time they... View Details

Keywords: Mezzanine Financing; Corporate Debt; Bankruptcy; Real Assets; Financing and Loans; Borrowing and Debt; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Restructuring; Private Equity; Cost vs Benefits; Atlanta; New York (city, NY)

17 Apr 2009
Working Paper Summaries

The Investment Strategies of Sovereign Wealth Funds

Keywords: by Shai Bernstein, Josh Lerner & Antoinette Schoar; Financial Services

July 2009 (Revised January 2012)
Case

Risk Management at Wellfleet Bank: All That Glitters Is Not Gold

By: Anette Mikes

This case motivates a debate on the role of staff functions, such as risk management: what does it mean for them to be independent, and at the same time, to partner the business lines? The case describes the risk assessment process in the corporate banking arm of... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Judgments; Credit; Banks and Banking; Governance Controls; Risk Management; Mathematical Methods

13 Mar 2023
Op-Ed

How Leaders Should Leave

and two or three adviser friends outside the organization you can trust. Your resignation should be rational, not emotional. What are the financial implications if you don’t have an immediate new job, and what benefits will you lose? Can... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch

Web

Faculty & Researchers - Managing the Future of Work

Bowen Research Associate Ted Smalley Bowen is a Research Associate with the Project on Managing the Future of Work. A veteran journalist and academic case writer, he has covered business, science and technology, public policy, design, and sustainability for The View Details

Web

Becoming a Board Member - Alumni

board. A board bio is typically one page including a headshot and four to five paragraphs that highlight your accomplishments, skills, and credibility. Interpersonal skills Ability to handle complexity and ambiguity Integrity Independent mindedness Collaboration View Details

Fall 2012
Article

Foreign Entry and the Mexican Banking System, 1997-2007

By: Stephen Haber and Aldo Musacchio

What is the impact of foreign bank entry on the pricing and availability of credit in developing economies? The Mexican banking system provides a quasi-experiment to address this question because in 1997 the Mexican government radically changed the laws governing the... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Ownership; Foreign Direct Investment; Laws and Statutes; Developing Countries and Economies; Banking Industry; Mexico

Find at Harvard

June 2007 (Revised March 2008)
Case

Zoots - Financing Growth (A)

By: Michael J. Roberts, William A. Sahlman and Todd Krasnow

Traces the genesis and founding of Zoots, the largest chain of dry cleaning establishments in the U.S. Founded by some of the founders of the very successful Staples chain, the company raises a very large amount of capital without fully proving its business model, and... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Decision Choices and Conditions; Venture Capital; Financial Strategy; Investment Return; Growth and Development Strategy; Valuation; United States

January 2022 (Revised March 2022)
Technical Note

Deglobalization and Alternative Futures

By: Geoffrey Jones and Valeria Giacomin

This note reviews the evidence that the world is undergoing an era of de-globalization. It shows that available metrics show some support for this theory. However there is also evidence that what is happening might be better described as regionalization. The nature of... View Details

Keywords: Global Business; Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, And Changes; Populism; Geopolitics; Business History; Globalization; Change; Financial Crisis; China

September 2022 (Revised January 2023)
Case

DBS: Purpose-Driven Transformation

By: Ranjay Gulati, Adina Wong, Dawn H. Lau and Joseph Mesfin

Singapore-based bank DBS went through three waves of purpose-driven transformation, overhauling the bank’s systems, upgrading employee skills, and re-centering its customer focus, with the bank’s purpose growing bolder with each key milestone achieved. Find out how the... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Alignment; Business Strategy; Balanced Scorecard; Technology Adoption; Mission and Purpose; Change Management; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Asia; Singapore

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