Publications

October 2006 (Revised May 2007)
Case

Academia Barilla

By: David E. Bell and Mary L. Shelman

Barilla, the world's largest pasta company, has introduced a new high-quality, high-priced product line that features a range of authentic Italian food products sourced from artisan producers. Management believes the line will appeal to consumers seeking healthier... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Brands and Branding; Decision Choices and Conditions; Family Ownership; Nutrition; Product Development; Investment; Food and Beverage Industry; Italy

25 Apr 2022
Video

U.S. Health Care Strategy: Course Overview with Professor Leemore Dafny

Program

Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management

Summary Today's nonprofit organizations are faced with shifting demands for services, resource constraints, and diverse operational challenges. They must also learn to navigate the advent of new technology and new sources of funding. To... View Details

04 Mar 2010
Working Paper Summaries

The Determinants of Individual Performance and Collective Value in Private-Collective Software Innovation

Keywords: by Ned Gulley & Karim R. Lakhani; Video Game; Web Services

2013
Article

Industry Equilibrium with Open-Source and Proprietary Firms

By: Gaston Llanes and Ramiro de Elejalde

We present a model of industry equilibrium to study the coexistence of open-source and proprietary firms. Two novel aspects of the model are (i) participation in open source arises as the optimal decision of profit-maximizing firms, and (ii) open-source and proprietary... View Details

Keywords: Open Source Distribution; Balance and Stability; Software; Knowledge Management; Supply and Industry; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Research and Development; Cooperation

Forthcoming
Article

Measurement and Effects of Bank Exit Policies

By: Daniel Green and Boris Vallée

We study whether exit policies by financial institutions have financial and real consequences on the firms they target, using bank coal exit policies as a laboratory. In contrast to theories assuming high capital substitutability, we find large effects of these... View Details

Keywords: Coal Power; Financing and Loans; Banks and Banking; Policy; Energy Industry

Forthcoming
Article

Weak Credit Covenants

By: Victoria Ivashina and Boris Vallée

Using novel data on 1,240 credit agreements, we investigate sources of contractual complexity in the leveraged loan market. While negative covenants are widespread, carve-out and deductible clauses that qualify them are as frequent. We propose simple and comprehensive... View Details

Keywords: Leveraged Loans; Loan Contracts; Debt Covenants; Carve-out; Creditor Governance; LBO; Credit; Agreements and Arrangements; Leveraged Buyouts

November 2022
Case

Para: Pay Transparency and Gig Drivers' Rights

By: Christopher Stanton and George Gonzalez

The case presents the founding vision and early days of a young startup that seeks to empower delivery drivers with tools and transparency. The company's flagship mobile app has been taken up by tens of thousands of delivery drivers across major U.S. cities who use it... View Details

Keywords: Gig Workers; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Applications and Software; Disruptive Innovation; Compensation and Benefits; Technology Industry; San Francisco

Article

Undisclosed Debt Sustainability

By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk

Over the past decade, non-Paris Club creditors, notably China, have become an important source of financing for low- and middle-income countries. In contrast with typical sovereign debt, these lending arrangements are not public, and other creditors have no information... View Details

Keywords: Paris Club; Transparency; Sovereign Finance; Borrowing and Debt; International Finance

2016
Working Paper

Experimental Evidence on Policies Aimed at Closing the Gender Gap in Willingness to Guess on Multiple-Choice Tests

By: Katherine Baldiga Coffman

Research has shown that women skip more questions than men on multiple-choice tests with penalties for wrong answers. We propose and test five policy changes aimed at eliminating this source of gender bias in test scores. Our data show that simply removing the penalty... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Behavior; Decision Choices and Conditions; Gender

January 2013
Article

Barriers to Household Risk Management: Evidence from India

By: Shawn A. Cole, Xavier Gine, Jeremy Tobacman, Petia Topalova, Robert M. Townsend and James Vickery

Why do many households remain exposed to large exogenous sources of non-systematic income risk? We use a series of randomized field experiments in rural India to test the importance of price and non-price factors in the adoption of an innovative rainfall insurance... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Household; India

January 2009
Article

Multinationals as Arbitrageurs? The Effect of Stock Market Valuations on Foreign Direct Investment

By: Malcolm Baker, C. Fritz Foley and Jeffrey Wurgler

Empirical evidence of imperfect integration across world capital markets suggests a role for cross-border arbitrage by multinationals. Consistent with multinational arbitrage as a determinant of foreign direct investment (FDI) patterns, we find that FDI flows increase... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management; Financial Markets; Foreign Direct Investment; Valuation; Capital Markets; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Cost; Forecasting and Prediction; Capital; Stocks; Integration

12 Dec 2022
HBS Seminar

Jenny Chatman, UC Berkeley Haas

February 2006 (Revised November 2012)
Case

Corporate Responsibility & Community Engagement at the Tintaya Copper Mine (A)

By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Brooke Barton and Ezequiel Reficco

Located in the highlands of Peru, the Tintaya copper mine has long been a source of intense conflict between local community members and mine operators. The mine, which was owned and managed first by the Peruvian state and later by BHP Billiton, stands on 2,300... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Multinational Firms and Management; Agreements and Arrangements; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Community Relations; Non-Governmental Organizations; Conflict Management; Mining Industry; Australia; Peru

29 Jan 2007
Research & Ideas

The Business Press Is a Watchdog that Bites

company, through suppliers or customers at trade shows saying something was weird, or through tracking the names of people who had been involved in fraud in the past and finding another company they're in. The press's next most frequent View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Journalism & News; Publishing

14 Aug 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Insider Trading Preceding Goodwill Impairments

Keywords: by Karl A. Muller III, Monica Neamtiu & Edward J. Riedl

Research Summary

Overview

Downstream businesses that utilize global suppliers frequently use auditing programs to monitor their suppliers’ working conditions and are often deployed to address reputational concerns associated with procuring from unregulated suppliers. Despite their widespread... View Details

Keywords: Audit Quality; Remote Work; Outsourcing; Econometric Analysis; Switching Costs; Service Operations; Performance Effectiveness; Retail Industry; Service Industry

2021
Working Paper

Studying the U.S.-Based Portfolio Companies of U.S. Impact Investors

By: M. Diane Burton, Gurveen Chadha, Shawn A. Cole, Abhishek Dev, Christina Jarymowycz, Leslie Jeng, Laura Kelley, Josh Lerner, Jaime R. Diaz Palacios, Yue (Cynthia) Xu and T. Robert Zochowski

Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the reliance on market-based solutions to social and environmental problems around the world (Barman 2016; Horvath and Powell 2020). The growth of impact investing is a vivid example of this trend and, although there have... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investing; Impact Portfolio Companies; Investment; Social Issues; Environmental Sustainability; Investment Portfolio; Business Ventures; Analytics and Data Science; Performance; United States