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Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(15,474)
- People (43)
- News (3,322)
- Research (9,121)
- Events (53)
- Multimedia (221)
- Faculty Publications (7,323)
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Accounting for Organizational Employment Impact
By: David Freiberg, Katie Panella, George Serafeim and T. Robert Zochowski
Organizations create significant positive and negative impacts through their employment practices. This paper builds on the substantial body of research regarding job quality and impact measurement to present a framework for monetized analysis of employment impact. We... View Details
Keywords: Impact-Weighted Accounts; IWAI; Employment Impact; Employment; Jobs and Positions; Quality; Measurement and Metrics; Analysis; Framework
Freiberg, David, Katie Panella, George Serafeim, and T. Robert Zochowski. "Accounting for Organizational Employment Impact." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-050, October 2020. (Revised August 2021.)
- July 2012
- Case
New Century Financial Corporation (Abridged)
By: Krishna G. Palepu, Suraj Srinivasan and Ian Cornell
After years of rapid growth and stock price appreciation, New Century Financial Corporation, one of the largest subprime loan originators in the U.S., reported accounting problems in early 2007. The resulting liquidity crisis forced the company to file for Chapter 11... View Details
Keywords: Audit Committees; Financial Management; Control Systems; Securities; Loan Evaluation; Accounting; Value; Financial Services Industry; United States
Palepu, Krishna G., Suraj Srinivasan, and Ian Cornell. "New Century Financial Corporation (Abridged)." Harvard Business School Case 113-002, July 2012.
- 2021
- Working Paper
Financial Flexibility and Corporate Employment
By: Rebecca Lester, Ethan Rouen and Braden Williams
We study the role of financial flexibility on COVID-19 employment actions. Using daily data from March through May 2020 for 354 of the largest U.S. employers, we find that firms facing a negative demand shock were 28.8 percentage points more likely to reduce their... View Details
Keywords: Financial Flexibility; COVID-19; Pandemic; Employment; Health Pandemics; System Shocks; Finance
Lester, Rebecca, Ethan Rouen, and Braden Williams. "Financial Flexibility and Corporate Employment." Harvard Business School Series in Accounting and Control, No. 21-119, April 2021.
- April 1980
- Case
Dilemma of an Accountant
Daniel Potter receives a boost in his young career as a CPA by being specially placed on a particularly important assignment. He and his boss, who is known both for his accounting acumen and his autocratic manner, come into direct conflict over the evaluation and... View Details
Matthews, John B., Jr., and Laura L. Nash. "Dilemma of an Accountant." Harvard Business School Case 380-185, April 1980.
- March 2015
- Teaching Note
Gerry Pasciucco at AIG Financial Products
By: Gautam Mukunda and Thomas J. DeLong
- December 1998
- Case
Origins of National Income Accounting
By: David A. Moss and Joseph P Gownder
Set in the Great Depression, this case explores the origins of national income accounting in the United States. Highlights Senator La Follette's 1932 proposal for the federal government to begin collecting national income statistics. View Details
Keywords: Accounting; Financial Crisis; Analytics and Data Science; Mathematical Methods; United States
Moss, David A., and Joseph P Gownder. "Origins of National Income Accounting." Harvard Business School Case 799-080, December 1998.
- Article
Consequences of Financial Reporting Failure for Outside Directors: Evidence from Accounting Restatements and Audit Committee Members
By: Suraj Srinivasan
I use a sample of 409 companies that restated their earnings from 1997 to 2001 to examine penalties for outside directors, particularly audit committee members, when their companies experience accounting restatements. Penalties from lawsuits and Securities and Exchange... View Details
Keywords: Outcome or Result; Business Earnings; Financial Statements; Lawsuits and Litigation; Labor; Markets; Financial Reporting; Accounting Audits; Cost; Reputation
Srinivasan, Suraj. "Consequences of Financial Reporting Failure for Outside Directors: Evidence from Accounting Restatements and Audit Committee Members." Journal of Accounting Research 43, no. 2 (May 2005): 291–334.
- 2019
- White Paper
Impact-Weighted Financial Accounts: The Missing Piece for an Impact Economy
By: George Serafeim, T. Robert Zochowski and Jennifer Downing
Reimagining capitalism is an imperative. We need to create a more inclusive and sustainable form of capitalism that works for every person and the planet. Massive environmental damage, growing income and wealth disparity, stress, and depression within developed... View Details
Keywords: Impact-Weighted Accounts; IWAI; Background; Economic Systems; Economy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Measurement and Metrics; Financial Statements
Serafeim, George, T. Robert Zochowski, and Jennifer Downing. "Impact-Weighted Financial Accounts: The Missing Piece for an Impact Economy." White Paper, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA, September 2019.
