Publications
Publications
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(1,035)
- Faculty Publications (291)
- 2022
- Article
Which Corporate ESG News Does the Market React To?
By: George Serafeim and Aaron Yoon
Using a dataset that classifies firm-level ESG news as positive and negative, we examine how stock prices react to different types of ESG news. We analyze 111,020 firm-day observations for 3,126 companies and find that prices react only to issues identified as... View Details
- January 2022 (Revised February 2022)
- Case
Introducing EVA at ISS: A Better Way to Evaluate CEO Performance and Compensation?
By: Jonas Heese, Charles C.Y. Wang and James Weber
In early 2019, Anthony Campagna, the global director of fundamental research at ISS EVA, a unit of the proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), was preparing to release ISS's analyses of public company performance and CEO compensation ahead of Say... View Details
- December 2021 (Revised May 2025)
- Case
Bed Bath & Beyond: The New Strategy to Drive Shareholder Value
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel W. Fisher
At one time, Bed Bath & Beyond was one of the most successful specialty retailers in the United States—its growth and profit margins far exceeded both peer retailers in the home goods market as well as many other discount retailers. But in 2014, its stock price peaked,... View Details
- December 2021
- Article
Trade Policy Uncertainty and Stock Returns
By: Marcelo Bianconi, Federico Esposito and Marco Sammon
A recent literature has documented large real effects of trade policy uncertainty (TPU) on trade, employment, and investment, but there is little evidence that investors are compensated for bearing such risk. To quantify the risk premium associated with TPU, we exploit... View Details
- November 2021 (Revised December 2022)
- Case
Farfetch: Digital Transformation for Luxury Brands
By: Sunil Gupta, Jill Avery, Elena Corsi and Federica Gabrieli
Farfetch, a global luxury technology platform and digital marketplace had been surfing the wave of digital transformation in the luxury fashion industry since 2008. While the company’s stock price and market valuation had fluctuated since its IPO in 2018, it had... View Details
Keywords: Digital Marketing; Marketplaces; Retailing; Internet Marketing; E-Commerce Strategy; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Marketing Channels; Brands and Branding; Luxury; Growth and Development Strategy; Digital Transformation; E-commerce; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Fashion Industry; Retail Industry; Web Services Industry; Technology Industry; United Kingdom; Europe; Portugal; China
- October 2021 (Revised September 2022)
- Case
GoPro: Becoming a Subscription Hero
By: Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini and Nicole Tempest Keller
In 2021, Nick Woodman, founder and CEO of GoPro, was reviewing the company’s subscription offering, considering whether to extend it beyond benefits that were directly related to the company’s iconic camera. Founded in 2002, GoPro had gained renown for its innovative... View Details
- October 2021 (Revised May 2023)
- Case
Engine No. 1: An Impact Investing Firm Engages with ExxonMobil
By: Mark Kramer, Shawn Cole, Vikram S. Gandhi and T. Robert Zochowski
ExxonMobil, the world's fifth largest source of carbon emissions, remained committed to aggressively expanding its oil & gas business despite global warming. During the COVID pandemic this strategy resulted in massive losses as the price and demand for oil declined. ... View Details
- July 2021
- Article
Material Sustainability Information and Stock Price Informativeness
By: Jody Grewal, Clarissa Hauptmann and George Serafeim
As part of the SEC’s revision of Regulation S-K, many investors proposed the mandatory disclosure of sustainability information in the form of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data. However, progress is contingent on collecting evidence regarding which... View Details
Keywords: Voluntary Disclosure; Accounting Standards; Sustainability; Nonfinancial Information; Corporate Social Responsibility; Stock Price Informativeness; Synchronicity; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Disclosure; Corporate Accountability; Stocks; Price; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Accounting; Standards
- April 22, 2021
- Article
Shareholders Are Pressing for Climate Risk Disclosures. That's Good for Everyone
By: Caroline Flammer, Michael W. Toffel and Kala Viswanathan
Does shareholder activism induce firms to voluntarily disclose climate change risks? And how do markets respond to these disclosures? New research finds that the extent of climate-risk disclosure increases by approximately 4.6% for each environment-related proposal... View Details
- April 2021
- Case
Transforming BlackBerry: From Smartphones to Software
By: Ranjay Gulati and Nicole Tempest Keller
On the verge of failure, BlackBerry brought in John Chen as CEO in 2013 to orchestrate a bold turnaround of the company. Once an iconic leader in the smartphone market, BlackBerry was best known for its tactile QWERTY keyboard, strong security, and a focus on business... View Details
Keywords: Pivot; Managing Change; Turnaround; Smartphone; Change Management; Leading Change; Transformation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Digital Platforms; Change; Information Infrastructure; Applications and Software; Competitive Strategy; Cybersecurity; Technology Industry; Transportation Industry; Canada
- April 2021 (Revised July 2021)
- Case
StockX: The Stock Market of Things (Abridged)
By: Chiara Farronato, John J. Horton, Annelena Lobb and Julia Kelley
Founded in 2015 by Dan Gilbert, Josh Luber, and Greg Schwartz, StockX was an online platform where users could buy and sell unworn luxury and limited-edition sneakers. Sneaker resale prices often fluctuated over time based on supply and demand, creating a robust... View Details
Keywords: Markets; Auctions; Bids and Bidding; Demand and Consumers; Consumer Behavior; Analytics and Data Science; Market Design; Digital Platforms; Market Transactions; Marketplace Matching; Supply and Industry; Analysis; Price; Product Marketing; Product Launch; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Fashion Industry; North and Central America; United States; Michigan; Detroit
- 2022
- Working Paper
The Stock Market Value of Human Capital Creation
By: Matthias Regier and Ethan Rouen
We develop a measure of firm-year-specific human capital investment from publicly disclosed personnel expenses (PE) and examine the stock market valuation of this investment. Measuring the future value of PE (PEFV) based on the relation between lagged... View Details
- September 2020
- Teaching Note
TransDigm in 2017: The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning?
