Publications
Publications
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(12,859)
- Faculty Publications (4,241)
- 2022
- Working Paper
High-Yield Debt Covenants and Their Real Effects
By: Falk Bräuning, Victoria Ivashina and Ali Ozdagli
High-yield debt including leveraged loans is characterized by incurrence financial covenants, or “cov-lite” provisions. A traditional loan agreement includes maintenance covenants, which require continuous compliance with the covenant threshold, and their violation... View Details
- March 2022 (Revised December 2022)
- Case
Perch
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Stacy Straaberg and Julia Kelley
In May 2021, Perch CEO Chris Bell needed to decide whether his e-commerce aggregator company, which bought and scaled Amazon Marketplace brands, should acquire up to three acquisition targets. The prospective acquisitions, Web Deals Direct, HomeCo, and Future Brands,... View Details
Keywords: Business Ventures; Acquisition; Business Growth and Maturation; Decision Making; Cost vs Benefits; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decisions; Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Strategy; Business Strategy; Integration; E-commerce; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; Technology Industry; North America; United States; Massachusetts; Boston; California; Asia; Philippines
- 2022
- Chapter
Sustainability for People and the Planet: Placing Workers at the Center of Sustainability Research
By: Julie Yen, Julie Battilana and Emilie Aguirre
Though workers face a series of critical challenges in contemporary work organizations, they are often overlooked in conversations about sustainable business. In this chapter, we argue that prioritizing the rights and well-being of workers is a core dimension of... View Details
- March 2022
- Article
When Less Is More: Consumers Prefer Brands that Donate More in Relative versus Absolute Terms
By: Elizabeth A. Keenan, Anne V. Wilson and Leslie K. John
When trying to make a good impression on consumers through charitable giving, is it better for brands to maximize the overall dollars they donate or how much they give in relative terms; for example, the proportion of profits? Across five studies we show that consumers... View Details
- February 23, 2022
- Article
Can WEB3 Bring Back Competition to Digital Platforms?
By: Christian Catalini and Scott Duke Kominers
Like the early Internet, blockchain and Web3 applications promise a new wave of decentralization and competition—yet at the same time, it is unclear which of the dynamics that drove concentration in online platforms and services will remain in force under the Web3... View Details
- February 2022
- Case
Toraya
By: Lauren Cohen and Akiko Kanno
Mitsuharu Kurokawa was the 18th generation leader of a family firm that produced and sold premium Japanese sweets, Toraya Confectionery Co., Ltd. He had succeeded the business from his father, Mitsuhiro Kurokawa who had led the firm for thirty years. Mitsuharu was... View Details
- February 2022 (Revised January 2024)
- Supplement
Winning Business at Russell Reynolds (C)
By: Ethan Bernstein and Cara Mazzucco
In an effort to make compensation drive collaboration, Russell Reynolds Associates’ (RRA) CEO Clarke Murphy sought to re-engineer the bonus system for his executive search consultants in 2016. As his HR analytics guru, Kelly Smith, points out, that risks upsetting—and... View Details
- February 2022 (Revised November 2022)
- Case
Fondeadora
By: Álvaro Rodríguez Arregui and Mitchell Weiss
Norman Müller and René Serrano, cofounders of Fondeadora, a Mexican “neobank,” had lined up a $12.5 million in Series A funding round in 2020 only to run into a major obstacle: The lead investor was Gradient Ventures, a venture firm launched by Alphabet, Inc., and... View Details
- February 2022
- Case
NFX Capital and Moov Technologies
By: Scott Duke Kominers and Nicole Tempest Keller
In July 2019, James Currier, a general partner at San Francisco-based NFX Ventures, was considering a seed stage investment of $1.5 million in Moov Technologies, a B2B marketplace for used industrial equipment. NFX was a venture capital firm focused on seed-stage... View Details
- 2022
- Chapter
Creating 'Smart' Policy to Promote Entrepreneurship and Innovation
By: Karen G. Mills and Annie Dang
Entrepreneurship is a key to unlocking innovation and fostering regional and national economic productivity. Extensive studies demonstrate that small and young firms contribute to innovation and employment growth. But which of the many types of small firms are... View Details
- 2022
- Book
Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies
By: Ranjay Gulati
This book offers a compelling reassessment and defense of purpose as a management ethos, documenting the vast performance gains and social benefits that become possible when firms manage to get purpose right. Few business topics have aroused more skepticism in recent... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Hate Crime Increases with Minoritized Group Rank
People are on the move in unprecedented numbers within and between countries. How does demographic change affect local intergroup dynamics? In complement to accounts that emphasize stereotypical features of groups as determinants of their treatment, we propose the... View Details
- February 2022 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
MicroStrategy's Investment in Bitcoin
By: C. Fritz Foley
At the end of the second quarter of 2020, MicroStrategy, a Virginia based provider of analytics software and services, announced plans to acquire and hold bitcoin as a part of the firm’s treasury reserve policy and corporate strategy. Within a year, the firm purchased... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Racial Disparities in the Paycheck Protection Program
By: Sergey Chernenko and David S. Scharfstein
Using a large sample of Florida restaurants, we document significant racial disparities in borrowing through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and investigate the causes of these disparities. Black-owned restaurants are 25% less likely to receive PPP loans.... View Details
- February 2022
- Article
Taxation and Innovation in the 20th Century
By: Ufuk Akcigit, John Grigsby, Tom Nicholas and Stefanie Stantcheva
This paper studies the effect of corporate and personal taxes on innovation in the United States over the twentieth century. We build a panel of the universe of inventors who patent since 1920, and a historical state-level corporate tax database with corporate tax... View Details
- 2022
- Chapter
The Servicification of the U.S. Economy: The Role of Startups versus Incumbent Firms
By: Mercedes Delgado, J. Daniel Kim and Karen G. Mills
Over the last few decades, the U.S. economy has exhibited a significant shift from manufacturing towards services. This transition has been particularly prominent in an important subcategory of services industries that drives innovation and employs many high-wage... View Details
- January 2022
- Background Note
Common Prosperity? China Shifts Left
By: William C. Kirby and Noah B. Truwit
Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been mistrustful of entrepreneurs and the private sector that operates outside the government’s authority. In its first decades under Mao Zedong, the CCP... View Details
Keywords: Market Reform; Gdp; Government Administration; Government and Politics; Private Sector; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Economy; Globalized Economies and Regions; Entrepreneurship; Business and Government Relations; Globalized Markets and Industries; Social Issues; Society; Economic Growth; China
- January 2022
- Case
Fueling a Cleaner Future: ACWA Power and Green Hydrogen
By: Dennis Yao and Alpana Thapar
In January 2020, Paddy Padmanathan, president and CEO of ACWA Power, was reflecting on the company’s sixteen-year record of success and thinking about its future growth plans. Founded in 2004, ACWA Power was a Saudi Arabian developer, owner, and operator of power and... View Details
- January 2022
- Technical Note
Introduction to Capital Structure Analytics
By: Samuel Antill and Ted Berk
This technical note provides an overview of key analytical approaches that are useful in assessing the appropriateness of a firm’s capital structure and funding plan. This note introduces basic quantitative tools and metrics that are commonly used as inputs to this... View Details
- January 2022 (Revised March 2022)
- Module Note
Analysis of Financial and Non-Financial Information for Forecasting Performance
This note describes the main themes and cases of a teaching module on the analysis of information from, and outside of, financial statements for forecasting firms’ future financial performance. The module’s pedagogical goal is to deepen students’ understanding of the... View Details