Publications
Publications
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(2,118)
- Faculty Publications (549)
- September 2008
- Article
Firm Heterogeneity and Credit Risk Diversification
By: Samuel G. Hanson, M. Hashem Pesaran and Til Schuermann
This paper examines the impact of neglected heterogeneity on credit risk. We show that neglecting heterogeneity in firm returns and/or default thresholds leads to under estimation of expected losses (EL), and its effect on portfolio risk is ambiguous. Once EL is... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
CEO and CFO Career Penalties to Missing Quarterly Analysts Forecasts
By: Rick Mergenthaler, Shiva Rajgopal and Suraj Srinivasan
We find that missing the quarterly analyst consensus earnings forecast is associated with career penalties in the form of a reduced bonus, smaller equity grants, and a greater chance of forced dismissal for both CEOs and CFOs during the period 1993-2004. These results... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
A Replication Study of Alan Blinder's 'How Many U.S. Jobs Might Be Offshorable?'
By: Troy Smith and Jan W. Rivkin
In a 2007 working paper, Alan Blinder assessed the "offshorability" of hundreds of U.S. occupations and estimated that between 22% and 29% of all U.S. jobs were potentially offshorable. This note reports the results of an exercise in which members of Harvard Business... View Details
- 2008
- Chapter
Allocating Marketing Resources
By: Sunil Gupta and Thomas J. Steenburgh
Companies spend billions of dollars on marketing every year because it is essential to organic growth. Given these large investments, marketing managers have the responsibility to optimally allocate resources and to demonstrate that their investments generate... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Investable Tax Credits: The Case of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit
By: Mihir A. Desai, Dhammika Dharmapala and Monica Singhal
The Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) represents a novel tax expenditure program that employs "investable" tax credits to spur production of low-income rental housing. While it has grown into the largest source of new affordable housing in the U.S. and its... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Allocating Marketing Resources
By: Sunil Gupta and Thomas J. Steenburgh
Marketing is essential for the organic growth of a company. Not surprisingly, firms spend billions of dollars on marketing. Given these large investments, marketing managers have the responsibility to optimally allocate these resources and demonstrate that these... View Details
- January 2008
- Background Note
Equity Options
By: Joshua Coval and Erik Stafford
The goal of this simulation is to understand the reliance of option values on volatility. When an investor trades an option, they are essentially trading volatility. Therefore, much of the focus in this lesson is on forecasting volatility. Students are able to use two... View Details
- January 2008 (Revised September 2008)
- Supplement
Marketing the "$100 Laptop" (C)
By: John A. Quelch and David Chen
In October 2007, the OLPC reported production delays and missed its shipment date. In early November, the $100 PC finally went into production, with initial shipments planned for Uruguay and Mongolia, and mid-month launched the "Give One, Get One" program. It enabled... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Attracting Flows by Attracting Big Clients: Conflicts of Interest and Mutual Fund Portfolio Choice
By: Lauren Cohen and Breno Schmidt
We explore a new channel for attracting inflows using a unique dataset of corporate 401(k) retirement plans and their mutual fund family trustees. Families secure substantial inflows by being named trustee of a 401(k) plan. This affords the plan sponsor potential... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Cost of External Finance and Selection into Entrepreneurship
By: Ramana Nanda
This paper examines the extent to which the positive relationship between personal wealth and entry into entrepreneurship is due to financing constraints. I exploit a tax reform and use unique micro-data from Denmark to study how exogenous changes in the cost of... View Details
- December 2007 (Revised January 2008)
- Background Note
Evaluating M&A Deals-Announcement Effects, Risk Arbitrage and Event Risk
The announcement of merger or acquisition conveys new information to the capital markets. This note describes how the stock prices of a Buyer and Target behave after the announcement of a deal. First, for an all-stock deal that is certain to go through, the note... View Details
- November 2007
- Background Note
Bayesian Estimation & Black-Litterman
By: Joshua D. Coval and Erik Stafford
Describes a practical method for asset allocation that is more robust to estimation errors than the traditional implementation of mean-variance optimization with sample means and covariances. The Bayesian inspired Black-Litterman model is described after introducing... View Details
- October 2007 (Revised January 2009)
- Background Note
Analyzing Relative Costs
By: Hanna Halaburda and Jan W. Rivkin
Introduces students to the technique of relative cost analysis, a core technique of strategists. Among the intricate quantitative analyses that strategists undertake, relative cost analysis may be the most common. The goal of a relative cost analysis is simply to... View Details
- October 2007
- Article
The Effectiveness of Pre-Release Advertising for Motion Pictures: An Empirical Investigation Using a Simulated Market
By: Anita Elberse and Bharat N. Anand
One of the most visible and publicized trends in the movie industry is the escalation in movie advertising expenditures over time. Yet, the returns to movie advertising are poorly understood. The main reason is that disentangling the causal effect of advertising on... View Details
- October 2007
- Article
The Power of Stars: Do Star Actors Drive the Success of Movies?
By: Anita Elberse
Is the involvement of star actors critical to the success of motion pictures? Film studios, which they regularly pay multimillion-dollar fees to star actors, seem driven by that belief. I shed light on the returns on this investment using an event study that considers... View Details
- fall 2007
- Article
Estimating Demand Uncertainty Using Judgmental Forecasts
By: Vishal Gaur, Saravanan Kesavan, Ananth Raman and Marshall L. Fisher
- June 2007
- Article
Does Employment Protection Reduce Productivity? Evidence from U.S. States
By: David H Autor, William R. Kerr and Adriana D. Kugler
Theory predicts that mandated employment protections may reduce productivity by distorting production choices. Firms facing (non-Coasean) worker dismissal costs will curtail hiring below efficient levels and retain unproductive workers, both of which should affect... View Details
Keywords: Theory; Production; Selection and Staffing; Cost; Employment; Capital; Performance Productivity; United States
- 2006
- Working Paper
The Value of a 'Free' Customer
By: Sunil Gupta, Carl F. Mela and Jose M. Vidal-Sanz
Central to a firm's growth and marketing policy is the revenus and profit potential of its customer assets. As a result, there has been a recent proliferation of work regarding customer lifetime value. However, extant research in this area is silent regarding how to... View Details
- September 2006
- Article
Dynamic Scoring: A Back-of-the-Envelope Guide
By: Matthew C. Weinzierl and N. Gregory Mankiw
This paper uses the neoclassical growth model to examine the extent to which a tax cut pays for itself through higher economic growth. The model yields simple expressions for the steady-state feedback effect of a tax cut. The feedback is surprisingly large: for... View Details
- August 2006
- Article
Confidence Intervals for Probabilities of Default
By: Samuel G. Hanson and Til Schuermann
In this paper we conduct a systematic comparison of confidence intervals around estimated probabilities of default (PD) using several analytical approaches as well as parametric and nonparametric bootstrap methods. We do so for two different PD estimation... View Details