Publications
Publications
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(15,824)
- Faculty Publications (6,665)
- 2025
- Working Paper
Performance Capital Flows in DC Pensions
By: Bryan Gutierrez Cortez, Victoria Ivashina and Juliana Salomao
Are defined contribution (DC) pension funds' capital flows sensitive to performance? We examine pressures from individual account holders who can switch their pension managers. Using novel data on retirement accounts for nearly 10 million individuals, we analyze... View Details
- April 2025
- Case
Salesforce Agentforce: The Limitless Workforce
By: Suraj Srinivasan, Allison Ciechanover and George Gonzalez
In early 2025, Salesforce was a global leader in cloud-based enterprise software, best known for pioneering customer relationship management (CRM) delivered as a service. Over the past two decades, the company had expanded into marketing, customer service, analytics,... View Details
- April 2025
- Article
The Allocation of Socially Responsible Capital
By: Daniel Green and Benjamin N. Roth
Portfolio allocation decisions increasingly incorporate social values. We develop a tractable framework to study how competition between investors to own socially valuable assets affects social welfare. Relative to the most common social-investing strategies, we... View Details
- April 2025
- Article
The Disappearing Index Effect
By: Robin Greenwood and Marco Sammon
The abnormal return associated with a stock being added to the S&P 500 has fallen from an average
of 7.4% in the 1990s to 0.3% over the past decade. This has occurred despite a significant increase in the
share of stock market assets linked to the index. A similar... View Details
- April 2025
- Article
The Impact of Minority Representation at Mortgage Lenders
By: W. Scott Frame, Ruidi Huang, Erica Jiang, Yeonjoon Lee, Will Liu, Erik J. Mayer and Adi Sunderam
We study links between the labor market for loan officers and access to mortgage credit. Using novel data matching the (near) universe of mortgage applications to loan officers, we find that minorities are significantly underrepresented among loan officers. Minority... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Tracking the Short-Run Price Impact of U.S. Tariffs
By: Alberto Cavallo, Paola Llamas and Franco Vazquez
This paper examines the short-run impact of the 2025 U.S. tariffs on consumer prices using a unique integration of high-frequency retail pricing data, product-level country-of-origin information, and detailed tariff classifications. By linking daily prices from major... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
With a Little Help from My Family: Informal Startup Financing
By: Brian K. Baik, Johan Ludvig S. Karlsen and Katja Kisseleva
Using Norwegian administrative data, we identify family equity investments in startups
and examine their effects on investor returns and firm behavior. Informal investors
earn lower returns than external individuals, and the firms they back are less
likely to secure... View Details
- March 2025
- Case
Boom, Bust, or Bullseye? Navigating the Short-Term Rental Market
By: John Macomber, Juan Pablo Heusser Killing, Siddhant Pardeshi and Sally Su
Short-term rentals listed via apps like AirBnB and VRBO are increasingly interesting investments for small-scale real estate investors. However, they have substantial operating costs, vacancy risk, and regulatory exposure compared to traditional long-term leases... View Details
- March 2025
- Case
Hurtigruten: Sea Zero
By: Christian Kaps and Michael W. Toffel
Hurtigruten was deciding whether the next ship they built should be fully electric. But such a vessel's battery, the size of electric cars, needed to be charged on the ship's multi-day voyage along the Norwegian coast. Before making such a $250 million investment, the... View Details
Keywords: Energy Sources; Alternative Energy; Ship Transportation; Environmental Regulation; Environmental Sustainability; Innovation and Management; Green Technology; Investment; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Shipping Industry; Tourism Industry; Transportation Industry; Travel Industry; Battery Industry; Norway; Europe
- March 2025
- Case
Mobvoi's Path Through Market Challenges and Business Reinvention
By: Paul A. Gompers and Shu Lin
Founded in 2012, Mobvoi evolved through multiple transformations—from AI-driven voice technology to smart wearables and later AI-generated content. Backed by major investors, the company navigated shifts in strategy while facing two failed IPO attempts. As market... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Private Equity and Workers: Modeling and Measuring Monopsony, Implicit Contracts, and Efficient Reallocation
By: Kyle Herkenhoff, Josh Lerner, Gordon M. Phillips, Francisca Rebelo and Benjamin Sampson
We measure the real effects of private equity buyouts on worker outcomes by building a new
database that links transactions to matched employer-employee data in the United States. To
guide our empirical analysis, we derive testable implications from three theories in... View Details
- March 2025
- Case
Silicon Valley Bank: Gone in 36 Hours
