Publications

October 2012
Case

Harrah's Entertainment

By: Paul A. Gompers, Kristin Mugford and J. Daniel Kim

This case examines the issues of establishing and managing a capital structure for the leveraged buyout of Harrah's Entertainment. View Details

Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Debt Markets; Loan Contracts; Covenants; Casinos; Gaming; Private Equity; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States

September 2012 (Revised August 2013)
Background Note

A Brief History of the U.S. Tobacco Industry Controversy

By: Sandra J. Sucher and Henry McGee

This history of the U.S. tobacco controversy is a reading for a class on "The Insider," a film about whistleblowing in the U.S. tobacco industry, taught in the course, The Moral Leader. View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Ethics; United States

September 2012 (Revised March 2013)
Teaching Note

Ultimate Fighting Championship: License to Operate (A) & (B) (TN)

By: George Serafeim

The case describes the challenges that Ultimate Fighting Championship faced as a result of regulatory opposition and loss of the license to operate. The genesis of the business idea, the subsequent growth, and the fall of the UFC are described. The case concludes with... View Details

Keywords: Governance Compliance; Ethics; Judgments; Investment; Sports Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States

July 2012 (Revised May 2024)
Case

Lyric Dinner Theater (A)

By: Richard G. Hamermesh and Jim Sharpe

Looking back at five years of losses, Rivka Belzer, a newly minted MBA, steps into her family owned business with their mandate to turn it around or close it. In her first six months, she has made a number of changes, with mixed results, but is beginning to show a... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurs; Entrepreneurial Management; Crisis Management; Family Business; Turnarounds; Financial Crisis; Boards Of Directors; Operations Management; Strategy Implementation; Career Planning; Entrepreneurship; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States

October 2013
Article

How Firms Respond to Mandatory Information Disclosure

By: Anil R. Doshi, Glen W.S. Dowell and Michael W. Toffel

Mandatory information disclosure regulations seek to create institutional pressure to spur performance improvement. By examining how organizational characteristics moderate establishments' responses to a prominent environmental information disclosure program, we... View Details

Keywords: Information Disclosure; Institutional Theory; Environmental Strategy; Mandatory Disclosure; Environmental Performance; Information; Corporate Disclosure; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Performance Improvement; Environmental Sustainability; Manufacturing Industry; United States

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

March 2012
Article

Reviving Entrepreneurship

By: Josh Lerner and William Sahlman

New enterprises don't exist in a vacuum: They rise or fall depending on myriad contextual factors, all of them interrelated, and all of them affected by government policy. U.S. lawmakers must carefully consider the effects of interventions in at least 12 areas, ranging... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Government and Politics; Policy; Economy; Public Administration Industry; United States

Register to Read

March 2012
Article

How to Make Finance Work

By: Robin Greenwood and David S. Scharfstein

Once a sleepy old boys' club, the U.S. financial sector is now a dynamic and growing business that attracts the best and the brightest. It is tempting to declare the industry a roaring success. But its purpose is to serve the needs of U.S. households and firms, and by... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Value; Competitive Advantage; Investment; Performance Evaluation; Household; Financial Crisis; Finance; Financial Services Industry; United States

April 2013
Article

An fMRI Investigation of Racial Paralysis

By: Michael I. Norton, Malia F. Mason, Joseph A. Vandello, Andrew Biga and Rebecca Dyer

We explore the existence and underlying neural mechanism of a new norm endorsed by both black and white Americans for managing interracial interactions: "racial paralysis," the tendency to opt out of decisions involving members of different races. We show that people... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Race; Judgments; Decision Choices and Conditions; Personal Characteristics; United States

September 26, 2011
Article

A Two-Pronged Approach to Reforming International Corporate Taxes in the U.S.

By: Robert C. Pozen

Keywords: Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Taxation; United States

March 2012 (Revised December 2012)
Case

Foro Energy (A)

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, William A. Sahlman and James McQuade

Foro Energy developed proprietary and patent-pending fiber-laser technologies that could disrupt existing processes and services for the exploration and production of oil and natural gas. These breakthrough laser technologies were protected by a strong intellectual... View Details

Keywords: Disruptive Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Entrepreneurship; United States

2011
Other Unpublished Work

What Do Private Firms Look Like?

By: John Asker, Joan Farre-Mensa and Alexander Ljungqvist

Private firms in the U.S. are not subject to public reporting requirements, so relatively little is known about their characteristics and behavior—until now. This Data Appendix describes a new database on private U.S. firms, created by Sageworks Inc. in cooperation... View Details

Keywords: Data and Data Sets; Behavior; Public Sector; Corporate Disclosure; Private Sector; Financial Statements; United States

SSRN

February 2012 (Revised December 2013)
Case

Saks Incorporated

By: Carliss Baldwin and Stefon Burns

Saks Fifth Avenue, a luxury department store chain, has been hard hit by the 2008 financial crisis and stock market crash. Speculation about impending bankruptcy is rampant in the press. The CEO, Stephen Sadove, must decide how to respond. View Details

Keywords: Retail; Fashion; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Financial Crisis; Fashion Industry; Retail Industry; United States

February 2012 (Revised May 2012)
Case

Boston Physicians Devices

By: Marc Bertoneche

Keywords: Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; United States

2011
Working Paper

Fairness, Efficiency and Flexibility in Organ Allocation for Kidney Transplantation

By: Dimitris Bertsimas, Vivek F. Farias and Nikolaos Trichakis

We propose a scalable, data-driven method for designing national policies for the allocation of deceased donor kidneys to patients on a waiting list, in a fair and efficient way. We focus on policies that have the same form as the one currently used in the U.S. In... View Details

Keywords: Fairness; Policy; Health Disorders; Marketplace Matching; Performance Effectiveness; Rank and Position; Health Industry; United States

December 2011 (Revised September 2014)
Case

The Kid Grows Up: Decisions at the Sundance Institute

By: Mukti Khaire and Eleanor Kenyon

The Sundance case raises the question of how markets for innovative cultural products can be created and what the role of intermediaries in creative industries ought to be. The case describes the history of the Sundance Institute, which was founded by actor/director... View Details

Keywords: Entertainment; Entrepreneurship; Decision Making; Film Entertainment; Motion Pictures and Video Industry; United States