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- 2008
- Working Paper
Open to Negotiation: Phenomenological Assumptions and Knowledge Dissemination
By: Corinne Bendersky and Kathleen L. McGinn
Phenomenological assumptions-assumptions about the fundamental qualities of the phenomenon being studied and how it relates to the environment in which it occurs-affect the dissemination of knowledge from subfields to the broader field of study. Micro-process research... View Details
- September 2008
- Article
Testing Limits to Policy Reversal: Evidence from Indian Privatizations
By: Siddhartha G. Dastidar, Raymond Fisman and Tarun Khanna
- August 2008
- Article
Economic Links and Predictable Returns
By: Lauren Cohen and Andrea Frazzini
This paper finds evidence of return predictability across economically linked firms. We test the hypothesis that in the presence of investors subject to attention constraints, stock prices do not promptly incorporate news about economically related firms, generating... View Details
- 2008
- Book
Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage
By: Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton
In a world of stiffening competition, business strategy is more crucial than ever. Yet most organizations struggle in this area--not with formulating strategy but with executing it, or putting their strategy into action. Owing to execution failures, companies realize... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Hiring Cheerleaders: Board Appointments of 'Independent' Directors
By: Lauren Cohen, Andrea Frazzini and Christopher J. Malloy
We test the hypothesis that firms appoint independent directors who are overly sympathetic to management, while still technically independent according to regulatory definitions. We explore a subset of independent directors for whom we have detailed, micro-level data... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
New Framework for Measuring and Managing Macrofinancial Risk and Financial Stability
By: Dale F. Gray, Robert C. Merton and Zvi Bodie
This paper proposes a new approach to improve the way central banks can analyze and manage the financial risks of a national economy. It is based on the modern theory and practice of contingent claims analysis (CCA), which is successfully used today at the level of... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Rethinking the Role of History in Law & Economics: The Case of the Federal Radio Commission in 1927
By: David A. Moss and Jonathan B. Lackow
In the study of law and economics, there is a danger that historical inferences from theory may infect historical tests of theory. It is imperative, therefore, that historical tests always involve a vigorous search not only for confirming evidence, but for... View Details
- July – August 2008
- Article
Buy-Side vs. Sell-Side Analysts' Earnings Forecasts
By: Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and Craig James Chapman
We compare the earnings forecast performance of analysts at a large buy-side firm to that of sell-side analysts. Our tests show that the buy-side firm analysts make more optimistic and less accurate forecasts than their counterparts on the sell-side. These performance... View Details
- July 2008
- Article
Fairness in Extended Dictator-Game Experiments
By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Reiner Eichenberger
We test the robustness of behavior in dictator games by offering allocators the choice to play an unattractive lottery. With this lottery option, mean transfers from allocators to recipients substantially decline, partly because many allocators now keep the entire... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Fixing Market Failures or Fixing Elections? Agricultural Credit in India
By: Shawn A. Cole
This paper integrates theories of political budget cycles with theories of tactical electoral redistribution to test for political capture in a novel way. Studying banks in India, I find that government-owned bank lending tracks the electoral cycle, with agricultural... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Welfare Payments and Crime
By: C. Fritz Foley
This paper tests the hypothesis that the timing of welfare payments affects criminal activity. Analysis of daily reported incidents of major crimes in twelve U.S. cities reveals an increase in crime over the course of monthly welfare payment cycles. This increase... View Details
- May 2008
- Article
Regulation and Bonding: The Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Flow of International Listings
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Joseph Piotroski
In this paper, we examine the economic impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) by analyzing foreign listing behavior onto U.S. and U.K. stock exchanges before and after the enactment of the Act in 2002. Using a sample of all listing events onto U.S. and U.K. exchanges... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Structural Closure and Exposure: Market Reactions to Announcements of Acquisitions and Divestitures
By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski and Nitin Nohria
This paper develops an exchange-network perspective on corporate diversification and proposes two measures of corporate scope: structural closure and structural exposure. Structural closure focuses on exchanges of goods and services inside the firm... View Details
- March 2008
- Exercise
Exercise: Challenging Operational Assumptions
By: Frances X. Frei
This exercise provides students with an opportunity to thoroughly test an operating assumption. Students state an assumption as a testable hypothesis, collect and analyze relevant data, and communicate the results. At HBS, it is incorporated in a second-year elective... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Exploring the Duality between Product and Organizational Architectures: A Test of the Mirroring Hypothesis
By: Alan D. MacCormack, John Rusnak and Carliss Y. Baldwin
A variety of academic studies argue that a relationship exists between the structure of an organization and the design of the products that this organization produces. Specifically, products tend to "mirror" the architectures of the organizations in which they are... View Details
- March 2008
- Article
When Growth Stalls
By: Matthew S. Olson, Derek C. M. van Bever and Seth Verry
This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice along with suggestions for further reading.
An abrupt and lasting drop in revenue growth is a crisis that can strike even the... View Details
- February 2008 (Revised August 2008)
- Case
EXACT Sciences Corp.: Commercializing a Diagnostic Test
This case addresses the challenges of commercializing molecular diagnostics. Along the way, it explains the technology, payment system, and the measures used to assess the value of a diagnostic test. View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Contracting for Servicizing
Servicizing, a novel business practice that sells product functionality rather than products, has been touted as an environmentally beneficial business practice. This paper describes how servicizing transactions mitigate some problems associated with sales... View Details
- January 2008
- Background Note
Equity Derivatives
By: Joshua Coval and Erik Stafford
The goal of these simulations is to understand the dynamic replication technique behind the Black-Scholes/Merton options model. The simulations focus on a single stock and a risk-free discount bond, which are used to replicate a contingent payoff. The underlying stock... View Details
- January 2008 (Revised August 2009)
- Module Note
Competing through Business Models (A)
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Joan E. Ricart
This note defines the concepts of business model and the value loop. It also introduces business model representations and proposes four tests for evaluating business models in isolation. This is the first note in a series of three written for the HBS elective course... View Details