Publications

Educators

February 2009 (Revised April 2011)
Course Overview Note

Growing, Financing, and Managing Family and Closely Held Firms

By: Belen Villalonga

This note provides instructors with an overview of the course, its module structure and its unifying framework. The note contains information that should only be available to instructors, and should not be distributed to students. A shorter version of the note for... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Corporate Finance

November 1998 (Revised April 1999)
Case

Wireless Telecom Negotiation

By: Jay O. Light

A venture capital/private equity fund is preparing to negotiate with the two parties in a prospective PCS joint venture: the entrepreneur and AT&T Wireless. The negotiation will decide how equity and control are shared in the venture. View Details

Keywords: Joint Ventures; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Private Equity; Governance Controls; Negotiation Deal; Wireless Technology; Telecommunications Industry

Educators

November 2019
Supplement

Gillette: Cutting Prices to Regain Share

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher

After losing market share to low-priced competitors such as Harry’s and Dollar Shave Club for several years, Gillette decided to fight back by cutting prices on its razors and blades in April 2017. Bonnie Herzog, an equity analyst at Wells Fargo, must assess how the... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Product Positioning; Business Strategy; Competition; Price; Public Equity; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States

September 2009
Supplement

Consumer Lending in Japan: Citi CFJ (B)

By: J. Gunnar Trumbull and Akiko Kanno

As the regulatory environment for consumer lending evolves, CFJ has to decide how to respond. View Details

Keywords: Personal Finance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Risk Management; Business and Government Relations; Banking Industry; Japan

2000
Chapter

Value Creation and Process Management: Evidence from Retail Banking

By: Frances X. Frei and Patrick T. Harker

Keywords: Value Creation; Business Processes; Business or Company Management; Commercial Banking; Banking Industry

Find at Harvard

2022
Working Paper

Do Startups Benefit from Their Investors' Reputation? Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment

By: Shai Benjamin Bernstein, Kunal Mehta, Richard Townsend and Ting Xu

We analyze a field experiment conducted on AngelList Talent, a large online search platform for startup jobs. In the experiment, AngelList randomly informed job seekers of whether a startup was funded by a top-tier investor and/or was funded recently. We find that the... View Details

Keywords: Startup Labor Market; Investors; Randomized Field Experiment; Certification Effect; Venture Capital; Business Startups; Human Capital; Job Search; Reputation

SSRN

2008
Working Paper

The Contingent Nature of Public Policy and Growth Strategies in the Early Twentieth-Century U.S. Banking Industry

By: Christopher Marquis and Zhi Huang

While effects of public policy are one of the foundations of organizational theory, less explored is how these effects may depend on other external environmental factors. We focus on how policy is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to understand the growth... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Business History; Growth and Development Strategy; Business and Government Relations; Banking Industry; United States

09 Apr 2020
Research & Ideas

How Social Entrepreneurs Can Increase Their Investment Impact

can be profitable while doing good, suggests new research from Benjamin N. Roth, a Harvard Business School assistant professor in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit. “This idea that you're increasing your impact by leveraging capital,... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

11 Feb 2015
Research & Ideas

Politicians Benefited From Using Toxic Loans

opting for the short-term benefits in spite of the risks?” "There is no doubt the transactions were very risky, as interest rates on these loans frequently exceeded 20 percent," says Boris Vallée, an assistant professor in the Finance... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Financial Services

25 May 2016
News

Education Is the Key

Claudio (OPM 12, 1987) and Rosalie Haddad In 1998 Claudio Haddad (OPM 12, 1987) had achieved great success in a nearly 20-year banking career. He easily could have rested on his laurels, but instead, he left the world of finance to put... View Details

20 Aug 2012
Research & Ideas

The Acquirers

understudied subject of business research. After all, the economic activity generated by these deals is huge—North American M&A deals in 2011 were estimated at $450 billion. But another reason, says Harvard View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard; Financial Services

01 Dec 2009
News

Hope for Reform Dims

THAIN: Regulations failed to keep up with innovations in financial markets. A year after the federal government rushed to rescue Wall Street from its own nearly fatal excesses, former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain (MBA ’79) worries “that we aren’t using the crisis to... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Finance; Finance; Finance

2010
Working Paper

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: Developing Countries and Economies; Credit; Banks and Banking; Financing and Loans; Foreign Direct Investment; Market Entry and Exit; Business and Government Relations; Banking Industry; Mexico

February 2009
Article

Optimal Reserve Management and Sovereign Debt

By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk

Most models currently used to determine optimal foreign reserve holdings take the level of international debt as given. However, given the sovereign's willingness-to-pay incentive problems, reserve accumulation may reduce sustainable debt levels. In addition, assuming... View Details

Keywords: Borrowing and Debt; Motivation and Incentives; Decisions; Emerging Markets; Balance and Stability; Earnings Management; Policy; Interest Rates; International Finance; Cost

Find at Harvard

05 Dec 2022
Blog Post

2022 Climate Symposium: Tackling Climate Together

discussions featuring industry experts in the following areas: Energy Transition; Ag-Tech Innovations; Consumer Driven Sustainability; Living with Climate Change; Early Stage Climate Investing; Scaling Carbon Markets; Climate Mitigation & Adaptation in the Built... View Details

Profile

Paola Lara

that, she needed “to address shortcomings in areas like finance and strategy. I’d like to understand and communicate clearly on all business issues.” Once she committed herself to getting an MBA, selecting... View Details

Web

Frequently Asked Questions | MBA

Do I need to complete the AWA section of the GRE or GMAT 10th Edition? Application: GMAC Focus & Business Writing Assessment Do I need to submit a separate writing assessment if I took the GMAT Focus? What is the format of the GMAC View Details

May 2019
Background Note

Founders' Agreements

By: Shikhar Ghosh, Shweta Bagai and Sanchali Pal

Crafting a Founders’ Agreement is an important component of startup infrastructure as it documents a complex set of decisions that build a company’s roots. Its four key elements are: roles and responsibilities, rights (decision rights, rewards, position on board),... View Details

Keywords: Founders' Agreements; Team Management; Contingency Planning; Business Startups; Equity; Entrepreneurship

Educators