Publications
Publications
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(2,176)
- Faculty Publications (553)
- 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
- 2006
- Other Paper
Estimating the Value of Connections to Vice-President Cheney
By: Ray Fisman, Julia Galef and Rakesh Khurana
- December 2005 (Revised August 2006)
- Case
Amgen Inc.'s Epogen--Commercializing the First Biotech Blockbuster Drug
By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Dennis A. Yao
Amgen Inc.'s Epogen was the first biotech blockbuster drug. Epogen helped prevent anemia, a condition that leads to severe fatigue, increased risk of cardiovascular disease, and even death. At the time, the market for Epogen, which included dialysis patients and... View Details
- July 2005
- Article
The Consequences of Labor Market Flexibility: Panel Evidence Based on Survey Data
By: Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch
We introduce a new data set on hiring and firing restrictions for 21 OECD countries for the period 1984 –1990. The data are based on surveys of business people in the countries covered, so the indices we use are subjective in nature. Controlling for country and time... View Details
- March 2005 (Revised March 2006)
- Background Note
Activity-Based Costing and Capacity
By: Robert S. Kaplan
Discusses the use of budgeted rather than historical data in an activity-based costing (ABC) model and argues for calculating rates using practical capacity, not actual utilization. An ABC model need not be limited to analysis of historical data. When cost driver rates... View Details
- 2005
- Working Paper
Can Mutual Fund Managers Pick Stocks? Evidence from Their Trades Prior to Earnings Announcements
By: Malcolm Baker, Lubomir Litov, Jessica Wachter and Jeffrey Wurgler
We consider measures of stock-picking skill of mutual fund managers based on the earnings announcement returns of the stocks that they hold and trade. Relative to standard approaches, this approach focuses on an especially informative subset of the returns data,... View Details
- 2005
- Working Paper
Pseudo Market Timing and Predictive Regressions
By: Malcolm Baker, Ryan Taliaferro and Jeffrey Wurgler
A number of studies claim that aggregate managerial decision variables, such as aggregate equity issuance, have power to predict stock or bond market returns. Recent research argues that these results may be driven by an aggregate time-series version of Schultz's... View Details
- November 2004
- Article
Unemployment Benefits As a Substitute for a Conservative Central Banker
By: Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch
In the many years since their introduction, positive theories of inflation have rarely been tested. This paper documents a negative relationship between inflation and the welfare state (proxied by the parameters of the unemployment benefit program) that is to be... View Details
- October 2004
- Article
Are Politicians Really Paid Like Bureaucrats?
By: Rafael Di Tella and Raymond Fisman
We provide the first empirical analysis of gubernatorial pay. Using U.S. data for 1950-90, we document substantial variation in the wages of politicians, both across states and overtime. Gubernatorial wages respond to changes in state income per capita and taxes. We... View Details
- September 2004
- Article
Estimating the Market Risk Premium
- May 2004 (Revised April 2006)
- Case
Ultra: The Quest for Leadership (A)
By: Dwight B. Crane and Ricardo Reisen de Pinho
Ultra is one of a small group of competing Brazilian petrochemical companies, each of which buys raw material and is a minority owner of Copene, a "cracking" company that provides ethylene and other materials. Because of an industry restructuring, an auction of shares... View Details
- March 2004 (Revised April 2005)
- Case
Midwest Office Products
By: Robert S. Kaplan
Presents an easy introduction to time-driven activity-based costing (ABC) that allows students to build a simple ABC model of order profitability. Midwest's time-driven ABC approach is based on two categories of parameter estimates. The first is the cost per hour of... View Details