Publications

Ray Kluender is an associate professor in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit and the Berol Corporation Fellow at Harvard Business School, a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), an invited researcher at the Abdul Latif Jameel... View Details

April 2002 (Revised October 2003)
Case

Pension Plan of Bethlehem Steel, 2001, The

By: Peter Tufano

Bethlehem Steel's 2001 bankruptcy filing inspires an employee's daughter to evaluate her father's pension plan, weeks after September 11's tragedies exacerbated a weakening U.S. economy and just months before her father planned to retire. Battered equity markets and... View Details

Keywords: Asset Management; Financial Instruments; Retirement; Steel Industry; United States

Educators

September 2019
Article

Bankruptcy Spillovers

By: Shai Bernstein, Emanuele Colonnelli, Xavier Giroud and Benjamin Iverson

How do different bankruptcy approaches affect the local economy? Using U.S. Census microdata, we explore the spillover effects of reorganization and liquidation on geographically proximate firms. We exploit the random assignment of bankruptcy judges as a source of... View Details

Keywords: Agglomeration; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Economy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms

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14 Jun 2004
Research & Ideas

The Big Money for Big Projects

debt, which means the loan repayments must come from project cash flows only. In municipally financed or public financed projects, a government entity is the borrower or the... View Details

Keywords: by Ann Cullen; Financial Services

2014
Teaching Note

Microfinance Services in Rural Areas--Farmers' Self-reliance Branch of CFPA Microfinance in Shangyi County (TN)

By: F. Warren McFarlan, Yang Siqun and Shen Meihua

Microfinance is introduced into China in the 1990s. It had gone through 3 phases since the beginning, namely the pilot phase when all Microfinance practices are sponsored by charity funds based on projects, the promotion phase when the government subsidized some... View Details

Keywords: Microfinance; Rural Entrepreneurship; Value Added; China; China

December 2006
Case

Southern Company's Investment in CEMIG

In the spring of 1997, Southern Company had the opportunity to acquire a significant portion of the electric utility in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. The shares in the utility, CEMIG, were being sold by the state government as part of a comprehensive... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Strategy; Privatization; Investment; Acquisition; Globalized Markets and Industries; Utilities Industry; Brazil

David Ager is a Senior Lecturer in Executive Education. He engages CEOs, CHROs, and their teams to design and deliver customized executive development experiences for executive, senior and high potential leaders. The companies hail from diverse sectors including... View Details

January 2007 (Revised May 2009)
Case

Kibera and the Kenya Slum Upgrading Project (A)

By: Nicolas P. Retsinas, Arthur I Segel, Marc Diaz and John Dean Shepherd

Kenya's Minister of Housing faces tremendous pressures in dealing with the pervasive housing troubles in his country. Kibera is the largest slum in Africa and home to more than 800,000 residents, yet only measures two square kilometers, roughly half the size of... View Details

Keywords: Construction; Housing; Urban Development; Poverty; Kenya

Educators

2010
Working Paper

Surviving the Global Financial Crisis: Foreign Direct Investment and Establishment Performance

By: Laura Alfaro and Maggie Chen

We examine in this paper the differential response of establishments to the global financial crisis, with particular emphasis on the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) in determining micro economic performance. Using a new worldwide dataset that reports the... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; International Finance; Foreign Direct Investment; Local Range; Multinational Firms and Management; Production; Performance Evaluation; Networks

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15 Feb 2017
Op-Ed

What Africa Can Teach the United States About Funding Infrastructure Projects

the great cities of America. But there will likely be massive arguments about how to raise the money and how to invest it. The solution may lie in finance models that have proven successful in several nations across the Atlantic Ocean—not... View Details

Keywords: by John Macomber; Construction

November 2002 (Revised June 2003)
Case

China's Rural Leap Forward

By: Bruce R. Scott and Jamie Matthews

Collectively owned township and village enterprises (TVEs) played a pivotal role in China's rapid growth during the 1980s and 1990s. Although they originated in the policies and institutions of the Maoist era, TVEs thrived only after Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms... View Details

Keywords: Business and Government Relations; Public Sector; Public Ownership; Development Economics; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Macroeconomics; Emerging Markets; China

Educators

11 Feb 2015
Research & Ideas

Politicians Benefited From Using Toxic Loans

opting for the short-term benefits in spite of the risks?” "There is no doubt the transactions were very risky, as interest rates on these loans frequently exceeded 20 percent," says Boris Vallée, an assistant professor in the Finance... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Financial Services

October 24, 2018
Article

End the Corporate Health Care Tax

By: Mark R. Kramer and John Pontillo

Imagine if a single piece of legislation could effectively eliminate all U.S. corporate taxes, subsidize hundreds of millions of dollars in new corporate investment, increase the take-home pay of most U.S. employees, ease state and local budgets, and reduce the U.S.... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Taxation; Health Care and Treatment; Insurance; Taxation; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; United States

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March 2022
Article

Revealing Corruption: Firm and Worker Level Evidence from Brazil

By: Emanuele Colonnelli, Spyridon Lagaras, Jacopo Ponticelli, Mounu Prem and Margarita Tsoutsoura

We study how the disclosure of corrupt practices affects the growth of firms involved in illegal interactions with the government using randomized audits of public procurement in Brazil. On average, firms exposed by the anti-corruption program grow larger after the... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Corporate Disclosure; Business Growth and Maturation; Brazil

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10 Oct 2009
News

Making the 'public option' a simple one

William E. Fruhan

Professor WILLIAM E. FRUHAN, JR. is George E. Bates Professor, Emeritus at the Harvard Business School. He received his BS degree from Yale University, and his MBA and DBA degrees from Harvard University. He has served as Senior Associate Dean and Director of... View Details

Keywords: aircraft; airline; chemical; electronics; grocery; medical supplies; oil ＆ gas; pharmaceuticals; retailing; steel

2010
Working Paper

International Capital Allocation, Sovereign Borrowing, and Growth

By: Laura Alfaro, Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan and Vadym Volosovych

The key in the investigation of "where" and "why" capital flows, relative to the neoclassical benchmark, is how we measure these flows. The macro literature has been using three main yardsticks: the current account balance, returns to capital, and the volume of net... View Details

Keywords: Sovereign Finance; Performance Productivity; Capital; Economics

February 2025
Supplement

Align Partners and SM Entertainment: Korean Shareholder Activism Meets K-Pop (B)

By: Charles C.Y. Wang and Billy Chan

Supplements the (A) case, HBS No. 125-065. For years, institutional investors had experienced very limited success in influencing the management of listed companies through shareholder activist campaigns in Korea. The common practice of circular ownership and public... View Details

Keywords: Financial Reporting; Public Equity; Stocks; Investment Activism; Music Entertainment; Corporate Governance; Success; Business and Shareholder Relations; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; South Korea

June 2009 (Revised July 2010)
Case

Microfin

By: Michael Chu and Enrique Kramer

The case presents the management dilemmas of a new institution in an undeveloped microfinance market in Latin America. Supported by a globally recognized industry player, it is the result of the efforts of two fledgling local entrepreneurs with a business model they... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Developing Countries and Economies; Social Entrepreneurship; Microfinance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Industry Structures; Competitive Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Latin America