Publications

December 1999 (Revised October 2006)
Case

Praedium Corporation

By: Henry B. Reiling and Catherine M. Conneely

George Hicks and Patricia Ferrey, primary shareholders of the Praedium Corp., faced a dilemma that could dissolve their real estate management company. Praedium received an attractive offer to lease one of its properties, however, Hicks did not want to terminate the... View Details

Keywords: Leasing; Property; Taxation; Investment Return; Real Estate Industry; Construction Industry

January 1998 (Revised April 1998)
Case

Sealed Air Corporation: Globalization and Corporate Culture (B)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Karen Wruck

Sealed Air Corp.'s CEO and COO are considering what approach they should take to building a seamless corporate culture worldwide. Anticipating continuing growth and expansion, especially outside the United States, they are concerned with preserving and promoting the... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Culture; Business or Company Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Expansion; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Policy; Leadership; United States; Europe; Asia

July 2024
Module Note

Organization: Managing the Corporation

By: David J. Collis

Ongoing management of the corporate portfolio is critical to realizing value in diversified companies. This requires designing and administering structures, systems, and processes appropriate for the set of businesses and the resources that underpin value creation... View Details

Keywords: Organization; Corporate Strategy; Business Conglomerates; Business or Company Management; Diversification; Value Creation; Corporate Governance; Business Units

14 Oct 2013
Research & Ideas

Time that Government Reopens for Business

Summers as the successor to Ben Bernanke. That saga left many people in business and finance concerned. If politicians in Washington, DC, are having an argument about something as do-or-die as the debt... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Aisner

October 2022
Article

Sovereign Risk, Currency Risk, and Corporate Balance Sheets

By: Wenxin Du and Jesse Schreger

We provide a comprehensive account of the evolution of the currency composition of sovereign and corporate external borrowing by emerging markets from 2003 to 2017. We show that a higher reliance on foreign currency debt by the corporate sector is associated with... View Details

Keywords: Currency; International Finance

January 2008
Article

On the Pricing of Intermediated Risks: Theory and Application to Catastrophe Reinsurance

By: K. A. Froot and P. O'Connell

Keywords: Catastrophe Risk; Corporate Finance; Banking And Insurance; Hedging; Banking; Financial Markets; Insurance; Policy; Risk Management; Natural Disasters; Cost of Capital; Asset Pricing; Insurance Industry

October 2006 (Revised November 2006)
Course Overview Note

Instructor's Guide to Leadership and Corporate Accountability (LCA)

By: Lynn S. Paine

To provide instructors with a roadmap to the Harvard Business School's required first-year MBA Course Leadership and Corporate Accountability. Describes the objectives of the course, as well as its structure, content, and guiding framework. A day-by-day synopsis,... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Corporate Accountability

April 2018 (Revised September 2023)
Case

Sabine Oil & Gas Corporation

By: Stuart C. Gilson, Kristin Mugford and Sarah L. Abbott

In 2016, a trial began to determine the future of Sabine Oil & Gas Corporation’s $3 billion chapter 11 reorganization plan. The plan called for first- and second-lien-secured creditors to receive new claims representing approximately 98% of the reorganized company’s... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Reorganization; Chapter 11; Oil ＆ Gas; Bankruptcy; Bankruptcy Reorganization; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Energy; Restructuring; Valuation; United States

10 Jan 2017
News

The Risk And Opportunity For America's Corporate Pension Plans

February 2021
Case

Veracity Worldwide: Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Risk

By: Kristin Fabbe

Keywords: ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance

08 May 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Corporate and Integrated Reporting: A Functional Perspective

Keywords: by Robert Eccles & George Serafeim

2018
Chapter

Behavioral Household Finance

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian

This chapter provides an overview of household finance. The first part summarizes key facts regarding household financial behavior, emphasizing empirical regularities that are inconsistent with the standard classical economic model and discussing extensions of the... View Details

Keywords: Personal Finance; Global Range; Household; Behavior; Strategy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Product Design; Welfare

Read Now

02 Nov 2016
Op-Ed

Government and Financial Tech Can Fix Cash Woes for Small Businesses

products and services. Making the payrolls that support middle class families across the country. These are all things we rely on small businesses for, so we should look with more than just casual interest at how technology, View Details

Keywords: by Karen Mills

October 2023 (Revised March 2024)
Case

KOKO Networks: Bridging Energy Transition and Affordability with Carbon Financing

By: George Serafeim, Siko Sikochi and Namrata Arora

The problem was massive: two million hectares of African forests were lost annually to charcoal production for cooking, an area equivalent to 13 times Greater London, resulting in one billion tons of carbon emissions yearly. At the same time, an estimated 700,000... View Details

08 Aug 2018
Sharpening Your Skills

Parmigiano-Reggiano, Jane Austen, and Other Things You Didn't Know About Finance

MarsYu Who says finance is boring? These stories, written about HBS faculty research and case studies, cover such diverse topics as financial adviser robots, the rise of impact investing, View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Financial Services

July 2015
Article

The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Investment Recommendations: Analysts' Perceptions and Shifting Institutional Logics

By: Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim

We explore the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) ratings on sell-side analysts' assessments of firms' future financial performance. We suggest that when analysts perceive CSR as an agency cost, due to the prevalence of an agency logic, they produce... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility; Analysts; Investment Recommendations; Sustainability; Institutional Logics; Environment; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Investment; Corporate Governance; United States

2021
Working Paper

The Incidence of the Corporate Income Tax Is Irrelevant for Its (Benefit-Based) Justification

By: Matthew C. Weinzierl

Robust support for corporate income taxation is a puzzle for standard tax theory because the tax’s incidence is uncertain and unreliable. We propose a resolution: if the corporate tax is seen as a benefit-based tax, its normative appeal depends on the correspondence... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Income Tax; Benefit-based Taxation; Business Ventures; Taxation

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March 2023
Article

Attracting the Sharks: Corporate Innovation and Securities Class Action Lawsuits

By: Elisabeth Kempf and Oliver Spalt

This paper provides novel evidence suggesting that securities class action lawsuits, a central pillar of the U.S. litigation and corporate governance system, can constitute an obstacle to valuable corporate innovation. We first establish that valuable innovation output... View Details

Keywords: Class-action Litigation; Turnover; Lawsuits and Litigation; Innovation and Invention; Risk and Uncertainty