Publications

May 2000 (Revised April 2003)
Case

Contractual Innovation in the UK Energy Markets: Enron Europe, The Eastern Group, and the Sutton Bridge Project

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Peter Tufano

In December 1996, Enron Europe and The Eastern Group were on the verge of signing an innovative transaction in the utility industry. Eastern was going to buy a long-term option to convert natural gas into electricity from Enron, thereby giving it the economic right to... View Details

Keywords: Project Finance; Infrastructure; Supply and Industry; Corporate Finance; Utilities Industry; Energy Industry

Educators

21 Jun 2010
Research & Ideas

Strategy and Execution for Emerging Markets

regulatory framework, and adjudication capability; but in the private sector there is also the need for a tremendous number of institutions and intermediaries such as information analyzers and advisors, transaction facilitators,... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

March 2022 (Revised May 2022)
Case

Reclaiming the Land of Purple: Purpl’s Mission to Unlock Finance in Lebanon

By: Lauren Cohen and Grace Headinger

Karl Naim, Co-Founder and CEO of Purpl, embarked on a venture to lower remittance costs for his native Lebanon. Since October 2019, the Lebanese economy had entered a free fall as its banking sector collapsed and large swathes of its population were plunged into... View Details

Keywords: Business Startup; Fintech; Inflation; Deflation; Cross-border Frictions; Remittances; Business Startups; Diasporas; Financial Crisis; Money; Entrepreneurship; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Poverty; Financial Institutions; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; Lebanon

Educators

2021
Working Paper

Hidden Software and Veiled Value Creation: Illustrations from Server Software Usage

By: Raviv Murciano-Goroff, Ran Zhuo and Shane Greenstein

How do you measure the value of a commodity that transacts at a price of zero from an economic standpoint? This study examines the potential for and extent of omission and misattribution in standard approaches to economic accounting with regards to open source... View Details

Keywords: Server Software; Open Source Distribution; Applications and Software; Analytics and Data Science; Economics; Value Creation; Measurement and Metrics

Find at Harvard

2015
Working Paper

Service Quality, Inventory and Competition: An Empirical Analysis of Mobile Money Agents in Africa

By: Karthik Balasubramanian and David F. Drake

The use of electronic money transfer through cellular networks ("mobile money") is rapidly increasing in the developing world. The resulting electronic currency ecosystem could improve the lives of the estimated 2 billion people who live on less than $2 a day by... View Details

Keywords: Operations Strategy; Base Of The Pyramid; Mobile Money; Inventory Management; Competition; Currency; Service Operations; Mobile and Wireless Technology

SSRN

2008
Working Paper

Finding Missing Markets (and a disturbing epilogue): Evidence from an Export Crop Adoption and Marketing Intervention in Kenya

By: Nava Ashraf, Xavier Gine and Dean Karlan

In much of the developing world, many farmers grow crops for local or personal consumption despite export options which appear to be more profitable. Thus many conjecture that one or several markets are missing. We report here on a randomized controlled trial conducted... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Developing Countries and Economies; Trade; Profit; Product Marketing; Standards; Failure; Risk and Uncertainty; Non-Governmental Organizations; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Service Industry; Kenya; Europe

17 Nov 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Network Effects in Countries’ Adoption of IFRS

Keywords: by Karthik Ramanna & Ewa Sletten

05 Jul 2006
Working Paper Summaries

Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan & Steven R. Anderson; Financial Services

August 2022
Supplement

Sweet Teez Bakery: Projecting the Dough’s Rise Financial Supplement

By: Emily R. McComb, Mel Martin and Amy Klopfenstein

Abstract: In 2021, the HBS Impact Investment Fund student team met with entrepreneur Teresa Maynard, who had applied for a $25,000 impact investment loan. The students thought the former Harvard Data Scientist’s bakery business, Sweet Teez Bakery, showed promise.... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investment; Entrepreneurship; Social Entrepreneurship; Finance; Investment; Goods and Commodities; Financial Reporting; Small Business; Food and Beverage Industry; Massachusetts; United States

