Publications

March 2002 (Revised November 2003)
Case

Satellite Radio

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Alastair Brown

In early 2002, XM and Sirius were fighting for control of the emerging U.S. market for satellite radio. Each company targeted consumers in automobiles, providing 100 channels of CD-quality audio for a monthly subscription fee of $10-$13. Wall Street analysts predicted... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Price; Risk and Uncertainty; Problems and Challenges; Network Effects; Partners and Partnerships; Information Technology; Business Model; Investment Return; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; United States

2009
Working Paper

Prices or Knowledge? What Drives Demand for Financial Services in Emerging Markets?

By: Shawn A. Cole, Thomas Sampson and Bilal Zia

Financial development is critical for growth, but its micro-determinants are not well understood. We test leading theories of low demand for financial services in emerging markets, combining novel survey evidence from Indonesia and India with a field experiment. We... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Saving; Knowledge Acquisition; Emerging Markets; Motivation and Incentives; Financial Services Industry; India; Indonesia

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May 2003
Case

Liz Claiborne, Inc.

By: Rajiv Lal, Walter J. Salmon and Edie Prescott

Discusses the business portfolio emphasis of a large multibrand manufacturer and the future of department stores as well as how relationships between manufacturers and key customers can be improved. View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Investment Portfolio; Brands and Branding; Production; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Apparel and Accessories Industry

December 2008 (Revised October 2009)
Case

Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)

By: David E. Bell and Brian Matthew Milder

In 2006, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation joined together to form a new organization, AGRA, to tackle the historic challenge of increasing agricultural production in Africa. Launched with much fanfare and led by former U.N.... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Investment Funds; Food; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Business and Government Relations; Non-Governmental Organizations; Poverty; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Africa

November 2006 (Revised July 2021)
Case

Kerr-McGee

By: Robin Greenwood and André Perold

Activist investors Carl Icahn and Barry Rosenstein acquire a stake in Oklahoma-based company Kerr-McGee. They demand two board seats and ask the company to make several operational and financial changes, including the repurchase of equity and divestiture of their... View Details

Keywords: Investment Activism; Restructuring; Equity; Investment; Management; Governance Controls; Corporate Strategy; Chemical Industry; Energy Industry; United States

August 1994
Background Note

World Pension Fund Markets

By: Jay O. Light and Jon Headley

Presents a comparative description and analysis of pension funds in different countries. There is a special focus on comparing the United States and the United Kingdom. View Details

Keywords: Retirement; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Investment Funds; United States; United Kingdom

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2024
Working Paper

How Do Global Portfolio Investors Hedge Currency Risk?

By: Robin Greenwood and Alex Cheema-Fox

We use monthly portfolio data from one of the world’s largest custodian banks, with over $40 trillion assets under custody, to study how global portfolio investors hedge foreign exchange risk in their equity and fixed income portfolios over the past 25 years. The data... View Details

Keywords: Investment Portfolio; Investment Funds; Currency; Risk and Uncertainty

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May 2022 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Third Point in 2020: Growth Is Where the Value Is?

By: Robin Greenwood, James Williams and Denise Han

In early May 2020, Daniel Loeb’s team at Third Point was evaluating a potential growth opportunity in the Walt Disney Company and whether investor activism might play a role. Battered by the effects of COVID-19, the company’s stock had initially tumbled to $86 and then... View Details

Keywords: Growth; Equity; Disney; Value; COVID-19 Pandemic; Economics; Strategy; Growth and Development; Investment Return; Opportunities; Business and Stakeholder Relations; North America

October 2019 (Revised February 2025)
Case

A Conversation with Ellen J. Kullman, Chairman & CEO of DuPont, 2009-2015

By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz

Ellen J. Kullman, the retired Chairman and CEO of DuPont, describes how she guided the storied science and technology company through a contentious proxy battle with activist investor Trian Partners, which acquired DuPont shares in 2013 and sought to break up the... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Capital Structure; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Governance; Institutional Investing; Leadership; Leadership Style; Management; Transformation; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Chemical Industry; United States

18 Oct 2024
Blog Post

The Benefits of Living in a Dorm at HBS

is happening. Most HBS students have internships between their first and second years. Not knowing where I was going to spend my summer when I started school (spoiler that I went back to Los Angeles), I didn’t want to be locked into a... View Details

12 Sep 2007
Op-Ed

Building Sandcastles: The Subprime Adventure

market that seemed to promise endless double-digit returns. Typically, an investor bought a bundle of subprime loans from a mortgage bank. Investment banking houses such as Bear Sterns organized hedge funds. The Industrial View Details

Keywords: by Nicolas P. Retsinas; Banking; Construction; Real Estate

March 2025
Article

Optimal Illiquidity

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, Christopher Clayton, Christopher Harris, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian

We study the socially optimal level of illiquidity in an economy populated by households with taste shocks and present bias with naive beliefs. The government chooses mandatory contributions to accounts, each with a different pre-retirement withdrawal penalty.... View Details

Keywords: Retirement; Financial Liquidity; Personal Finance; Saving

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Article

The Value of Intermediation in the Stock Market

By: Marco Di Maggio, Mark Egan and Francesco Franzoni

We estimate a structural model of broker choice to quantitatively decompose the value that institutional investors attach to broker services. Studying over 300 million institutional equity trades, we find that investors are sensitive to both explicit and implicit... View Details

Keywords: Financial Intermediation; Institutional Investors; Research Analysts; Broker Networks; Equity Trading; Institutional Investing

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14 Dec 2010
Op-Ed

Tax US Companies to Spur Spending

been a saving grace in ensuring that the financial crisis did not cause further damage to the economy. With traditional monetary and fiscal policy instruments seemingly exhausted, the mobilization of that... View Details

Keywords: by Mihir A. Desai

17 Nov 2015
Lessons from the Classroom

How Activist Investors Became Respectable

online well before any regulatory filing disclosed his holdings in the company. These tactics may have been designed for drama, but the investment strategy and its scale are nothing unusual today. Activist... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph Fuller; Financial Services; Banking

November 2013 (Revised March 2014)
Technical Note

Tax Havens

By: Eric Werker, Sebastian Berardi, Stelios Elia, Omar Muakkassa and James Zumberge

Multinational corporations and wealthy individuals often use so-called tax havens to establish subsidiaries or holding companies in order to rebalance profits across borders with the primary purpose of lowering their effective tax rate. This note describes the use of... View Details

Keywords: Tax Havens; Saving; Taxation

January 1998 (Revised July 2019)
Case

Cafes Monte Bianco: Building a Profit Plan

By: Robert L. Simons and Antonio Davila

Alert: This case has been revised since its original publication; all amounts have been converted to euros and the dates have been updated to 2020. If you’ve taught with this case in the past, please note that changes may affect teaching plans and classroom use. Using... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Planning; Cash Flow; Investment Return; Profit; Financial Statements; Food and Beverage Industry; Italy