Publications

SSRN

Earnings Call that get Lost in Translation

Does the form in which financial information is presented have consequences for the capital markets? The authors examine the level of linguistic complexity of more than 11,000 conference call transcripts from non-US firms between 2002 and 2010.... View Details

06 Jun 2007
Research & Ideas

Behavioral Finance—Benefiting from Irrational Investors

like computers in financial models. Behavioral finance replaces these idealized decision makers with real and imperfect people who have social, cognitive, and emotional biases. My work focuses on how the View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

August 2008 (Revised June 2012)
Case

Martingale Asset Management LP in 2008, 130/30 Funds, and a Low-Volatility Strategy

By: Luis M. Viceira and Helen Tung

In early July of 2008, William (Bill) Jacques, Chief Investment Officer at Martingale Asset Management, a quantitative value-oriented investment manager in Boston, Massachusetts, was busy preparing for an upcoming meeting with the group that made new product decisions... View Details

Keywords: Volatility; Asset Management; Stocks; Financial Strategy; Investment Funds; Product Development

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The Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage

From HBSP: " In a world of stiffening competition, business strategy is more crucial than ever. Yet most organizations struggle in this area--not with formulating strategy but with executing it, or putting their... View Details

15 Nov 2018
Blog Post

Valuing an MBA: Beyond Dollars and “Sense"

pursuing an MBA, common themes aren’t hard to see—not only financial and academic benefits, but also leadership development, opportunities for self-reflection and growth, and meaningful personal relationships. An MBA at HBS requires... View Details

2012
Book

The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup

By: Noam Wasserman

Often downplayed in the excitement of starting up a new business venture is one of the most important decisions entrepreneurs will face: Should they go it alone or bring in cofounders, hires, and investors to help build the business? More than just financial rewards... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Partners and Partnerships; Social Psychology; Outcome or Result

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22 Mar 2011
First Look

First Look: March 22

not important at the aggregate level. Hence, our results support the use of PAYT as an effective tool to increase waste sorting. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/11-093.pdf The Consequences of View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

June 2017
Article

Is Operating Flexibility Harmful under Debt?

By: Nikolaos Trichakis, Dan A. Iancu and Gerry Tsoukalas

We study the inefficiencies stemming from a firm's operating flexibility under debt. We find that flexibility in replenishing or liquidating inventory, by providing risk-shifting incentives, could lead to borrowing costs that erase more than a third of the firm's... View Details

Keywords: Covenants; Risk-shifting; Inventory; Agency Costs; Debt Financing; Risk Management; Borrowing and Debt

15 Sep 2003
Research & Ideas

The Lessons of New-Market Disruption

Teradyne and HP forced their organizations to focus on these new technologies. The CEOs of both companies got involved, creating separate, financially autonomous divisions for the projects to ensure that the technological breakthroughs... View Details

Keywords: by Clark Gilbert; Technology

Article

Market Heterogeneity and Local Capacity Decisions in Services

By: Dennis Campbell and Frances X. Frei

We empirically document factors that influence how local operating managers use discretion to balance the tradeoff between service capacity costs and customer sensitivity to service time. Our findings, using data from one of the largest financial services providers in... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Cost; Standards; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Performance Capacity; Performance Productivity; Financial Services Industry; United States

2017
Working Paper

Economic Uncertainty and Earnings Management

By: Luke C.D. Stein and Charles C.Y. Wang

In the presence of managerial short-termism and asymmetric information about skill and effort provision, firms may opportunistically shift earnings from uncertain to more certain times. We document empirically that when financial markets are less certain about a firm's... View Details

Keywords: Discretionary Accruals; Uncertainty; Implied Volatility; Earnings Response Coefficient; Risk and Uncertainty; Earnings Management; Financial Markets

SSRN

Publications - Faculty & Research

Publications Publications Show Results For All HBS Web (119,594) Faculty Publications (38,089) Page 1 of 38,089 Results September 2025 Article Using Satellites and Phones to Evaluate and Promote Agricultural... View Details

2024
Working Paper

Private Equity Fund Valuation Management during Fundraising

By: Brian K. Baik

I investigate whether and how private equity fund managers (GPs) inflate their interim fund valuations (net asset values or NAVs) during fundraising periods. Specifically, I study the extent to which the GPs inflate NAVs by managing valuation assumptions (e.g.,... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Institutional Investors; Valuation Multiples; Earnings Management; Private Firms; Valuation; Investment Funds

2023
Working Paper

Complexity and Hyperbolic Discounting

By: Benjamin Enke, Thomas Graeber and Ryan Oprea

A large literature shows that people discount financial rewards hyperbolically instead of exponentially. While discounting of money has been questioned as a measure of time preferences, it continues to be highly relevant in empirical practice and predicts a wide range... View Details

Keywords: Hyperbolic Discounting; Present Bias; Bounded Rationality; Cognitive Uncertainty; Behavioral Finance

June 2024 (Revised September 2024)
Case

Driving Scale with Otto

By: Rebecca Karp, David Allen and Annelena Lobb

This case asks how startup founders make scaling decisions in light of their priorities for their business and for themselves. Otto was a technology company that applied artificial intelligence technology to sales. It deployed natural language processing to find sales... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Natural Language Processing; B2B; B2B Innovation; Scaling; Scaling Tech Ventures; Business Startups; AI and Machine Learning; Finance; Sales; Business Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Information Technology Industry; United States; Cambridge; New York (city, NY); Spain

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July 2021
Article

Big Data for Social Benefits: Innovation as a Mediator of the Relationship between Big Data and Corporate Social Performance

By: Goran Calic and Maryam Ghasemaghaei

Over the last decade, the use big data in firms has seen a rapid increase. Whilst scholars have begun to unpack the relationship between big data utilisation and financial performance, significant uncertainty exists about the ethical uses of this new asset. Whether... View Details

Keywords: Analytics and Data Science; AI and Machine Learning; Performance Improvement; Organizational Change and Adaptation

February 2002
Article

Market Timing and Capital Structure

By: Malcolm Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler

It is well known that firms tend to raise equity when their market values are high relative to book and past market values. We document that the resulting effects on capital structure are very persistent. As a consequence, current capital structure is strongly related... View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Equity; Capital Structure; Theory; Market Timing; Financial Markets

17 May 2010
Research & Ideas

What Brazil Teaches About Investor Protection

to mention the Suez Canal). Since I found similar results in an effort by Brazilian corporations to attract small shareholders, I thought that Brazil was also a financial democracy. Yet, in Brazil there was... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Financial Services; Financial Services

June 2004
Article

A Catering Theory of Dividends

By: Malcolm Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler

We propose that the decision to pay dividends is driven by prevailing investor demand for dividend payers. Managers cater to investors by paying dividends when investors put a stock price premium on payers, and by not paying when investors prefer nonpayers. To test... View Details

Keywords: Dividends; Catering; Financial Instruments; Investment Return; Business and Shareholder Relations