- September 2011
- Article
Political Instability: Effects on Financial Development, Roots in the Severity of Economic Inequality
By: Mark J. Roe and Jordan I. Siegel
We here bring forward strong evidence that political instability impedes financial development, with its variation a primary determinant of differences in financial development around the world. As such, it needs to be added to the short list of major determinants of... View Details
Keywords: Financial Development; Political Instability; Government and Politics; Finance; Growth and Development; Economics; Equality and Inequality
Roe, Mark J., and Jordan I. Siegel. "Political Instability: Effects on Financial Development, Roots in the Severity of Economic Inequality." Journal of Comparative Economics 39, no. 3 (September 2011): 279–309. (We here bring forward strong evidence that political instability impedes financial development, with its variation a primary determinant of differences in financial development around the world. As such, it needs to be added to the short list of major determinants of financial development. First, structural conditions first postulated by
Engerman and Sokoloff (2002) as generating long-term inequality are shown here empirically to be exogenous determinants of political instability. Second, that exogenously-determined political instability in turn holds back financial development, even when we control for factors prominent in the last decade's cross-country studies of
financial development. The findings indicate that inequality-perpetuating conditions that result in political instability are fundamental roadblocks for international organizations like the World Bank that seek to promote financial development. The evidence here includes country fixed effect regressions and an instrumental model inspired by Engerman and Sokoloff's (2002) work, which to our knowledge has not yet been used in finance and which is consistent with current tests as valid instruments. Four conventional measures of national political instability — Alesina and Perotti's (1996) well-known index of instability, a subsequent index derived from Banks' (2005) work,
and two indices of managerial perceptions of nation-by-nation political instability — persistently predict a wide range of national financial development outcomes for recent decades. Political instability's significance is time consistent in cross-sectional regressions back to the 1960's, the period when the key data becomes available, robust
in both country fixed-effects and instrumental variable regressions, and consistent across multiple measures of instability and of financial development. Overall, the results indicate the existence of an important channel running from structural inequality to political instability, principally in nondemocratic settings, and then to financial
backwardness. The robust significance of that channel extends existing work demonstrating the importance of political economy explanations for financial development and financial backwardness. It should help to better understand which policies will work for financial development, because political instability has causes, cures, and effects quite distinct from those of many of the key institutions most studied in the past decade as explaining financial backwardness.)
- November 2009
- Article
Is it Fair to Blame Fair Value Accounting for the Financial Crisis?
By: Robert C. Pozen
When the credit markets seized up in 2008, many heaped blame on "mark to market" accounting rules, which require banks to write down their troubled assets to the prices they'd fetch if sold on the open market - at the time, next to nothing. Recording those assets below... View Details
Keywords: Cost Accounting; Fair Value Accounting; Financial Crisis; Assets; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Crisis Management; Standards; Banking Industry
Pozen, Robert C. "Is it Fair to Blame Fair Value Accounting for the Financial Crisis?" Harvard Business Review 87, no. 11 (November 2009).
- June 2001 (Revised January 2006)
- Background Note
Mechanics of Financial Accounting, The
By: David F. Hawkins and Jacob Cohen
Explains in simple terms and numerical examples how the language of accounting is spoken and communicated to financial statement users. Describes terms such as "debits," "credits," "journal entries," "t-accounts," and "financial statements." View Details
Hawkins, David F., and Jacob Cohen. "Mechanics of Financial Accounting, The." Harvard Business School Background Note 101-119, June 2001. (Revised January 2006.)
- 2017
- Working Paper
Does Financial Misconduct Affect the Future Compensation of Alumni Managers?
By: Boris Groysberg, Eric Lin and Georgios Serafeim
We explore how an organization’s financial misconduct may affect pay for former employees not implicated in wrongdoing. Drawing on stigma theory we hypothesize that although such alumni did not participate in the financial misconduct and they had left the organization... View Details
Keywords: Corporate Misconduct; Restatements; Stigma; Financial Misconduct; Compensation and Benefits; Crime and Corruption; Employees
Groysberg, Boris, Eric Lin, and Georgios Serafeim. "Does Financial Misconduct Affect the Future Compensation of Alumni Managers?" Working Paper, November 2017.