January 2013
Case

Omidyar Network: Pioneering Impact Investment

By: Michael Chu and Lauren Barley

Omidyar Network, having deployed to date over $500 million in ways ranging from donations to commercial equity capital, must decide whether to back Anudip, an Indian organization dedicated to providing the rural unemployed and marginalized with livelihoods linked to... View Details

Keywords: Social Enterprise; Social Entrepreneurship; Investment; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; India

Educators

28 Jan 2019
Research & Ideas

Forget Cash. Here Are Better Ways to Motivate Employees

like an empty gesture or a mere financial transaction and may not act as a strong motivator to work hard, Whillans says. It’s best to avoid merely adding a cash bonus to a worker’s paycheck; a separate bonus check stands out more as a... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

Research Summary

Sovereigns, Upstream Capital Flows and Global Imbalances

By: Laura Alfaro

We construct measures of net private and public capital flows for a large cross-section of developing countries considering both creditor and debtor side of the international debt transactions. Using these measures, we demonstrate that sovereign-to-sovereign... View Details

November 2019
Teaching Note

Magnus Resch: Transforming the Art Market Through Transparency

By: Henry McGee and Sarah Mehta

Teaching Note for HBS No. 319-002. This teaching note pairs with a case on economist and entrepreneur Magnus Resch, who is on a mission to make the art market more transparent. He has built the Magnus app, which catalogues the price and transaction history of millions... View Details

Keywords: Art Market; Transparency; Art Pricing; Business Startups; Innovation Strategy; Culture; Business Strategy; Mobile Technology; Fine Arts Industry; Information Technology Industry

2014
Working Paper

Price Coherence and Adverse Intermediation

By: Benjamin Edelman and Julian Wright

Suppose an intermediary provides a benefit to buyers when they purchase from sellers using the intermediary's technology. We develop a model to show that the intermediary will want to restrict sellers from charging buyers more for transactions it intermediates. We show... View Details

Keywords: Intermediaries; Platforms; Two-Sided Markets; Price Coherence; Price; Two-Sided Platforms; Distribution Channels

SSRN

2006
Article

Deposit Collectors

By: Nava Ashraf, Dean Karlan and Wesley Yin

Informal lending and savings institutions exist around the world, and often include regular door-to-door deposit collection of cash. Some banks have adopted similar services in order to expand access to banking services in areas that lack physical branches. Using a... View Details

Find at Harvard

17 Aug 2023
Research & Ideas

‘Not a Bunch of Weirdos’: Why Mainstream Investors Buy Crypto

School of Management; and Tetyana Balyuk of the Emory University Goizeta Business School. The economists analyzed the bank account and credit card transactions of more than 59 million US consumers between January 2010 and May 2021. They... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

2025
Working Paper

Private Equity and Workers: Modeling and Measuring Monopsony, Implicit Contracts, and Efficient Reallocation

By: Kyle Herkenhoff, Josh Lerner, Gordon M. Phillips, Francisca Rebelo and Benjamin Sampson

We measure the real effects of private equity buyouts on worker outcomes by building a new database that links transactions to matched employer-employee data in the United States. To guide our empirical analysis, we derive testable implications from three theories in... View Details

Keywords: Monopsony; Market Power; Productivity; Private Equity; Employment; Wages; Employees

March 2018
Module Note

Module Note for Instructors: Responsibilities to Society

By: Nien-hê Hsieh

This note outlines a framework to help managers discern and deliver on their responsibilities to society that has been taught in the “Responsibilities to Society” module in Leadership and Corporate Accountability (LCA), a semester-long, first-year required course for... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Leadership; Society

2012
Working Paper

Information Technology and Boundary of the Firm: Evidence from Plant-Level Data

By: Chris Forman and Kristina McElheran

We study the relationship between different margins of information technology (IT) use and vertical integration using plant-level data from the U.S. Census of Manufactures. Focusing on the short-run decision of whether to allocate production output to downstream plants... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Technology Adoption; Production; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Vertical Integration; Supply Chain; Manufacturing Industry; United States