Publications

2025
Working Paper

Evaluations Amid Measurement Error: Determining the Optimal Timing for Workplace Interventions

By: Matthew DosSantos DiSorbo, Iavor I. Bojinov and Fiammetta Menchetti

Researchers have embraced factorial experiments to simultaneously evaluate multiple treatments, each with different levels. Typically, in large-scale factorial experiments, the primary objective is identifying the treatment with the largest causal effect, especially... View Details

Keywords: Factorial Designs; Fisher Randomizations; Rank Estimators; Employer Interventions; Causal Inference; Mathematical Methods; Performance Improvement

SSRN

August 2007 (Revised June 2020)
Case

Trouble with a Bubble

By: Tom Nicholas

Examines technology, firm performance, and the stock market during the 1929 Great Crash and the Great Depression of the 1930s. The 1920s was an extraordinary period of technological progress marked by a strong run-up in stock market prices. Firms invested heavily in... View Details

Keywords: Bubble; Stock Market; Great Depression; Irving Fisher; Information Technology; Organizational Change and Adaptation; History; Financial Markets; Performance; Labor and Management Relations; Equity; Financial Crisis; Innovation and Invention; United States

Trevor Fetter is a Senior Lecturer and the Henry B. Arthur Fellow at Harvard Business School, where he has been on the faculty since 2019. He teaches two MBA required courses: Financial Reporting and Control and Leadership and Corporate Accountability. He has also... View Details

October 2016 (Revised October 2017)
Case

Misaki Capital and Sangetsu Corporation

By: Ian Gow, Charles C.Y. Wang, Naoko Jinjo and Nobuo Sato

Japan’s corporate culture has traditionally prioritized the interests of stakeholders such as customers, employees, and suppliers over those of shareholders. After a decades-long economic slump, Japan’s government has revitalized efforts to improve corporate governance... View Details

Keywords: Activist Investing; Constructivist Investing; Japan; Valuation; Stock Screens; Return On Equity; Investment; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Corporate Governance; Financial Strategy; Business and Shareholder Relations; Japan

March 2012
Article

The Incentive Bubble

By: Mihir Desai

The past three decades have seen American capitalism quietly transformed by a single, powerful idea—that financial markets are a suitable tool for measuring performance and structuring compensation. Stock instruments for managers, high-powered incentive contracts for... View Details

Keywords: Economic Systems; Financial Markets; Executive Compensation; Motivation and Incentives; Corporate Governance; Equality and Inequality; Human Capital; United States

Teaching Interest

MBA Elective Curriculum: Investment Strategies

By: Malcolm P. Baker

This is a CORE course for students pursuing careers in finance. Thus, students interested in pursuing careers in mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, endowments, wealth management, financial consulting, marketing and client service, sales and trading,... View Details

Article

Specialization and Success: Evidence from Venture Capital

By: Paul A. Gompers, Anna Kovner and Josh Lerner

This paper examines how organizational structure affects behavior and outcomes, studying the performance of different types of venture capital organizations. We find a strong positive relationship between the degree of specialization by individual venture capitalists... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Venture Capital; Organizational Structure; Outcome or Result; Performance Effectiveness; Behavior; Financial Services Industry

Find at Harvard

August 2024
Article

Not a One-Trick Pony: Price Impact of Rating Agency Information

By: Michael Machokoto and Anywhere Sikochi

Prior literature on the informational role of credit rating agencies has largely focused on announcements by the rating agencies regarding rating actions. We take a tangent in this paper and examine the relevance of rating agencies' other information disclosures beyond... View Details

Keywords: Credit; Investment Return; Financial Reporting

2016
Working Paper

Pros vs Joes: Agent Pricing Behavior in the Sharing Economy

By: Jun Li, Antonio Moreno and Dennis J. Zhang

One of the major differences between markets that follow a “sharing economy” paradigm and traditional two-sided markets is that the supply side in the sharing economy often includes individual nonprofessional decision makers, in addition to firms and professional... View Details

Keywords: Two-sided Market; Sharing Economy; Behavioral Economics; Revenue Management; Hospitality; Two-Sided Platforms; Price; Behavior; Experience and Expertise

SSRN

05 May 2009
First Look

First Look: May 5, 2009

Survive—Thrive: Leading Innovation in Good Times and Bad Authors:Lynda M. Applegate and Bruce Harreld Abstract Battered by contracting markets and frozen credit, many businesses today are fighting for survival. Indeed, the current global View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

25 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

Chasing Stars: Why the Mighty Red Sox Struck Out

performance decline when they move from one team to another; they operate fairly independently. (In the corporate world, the somewhat autonomous position of the chief financial officer is analogous to that... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Sports; Banking

July 2010
Case

Mekong Capital: Building a Culture of Leadership in Vietnam

By: Christopher Marquis, Vinay Ganti, Kevin Smith and Doug Guthrie

Mekong Capital, a private equity firm specializing in investing in Vietnam, had grown dramatically since its inception in 2002 and faced numerous organizational issues in 2007. There was a shortage of qualified middle managers, an overall lack of leadership, and a... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Leading Change; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Performance Improvement; Groups and Teams; Alignment; Financial Services Industry

2025
Working Paper

Is Love Blind? AI-Powered Trading with Emotional Dividends

By: De-Rong Kong and Daniel Rabetti

We leverage the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) setting to assess the valuation of emotional dividends (LOVE), a long-standing empirical challenge in private-value markets such as art, antiques, and collectibles. Having created and validated our proxy, we use deep learning... View Details

Keywords: NFTs; Non-fungible Tokens; AI and Machine Learning; Valuation; Financial Markets

SSRN

2023
Working Paper

The Stock Market and Bank Risk-Taking

By: David S. Scharfstein and Antonio Falato

Using confidential supervisory risk ratings, we document that banks increase risk after they go public compared to a control group of banks that filed to go public but withdrew their filings for plausibly exogenous reasons. The increase in risk increases short-term... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Banks and Banking; Going Public; Performance; Stocks

May 2022 (Revised June 2024)
Case

LOOP: Driving Change in Auto Insurance Pricing

By: Elie Ofek and Alicia Dadlani

John Henry and Carey Anne Nadeau, co-founders and co-CEOs of LOOP, an insurtech startup based in Austin, Texas, were on a mission to modernize the archaic $250 billion automobile insurance market. They sought to create equitably priced insurance by eliminating pricing... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Technological Innovation; Equality and Inequality; Prejudice and Bias; Growth and Development Strategy; Customer Relationship Management; Price; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry