Publications
Publications
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- Faculty Publications (644)
- January 2024
- Supplement
Accounting Red Flags or Red Herrings at Catalent? (B)
By: Joseph Pacelli, ZeSean Ali and Tom Quinn
GlassHouse Research identified accounting red flags at Catalent. Fiat Lux Partners countered most of GlassHouse’s claims. Who was right? This update explores the aftermath of the short seller duel. View Details
Keywords: Accounting Audits; Acquisition; Budgets and Budgeting; Business Earnings; Earnings Management; Cost Accounting; Fair Value Accounting; Financial Reporting; Revenue Recognition; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Fairness; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Government Legislation; Conflict of Interests; Announcements; Blogs; Debates; Lawsuits and Litigation; Stocks; Performance Productivity; Accounting Industry; Accounting Industry; United States
- December 2023
- Article
Intermediary Balance Sheets and the Treasury Yield Curve
By: Wenxin Du, Benjamin Hebert and Wenhao Li
We document a regime change in the Treasury market post-Global Financial Crisis (GFC): dealers switched from net short to net long Treasury bonds. We construct “net-long” and “net-short” curves that account for balance sheet and financing costs, and show that actual... View Details
- November 2023 (Revised October 2024)
- Supplement
Accounting Outages at Plug Power? (C)
By: Jonas Heese, Joseph Pacelli and James Barnett
Set in June 2023, the C case explores Plug Power’s recovery from its financial restatements, how it benefited from government subsidies, and new strategic alliances. View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
The Equity Market Implications of the Retail Investment Boom
By: Philippe van der Beck and Coralie Jaunin
This paper quantifies the impact of Robinhood traders on the US equity market. Within a structural model, we estimate retail and institutional demand curves and derive aggregate pricing implications via market clearing. The inelastic nature of institutional demand... View Details
- November 2023
- Article
When Executives Pledge Integrity: The Effect of the Accountant's Oath on Firms' Financial Reporting
By: Jonas Heese, Gerardo Pérez Cavazos and Caspar David Peter
We study the effect of executives’ pledges of integrity on firms’ financial reporting outcomes by exploiting a 2016 regulation that requires holders of Dutch professional accounting degrees to pledge an integrity oath. We identify chief executive officers (CEOs) and... View Details
- October 2023 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
Accounting Red Flags or Red Herrings at Catalent? (A)
By: Joseph Pacelli, ZeSean Ali and Tom Quinn
Fund manager Janet Curie asked for a recommendation about the pharmaceutical company Catalent. The company seemed like a solid investment. However, a pair of research reports issued over the previous two months complicated this narrative. GlassHouse Research, a short... View Details
Keywords: Accounting Audits; Budgets and Budgeting; Earnings Management; Cost Accounting; Fair Value Accounting; Revenue Recognition; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Fairness; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Government Legislation; Conflict of Interests; Announcements; Blogs; Debates; Investment; Trust; Business and Shareholder Relations; Accounting Industry; Accounting Industry; United States
- October 2023 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
Ball: EVA Driving the World's Leading Can Manufacturer (A)
By: Jonas Heese and Susan Pinckney
The case describes Ball’s multi decade history of using Economic Value Added to drive decision making and workforce compensation. In 2016, the company acquired Rexam PLC and became the world’s leading metal beverage container company. Consumer demand for varied... View Details
Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Cost Accounting; Financial Reporting; Financial Statements; Buildings and Facilities; Green Building; Mergers and Acquisitions; Customer Satisfaction; Decisions; Forecasting and Prediction; Machinery and Machining; Asset Pricing; Corporate Finance; Capital; Cost; Financial Management; Goods and Commodities; Compensation and Benefits; Executive Compensation; Employee Relationship Management; Goals and Objectives; Resource Allocation; Business Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; United States; Arizona; California; Texas
- September 2023
- Case
The Rise and Fall of FTX
In November 2022, Sam Bankman-Fried's multi-billion-dollar crypto exchange, FTX, collapsed, wiping out investors and throwing the crypto industry into disarray. As FTX's founder and CEO, Bankman-Fried developed a reputation for his unerring business sense and... View Details
- September 2023
- Supplement
Icahn Enterprises: Ponzi Scheme or Sound Investment
By: Aiyesha Dey, Jonas Heese and James Weber
Excel Supplement consists of financial statements of Icahn Enterprises and two competitors. View Details
Keywords: Financial Statements
- September 2023
- Module Note
Live Case Exercise for Financial Reporting
By: Tatiana Sandino and Marshal Herrmann
Harvard Business School employs the case method as a cornerstone of its pedagogy, providing students with opportunities to engage in discussions related to difficult or contentious decisions confronted by real-world organizations. In this “live case,” we depart from... View Details
- August 2023 (Revised October 2024)
- Case
Accounting Outages at Plug Power? (A)
By: Jonas Heese, Joseph Pacelli and James Barnett
Set immediately after a December 2019 short-seller attack, the case explores Plug Power’s long challenging history. It then focuses on two key issues raised in the short-seller report related to lease accounting and stock warrants that Plug purportedly used to boost... View Details
- August 2023 (Revised October 2024)
- Supplement
Accounting Outages at Plug Power? (B)
By: Jonas Heese, Joseph Pacelli and James Barnett
The case is set in spring 2021, immediately after Plug Power made financial restatements dating back to 2018. The case describes the restatements, which revealed that Plug was reclassifying expense items to boost gross profits. View Details
- August 2023 (Revised January 2024)
- Supplement
Arla Foods: Data-Driven Decarbonization (A)
By: Michael Parzen, Michael W. Toffel, Amram Migdal and Susan Pinckney
Arla implemented a data-based price incentive system to measure, track, and influence climate friendly changes to reduce CO2 emissions across the world’s fourth largest dairy cooperative. View Details
Keywords: Dairy Industry; Business Earnings; Earnings Management; Environmental Accounting; Agribusiness; Animal-Based Agribusiness; Acquisition; Mergers and Acquisitions; Decision Making; Decisions; Voting; Environmental Management; Climate Change; Environmental Regulation; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology; Pollution; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Financial Strategy; Price; Profit; Revenue; Food; Geopolitical Units; Global Strategy; Ownership Type; Cooperative Ownership; Performance Efficiency; Performance Evaluation; Problems and Challenges; Natural Environment; Science-Based Business; Business Strategy; Commercialization; Cooperation; Corporate Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Europe; United Kingdom; European Union; Germany; Denmark; Sweden; Luxembourg; Belgium
- August 2023 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
Arla Foods: Data-Driven Decarbonization (A)
By: Michael Parzen, Michael W. Toffel, Susan Pinckney and Amram Migdal
The case describes Arla’s history, in particular its climate change mitigation efforts, and how it implemented a price incentive system to motivate individual farms to implement scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions mitigation measures and receive a higher milk price. The... View Details
Keywords: Dairy Industry; Business Earnings; Agribusiness; Animal-Based Agribusiness; Acquisition; Mergers and Acquisitions; Decision Making; Decisions; Voting; Environmental Management; Climate Change; Environmental Regulation; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology; Pollution; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Financial Strategy; Price; Profit; Revenue; Food; Geopolitical Units; Global Strategy; Ownership Type; Cooperative Ownership; Performance Efficiency; Performance Evaluation; Problems and Challenges; Natural Environment; Science-Based Business; Business Strategy; Commercialization; Cooperation; Corporate Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Europe; United Kingdom; European Union; Germany; Denmark; Sweden; Luxembourg; Belgium
- August 2023 (Revised January 2024)
- Supplement
Arla Foods: Data-Driven Decarbonization (B)
By: Michael Parzen, Michael W. Toffel, Susan Pinckney and Amram Migdal
The case describes Arla’s history, in particular its climate change mitigation efforts, and how it implemented a price incentive system to motivate individual farms to implement scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions mitigation measures and receive a higher milk price. The... View Details
Keywords: Dairy Industry; Earnings Management; Environmental Accounting; Animal-Based Agribusiness; Mergers and Acquisitions; Decisions; Voting; Climate Change; Environmental Regulation; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology; Pollution; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Financial Strategy; Price; Profit; Revenue; Food; Geopolitical Units; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Global Strategy; Cooperative Ownership; Performance Efficiency; Performance Evaluation; Problems and Challenges; Natural Environment; Science-Based Business; Business Strategy; Commercial Banking; Cooperation; Corporate Strategy; Motivation and Incentives; Food and Beverage Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Europe; United Kingdom; European Union; Denmark; Sweden; Luxembourg; Belgium
- 2023
- Book
Precarious Ties: Business and the State in Authoritarian Asia
By: Meg Rithmire
Developing Asia has been the site of some of the last century's fastest growing economies as well as some of the world's most durable authoritarian regimes. Many accounts of rapid growth alongside monopolies on political power have focused on crony relationships... View Details
- July 2023 (Revised October 2024)
- Case
Revenue Recognition at Stride Funding: Making Sense of Revenues for a Fintech Startup
By: Paul M. Healy and Jung Koo Kang
The case explores the challenges of revenue recognition and financial reporting for Stride Funding (Stride), a fintech startup that has disrupted the student loan market. Stride leveraged proprietary machine learning and financial models to underwrite alternative... View Details
- June 2023
- Case
Dan McCrum - Unmasking Wirecard
By: Jonas Heese, Charles C.Y. Wang, Tonia Labruyere and Carlota Moniz
Dan McCrum, an investigative journalist for the Financial Times, had spent the past six years fighting to expose German payment processing firm Wirecard. The company had enjoyed years of exponential growth and was viewed by several investors as the poster child of... View Details
- June 2023
- Case
Accounting for Loan Losses at JPMorgan Chase: Predicting Credit Costs
By: Jonas Heese, Jung Koo Kang and James Weber
The case examines the accounting for loan losses at a large bank, how a bank sets its Allowance for Loan and Lease Losses (ALLL) on its financial statements. ALLL, and the rules that set them, determine when banks would and would not extend loans, which significantly... View Details
- May 2023
- Article
Do Internal Control Weaknesses Affect Firms' Demand for Financial Skills? Evidence from U.S. Job Postings
By: Janet Gao, Kenneth J. Merkley, Joseph Pacelli and Joseph H. Schroeder
Ineffective internal controls over financial reporting often relates to a lack of qualified personnel with sufficient accounting and technical expertise. In this study, we examine whether firms respond to internal control failures by increasing their demand for... View Details