Publications

March 1989 (Revised August 1994)
Case

Avon Products

Avon Products announced both a change in its business focus and a reduction of its dividend in June 1988. To offset the likely stock price effect of the dividend reduction, Avon announced at the same time an unusual exchange offer, under which it would take up to 25%... View Details

Keywords: Diversification; Capital Markets; Corporate Finance; Consumer Products Industry

September 2006 (Revised November 2006)
Supplement

SUN Brewing (A) (CW)

The Khemka family of India--founders, managers, and majority owners of Russia-based SUN Brewing--faces a difficult decision in 1998. Following the ruble's massive devaluation in August 1998, the stock price of SUN brewing, which is publicly listed on the Luxemburg... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Emerging Markets; Family Business; Financing and Loans; Capital Markets; Decision Choices and Conditions; Food and Beverage Industry; India; Russia

Article

Do Strict Capital Requirements Raise the Cost of Capital? Bank Regulation, Capital Structure and the Low Risk Anomaly

By: Malcolm Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler

Traditional capital structure theory predicts that reducing banks' leverage reduces the risk and cost of equity but does not change the weighted average cost of capital, and thus the rates for borrowers. We confirm that the equity of better-capitalized banks has lower... View Details

Keywords: Capital Structure; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry

20 Mar 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Catering to Characteristics

Keywords: by Robin Greenwood & Samuel Hanson; Technology

02 Apr 2020
Video

Incorporating Climate Risk into Financial Models: Bob Litterman on Transition Risk

18 Apr 2012
News

Good corporate citizenship can pay off

November 2003 (Revised June 2004)
Case

Samsung and Daewoo: Two Tales of One City

By fiscal year 2000, Samsung had pulled far ahead of other "chaebols," Korean conglomerates. For example, the market value of Samsung affiliates listed on the Korea Stock Exchange exceeded the sum of the market value of listed affiliates of second, third, and fourth... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Business Conglomerates; Corporate Strategy; Emerging Markets; Crisis Management; Electronics Industry; South Korea

May 2012
Article

Global, Local, and Contagious Investor Sentiment

By: Malcolm Baker, Jeffrey Wurgler and Yu Yuan

We construct investor sentiment indices for six major stock markets and decompose them into one global and six local indices. In a validation test, we find that relative sentiment is correlated with the relative prices of dual-listed companies. Global sentiment is a... View Details

Keywords: Business and Shareholder Relations; Globalization; Stocks; Markets; Capital; Financial Services Industry

02 Jul 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Technology Innovation and Diffusion as Sources of Output and Asset Price Fluctuations

Keywords: by Diego A. Comin, Mark Gertler & Ana Maria Santacreu; Technology

January 2025 (Revised March 2025)
Case

Creating Value by Splitting Aster: Can One Minus One Equal Two?

By: V.G. Narayanan and Kairavi Dey

Aster DM Healthcare (Aster), founded by Dr. Azad Moopen in 1987, is a prominent healthcare conglomerate with operations spanning hospitals, clinics, retail pharmacies, and diagnostic centers across India and the GCC. After its 2018 listing on India’s National Stock... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Corporate Accountability; Leadership; Change Management; Mergers and Acquisitions; Restructuring; Negotiation; Valuation; Health Industry; Asia; India; Middle East; United Arab Emirates

2013
Working Paper

Do Strict Capital Requirements Raise the Cost of Capital? Banking Regulation and the Low Risk Anomaly

By: Malcolm Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler

Minimum capital requirements are a central tool of banking regulation. Setting them balances a number of factors, including any effects on the cost of capital and in turn the rates available to borrowers. Standard theory predicts that, in perfect and efficient capital... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Cost of Capital; Capital Markets; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry; United States

March 2015
Article

Signaling to Partially Informed Investors in the Newsvendor Model

By: William Schmidt, Vishal Gaur, Richard Lai and Ananth Raman

We investigate a puzzling phenomenon in which firms make investment decisions that purposefully do not maximize expected profits. Using an extension to the newsvendor model, we focus on a relatively common scenario in which the firm's investor has imperfect information... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment

Register to Read

February 2023
Article

Climate Solutions Investments

By: Alex Cheema-Fox, George Serafeim and Hui (Stacie) Wang

An increasing number of companies are providing products and services that help reduce carbon emissions in the economy. We develop a methodology to identify those companies and create a sample of publicly listed climate solutions companies allowing us to study their... View Details

Keywords: Decarbonization; Climate Finance; Climate Impact; Climate Risk; Environment; Sustainability; Carbon Emissions; Electric Vehicles; Energy; Renewables; Climate Change; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Emerging Markets; Investment Portfolio

SSRN

Research Summary

Wall Street Research

By: Paul M. Healy

Wall Street research helps to support a well-functioning capital market by providing investors with information about investment opportunities, and corporate issuers with liquidity for their stocks. Yet surprisingly little is known about how Wall Street research... View Details

Keywords: Sell-side Analysts; Brokerage; Investment Banking; Buy-side Analysts; Compensation; Financial Services Industry

August 2009 (Revised August 2011)
Case

Nanosolar, Inc.

Nanosolar is a start-up company in the clean tech sector. It expects to be one of the first manufacturers to produce thin-film solar panels using copper indium gallium (di)selenide (CIGS) technology. Although this technology is less efficient in producing electricity... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Renewable Energy; Marketing Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Energy Industry; Green Technology Industry; Europe; United States

2017
Article

Inflation Bets or Deflation Hedges? The Changing Risks of Nominal Bonds

By: John Y. Campbell, Adi Sunderam and Luis M. Viceira

The covariance between U.S. Treasury bond returns and stock returns has moved considerably over time. While it was slightly positive on average in the period 1953–2009, it was unusually high in the early 1980s and negative in the 2000s, particularly in the downturns of... View Details

Keywords: Inflation and Deflation; Bonds; Interest Rates; Investment Return; Risk Management

January – February 2011
Article

Benchmarks as Limits to Arbitrage: Understanding the Low-Volatility Anomaly

By: Malcolm Baker, Brendan Bradley and Jeffrey Wurgler

Contrary to basic finance principles, high-beta and high-volatility stocks have long underperformed low-beta and low-volatility stocks. This anomaly may be partly explained by the fact that the typical institutional investor's mandate to beat a fixed benchmark... View Details

Keywords: Volatility; Stocks; Investment Return; Investment Portfolio; Risk Management; Performance Expectations

November 2016 (Revised March 2018)
Case

Deutsche Bank: Structured Retail Products

By: Boris Vallée and Jérôme Lenhardt

Describes how Deutsche Bank, a leading European bank, is deciding whether or not to launch a new structured retail product in Germany: an autocallable note. Will this product find a market and how does it fit into the bank’s product portfolio? The case investigates how... View Details