- January–February 2021
- Article
Cross‐firm Return Predictability and Accounting Quality
By: Wen Chen, Mozaffar Khan, Leonid Kogan and George Serafeim
We test the hypothesis that if poor accounting quality (AQ) is associated with poor investor understanding of firms’ revenue and cost structures, then poor AQ stocks likely respond more slowly than good AQ stocks to new non‐idiosyncratic information that affects both... View Details
Keywords: Accounting Quality; Earnings Quality; Stock Returns; Investment Strategy; Accounting; Business Earnings; Quality; Investment Return; Investment; Strategy
Chen, Wen, Mozaffar Khan, Leonid Kogan, and George Serafeim. "Cross‐firm Return Predictability and Accounting Quality." Journal of Business Finance & Accounting 48, nos. 1-2 (January–February 2021): 70–101.
- October 1998 (Revised May 1999)
- Case
Commercial Financial Services, Inc.: Securitization of Charged-off Credit Card Receivables
By: Kenneth A. Froot and Ivan G. Farman
Commercial Financial Services (CFS) is a company that buys charged-off credit card receivables, securitizes them, and then attempts to collect on the receivables. The case deals with how the firm makes money and the limits of securitization as an efficient financing... View Details
Keywords: Financing; Asset-back Finance; Financial Policy; Securitization; Credit; Financial Strategy; Business Strategy; Policy; Financial Services Industry
Froot, Kenneth A., and Ivan G. Farman. "Commercial Financial Services, Inc.: Securitization of Charged-off Credit Card Receivables." Harvard Business School Case 299-023, October 1998. (Revised May 1999.)
- January 2010
- Case
The Future of Financial Reporting
By: Karthik Ramanna
Multimedia/video case on the SEC's work on improvements to financial reporting. Students review topical audio and video from various sources including SEC footage, and interviews with others involved, such as Bob Pozen, (past head of Fidelity and chairman of the SEC's... View Details
Ramanna, Karthik. "The Future of Financial Reporting." Harvard Business School Multimedia/Video Case 110-701, January 2010.
- September 2016
- Case
Financial Services at Falabella (A)
By: C. Fritz Foley and Agustin M. Hurtado
In 2010, the board and senior management team of Falabella, a leading retailer with operations throughout Latin America, faced choices about what to do with its financial services division. More than 4.5 million customers had CMR credit cards that could be used in... View Details
Keywords: Consumer Credit; Financial Institutions; Personal Finance; Financial Management; Financial Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Banking Industry; Retail Industry; Latin America; Chile; Argentina; Colombia; Peru
Foley, C. Fritz, and Agustin M. Hurtado. "Financial Services at Falabella (A)." Harvard Business School Case 217-016, September 2016.
- 2015
- Book
Political Standards: Corporate Interest, Ideology, and Leadership in the Shaping of Accounting Rules for the Market Economy
By: Karthik Ramanna
There are certain institutions underlying our modern market-capitalist system that are largely outside the interest and understanding of the general public—e.g., rulemaking for bank capital adequacy, actuarial standards, accounting standards, and auditing practice. In... View Details
Keywords: Business And Society; Financial Institutions; Financial Reporting; GAAP; IFRS; Lobbying; Capitalism; Sustainability; Accounting; Finance; Business and Government Relations; Leadership; Accounting Industry; Accounting Industry; United States; China; India
Ramanna, Karthik. Political Standards: Corporate Interest, Ideology, and Leadership in the Shaping of Accounting Rules for the Market Economy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. (Reviews by Anat Admati, S.P. Kothari, Lynn Stout, Lawrence Summers, and Luigi Zingales, among others.)
- 11 Mar 2010
- Working Paper Summaries
The Many Faces of Nonprofit Accountability
Keywords: by Alnoor Ebrahim
- October 2012
- Case
Dispensers of California, Inc.
By: David A. Wilson and David Hawkins
An investor seeking capital must prepare projected financial statements for a new business. View Details
- February 2019
- Article
The Market for Financial Adviser Misconduct
By: Mark Egan, Gregor Matvos and Amit Seru
We construct a novel database containing the universe of financial advisers in the United States from 2005 to 2015, representing approximately 10% of employment of the finance and insurance sector. We provide the first large-scale study that documents the economy-wide... View Details
Keywords: Financial Advisors; Brokers; Consumer Finance; Financial Misconduct And Fraud; FINRA; Financial Institutions; Crime and Corruption; Organizational Culture; Personal Finance; Financial Services Industry
Egan, Mark, Gregor Matvos, and Amit Seru. "The Market for Financial Adviser Misconduct." Journal of Political Economy 127, no. 1 (February 2019): 233–295.