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 720-422. TransDigm was a highly acquisitive company that manufactured a wide range of highly engineered aerospace parts for both military and commercial customers. Over the ten years ending in 2016, its stock price had increase ten times,... View Details
Keywords: Value Capturing; Pricing Strategy; Supplier Power; Buyer Power; Porter's Five Forces; Bargaining Power; Monopoly; Aerospace; Acquisition Strategy; Value Drivers; Ethical Behavior; Regulation; Growth Strategy; Business Ethics; Defense; Procurement; Sustainability; Value-Based Business Strategy; Acquisition; Ethics; Private Equity; Financial Strategy; Growth Management; Performance Evaluation; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Horizontal Integration; Value Creation; Competitive Advantage; Aerospace Industry; Air Transportation Industry; United States
- August 2020 (Revised May 2021)
- Case
PayPal: The Next Chapter
By: Michael Porter, Mark Kramer and Annelena Lobb
Can a social purpose and stakeholder capitalism confer a powerful competitive advantage in the age of COVID-19? For PayPal, the answer is yes. After spinning off from eBay in a 2015 IPO, the company declared its purpose as "democratizing financial services" by ensuring... View Details
- August 2020 (Revised February 2021)
- Case
Luckin Coffee (A): Caffeine-fueled Growth?
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman
This case describes the founding of Chinese coffee chain Luckin Coffee in 2017 and its path to surpassing Starbucks as the largest coffee chain in China (by number of stores) in 2019. Unlike Starbucks stores, which were designed to be welcoming “third places” for... View Details
Keywords: Business Model; Business Earnings; Cost; Cost Management; Financial Statements; Financial Condition; Financial Management; Stocks; Profit; Revenue; Price; Food; Business History; Employment; Brands and Branding; Product Positioning; Marketing Strategy; Business Strategy; Expansion; Competitive Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; Technology Industry; Asia; China
- August 2020
- Supplement
Luckin Coffee (B): Revelations of Fraud
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman
This case describes revelations of fraud at Luckin Coffee, beginning with an anonymous report in January 2020 and continuing with the company’s admission in April 2020 that it had inflated its revenues by 2.2 billion RMB ($310 million), almost half its reported... View Details
- August 2020
- Article
Financial Market Risk Perceptions and the Macroeconomy
By: Carolin E. Pflueger, Emil Siriwardane and Adi Sunderam
We propose a novel measure of risk perceptions: the price of volatile stocks (PVS), defined as the book-to-market ratio of low-volatility stocks minus the book-to-market ratio of high-volatility stocks. PVS is high when perceived risk directly measured from surveys and... View Details
- June 2020 (Revised October 2020)
- Case
Muddy Waters vs. eHealth: The Debate of a 'Lifetime'
By: Jonas Heese and Cristo Liautaud
In May 2020, an analyst was assessing eHealth’s performance. eHealth was an online / tele-sales broker of health insurance products. The stock had recently hit all-time highs, closing at a peak of $146 on March 4, 2020. But now, May 4, 2020, eHealth traded at $103. The... View Details
- May 2020 (Revised November 2021)
- Supplement
Valuing Peloton
Peloton Interactive, a well-known unicorn in the connected fitness space, had gone public with a market capitalization of over $8.0 billion. In the weeks following its public debut, Peloton’s stock price fell by over 25%. Taylor Knox, a stock analyst and enthusiastic... View Details
- May 2020 (Revised October 2021)
- Case
Valuing Peloton
Peloton Interactive, a well-known venture-capital-backed unicorn in the connected fitness space, recently had gone public with a market capitalization of over $8.0 billion. However, in the weeks following its public debut, Peloton’s stock price had fallen by over 25%.... View Details