This case examines factors contributing to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in March 2023, an event as unpredicted as it was quick. SVB funded nearly half of all U.S. venture-backed startups and at the end of 2022 held $173 billion in deposits, largely... View Details
Keywords: Accounting Standards; Bank Runs; Financial Accounting; Financial Reporting; Social Media; Banks and Banking; Financing and Loans; Investment Portfolio; Interest Rates; Debt Securities; Risk and Uncertainty; Financial Statements; Risk Management; Failure; Fair Value Accounting; Credit; Corporate Governance; Financial Services Industry; Banking Industry; United States
- March 2025 (Revised April 2025)
- Case
Perplexity: Redefining Search
By: Suraj Srinivasan, Michelle Hu, Sriraghav Srinivasan and Radhika Kak
By early 2025, Perplexity had rapidly evolved from a modest startup into a popular "answer engine" valued at $9 billion. The company had boldly positioned itself as the disruptor to Google aiming to redefine search for the AI age. Through novel AI... View Details
- March 2025
- Case
Taylor Guitars: Making Employee Ownership Work the Taylor Way
By: Dennis Campbell, Petros Kusmu and Stacy Straaberg
In 2013, guitar manufacturer Taylor Guitars’ co-founders Bob Taylor and Kurt Listug were considering several exit options including selling to a competitor or to a private equity firm. The co-founders decided, instead, to embark on a seven-year process to transfer 100%... View Details
Keywords: Business Exit or Shutdown; Communication Strategy; Announcements; Decisions; Music Entertainment; Values and Beliefs; Borrowing and Debt; Geographic Location; Global Range; Governance; Employee Stock Ownership Plan; Management Style; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Private Ownership; Business Strategy; Management Succession; Transition; Employee Ownership; Performance; Manufacturing Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States; California; San Diego; Mexico; Netherlands
- March 2025 (Revised April 2025)
- Case
Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News
The case examines the Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News defamation settlement based upon statements made on air in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. View Details
Keywords: (General) Management; Business Earnings; Financial Statements; Change Management; Disruption; Volatility; Transition; Crime and Corruption; Cost vs Benefits; Decision Making; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decisions; Demographics; Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Corporate Finance; Cost; Governance; Governance Compliance; Governance Controls; Policy; Political Elections; Business History; Information; Law; Legal Liability; Laws and Statutes; Management; Marketing; Advertising; Media; Performance; Problems and Challenges; Society; Public Opinion; Social Issues; Media and Broadcasting Industry; United States
- March 2025 (Revised May 2025)
- Case
Xfund and Sam Altman: Finding Harvard's Best Generative AI Founders
By: Suraj Srinivasan
On May 1, 2024, Xfund Managing Partners Patrick Chung and Brandon Farwell, hosted a high-stakes venture pitch session designed to select one startup for a minimum $100,000 investment. This “Xperiment Stake” competition, dedicated to startups in the Generative AI... View Details
- March 2025 (Revised April 2025)
- Case
WallStreetBets: Democratizing Retail Investing
By: Joseph Pacelli and Alexis Lefort
In summer 2024, Jaime Rogozinski anticipated the launch of a day-trading eSports event, a vision he had nurtured for years. Rogozinski, the founder of the influential subreddit WallStreetBets (WSB), created the forum in 2012 as a space for retail traders to explore... View Details
- March 2025 (Revised March 2025)
- Case
Good for the Seller, Good for the Buyer and Good for Society: Sampo-yoshi, Sustainability and Trust at ITOCHU
By: Sandra J. Sucher and Bethelehem Y Araya
In 2024, ITOCHU CEO Masahiro Okafuji was at a crossroads. As the thirteenth CEO since ITOCHU’s founding in 1858, he had fueled the company’s growth since 2011 by bringing ITOCHU’s founding philosophy of Sampo-yoshi (good for the seller, good for the buyer and... View Details
- March 2025 (Revised May 2025)
- Case
Primetime Partners: Investing in Healthspan, Wealthspan, and Workspan
By: Rembrand Koning, Nicole Tempest Keller and Susan Wilner Golden
In the fall of 2024, Abby Miller Levy (HBS ’01), co-founder and managing partner of Primetime Partners, was preparing to raise a second fund. Founded in 2020 with veteran investor Alan Patricof, Primetime was a horizontal fund focused on early-stage companies serving... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Centralized Governance in Decentralized Organizations
By: Lin William Cong, Daniel Rabetti, Charles C.Y. Wang and Yu Yan
We systematically document governance centralization in decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and study its drivers and economic implications. Using multiple data sources and granular on-chain transactional data, we compare our findings to those in corporate... View Details