Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(319)
- Faculty Publications (101)
- June 2018
- Background Note
Introduction to Life Settlements
By: Alexander Braun, Lauren H. Cohen, Christopher J. Malloy and Jiahua Xu
Life insurance is an asset owned by the majority of American adults (61%). Note that this 61% penetration rate is essentially at parity with home ownership (64%) and higher than that of 401(k) retirement account ownership (53%). Life settlements, or life insurance... View Details
- June 2018 (Revised January 2019)
- Case
Membership Rewards® from American Express
By: Shelle Santana, Frances X. Frei and Lauren G. Pickle
Credit and charge card issuer American Express (Amex) had developed a strong reputation among consumers due in part to its Membership Rewards (MR) loyalty program, first established in 1991. Through MR, all Amex cardholders could accumulate and redeem “points” based on... View Details
- May 2018 (Revised June 2018)
- Case
Ashar Group: Brokers and Co-opetition in the Life Settlement Industry
By: Alexander Braun, Lauren H. Cohen, Christopher J. Malloy and Jiahua Xu
Connecting life insurance policyholders with potential investors (called Life Settlement Providers), Ashar Group plays a pivotal role in the industry. Its current position is, however, increasingly being challenged by consumer-direct models, led by major providers... View Details
- March 2018
- Teaching Note
Project Titan at Northrop Grumman
By: C. Fritz Foley, Lauren G. Pickle, David Lane and F. Katelynn Boland
Teaching Note for HBS No. 215-001. In March of 2011, Northrop Grumman divested shipbuilding assets through the spin-off of Huntington Ingalls Industries. This case reviews many of the key questions faced by Northrop's CEO, CFO, and top management team during this... View Details
- March 2018
- Case
Lufax: FinTech and the Transformation of Wealth Management in China
By: Christopher J. Malloy, Lauren H. Cohen and Anthony K. Woo
This case examines the rise and competitive positioning of Lufax, an online marketplace headquartered in Shanghai, China, and a pioneer in the origination and trading of financial assets. The company had grown at a remarkable rate, and was awarded “Trading Platform of... View Details
- Article
"Troll" Check? A Proposal for Administrative Review of Patent Litigation
By: Lauren Cohen, John Golden, Umit Gurun and Scott Duke Kominers
The patent system is commonly justified as a way to promote social welfare and, more specifically, technological progress. For years, however, there has been concern that patent litigation is undermining, rather than furthering, these goals. Particularly in the United... View Details
- September 2017 (Revised June 2019)
- Case
Dianrong: Marketplace Lending, Blockchain, and 'The New Finance' in China
By: Christopher J. Malloy, Lauren H. Cohen and Anthony K. Woo
This case examines the strategic positioning of Dianrong, one of the largest online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms in China, in its attempt to become a foundational player in the expansion of the FinTech sector in Asia. Dianrong had recently announced the... View Details
- November 2017
- Comment
Discussion: Do Common Inherited Beliefs and Values Influence CEO Pay?
By: Lauren Cohen
The origin of preferences is something we know strikingly little about in economics. Given the central importance of preferences, we have not invested nearly the time we should into this concept. And so, as an overarching research direction, I am heartened by the push... View Details
- February 2017
- Article
Resident Networks and Corporate Connections: Evidence from World War II Internment Camps
By: Lauren Cohen, Umit Gurun and Christopher J. Malloy
We demonstrate that simply by using the ethnic makeup surrounding a firm’s location, we can predict, on average, which trade links are valuable for firms. Using customs and port authority data on the international shipments of all U.S. publicly traded firms, we show... View Details
- December 2016
- Article
Industry Window Dressing
By: Huaizhi Chen, Lauren Cohen and Dong Lou
We explore a new mechanism by which investors take correlated shortcuts and present evidence that managers undertake actions—in the form of sales management—to take advantage of these shortcuts. Specifically, we exploit a regulatory provision wherein a firm’s primary... View Details
- July 2016 (Revised November 2018)
- Case
Code.org
By: John J-H Kim, Lauren Barley and Allison M. Ciechanover
The case explores Hadi Partovi’s mission to provide every K-12 student in the United States the opportunity to learn computer science. Students can assess how Partovi transformed his passion into an organization that reached millions around the globe through the launch... View Details
- Article
The Growing Problem of Patent Trolling
By: Lauren Cohen, Umit Gurun and Scott Duke Kominers
The last decade has seen a sharp rise in patent litigation in the U.S., with 2015 having one of the highest patent lawsuit counts on record. In theory, this could be a consequence of growth in the commercialization of technology and innovation—patent lawsuits increase... View Details
- 2016
- Article
Cloaked Trading
By: Lauren Cohen, Dong Lou and Christopher J. Malloy
Using a novel, proprietary database of micro-level trading activities by asset managers, we show strong evidence of asset managers engaging in strategic trading in order to “cloak” their most valuable trades. This takes the form, for instance, of a manager who sells... View Details
- 2018
- Working Paper
Patent Trolls: Evidence from Targeted Firms
By: Lauren Cohen, Umit G. Gurun and Scott Duke Kominers
We provide the first large-sample evidence on the behavior and impact of non-practicing entities (NPEs) in the intellectual property space. We find that on average, NPEs appear to behave as opportunistic “patent trolls.” NPEs sue cash-rich firms—and target cash in... View Details
- April 2014 (Revised June 2014)
- Case
Google Glass
By: Thomas Eisenmann, Lauren Barley and Liz Kind
In early 2014, business development executives at Google were formulating a distribution strategy for Glass, a wearable computer that projected information on a display viewable with an upward glance. Options, which were not mutually exclusive, included 1) continuing... View Details
- January 2014
- Supplement
Patagonia (B)
By: Forest Reinhardt, Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Lauren Barley
Patagonia produces high-quality environmentally friendly garments that command significant price premiums. In Spring 2010, Patagonia rolled out a new, radical environmental initiative called "Product Lifecycle Initiative" (PLI), which was committed to lengthening the... View Details
- January 2014
- Supplement
Fred Khosravi and AccessClosure (C)
By: Richard Hamermesh and Lauren Barley
On September 11, 2013, the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit denied St. Jude's request to rehear an appeal on the "double patenting" ruling for the '439 patent. Further, it removed the injunction threat that was hanging over the... View Details
- January 2014 (Revised January 2015)
- Case
Reinventing Adobe
By: Sunil Gupta and Lauren Barley
By 2013, Adobe had reinvented itself from a publisher of popular software such as Photoshop and Acrobat to a digital marketing and digital media company. In May 2013, the company decided to stop selling its software as a package in favor of Creative... View Details