Publications

September 1991 (Revised April 1994)
Case

First National Bank Corp. (A)

First National Bank Corp., a major regional bank in the Northeast, must decide how large a provision for credit losses to accrue in its 1990 financial statements. The recession in New England has caused serious problems in its loan portfolio. View Details

Keywords: Financing and Loans; Financial Statements; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry; Northeastern United States

01 Oct 1999
News

Banking on Success

The Dow's high for the year was 891.66, there were long lines at the gas pumps, and Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Lehman Brothers were essentially one-office firms. "Most of us who went into banking thought it was going to be a... View Details

Keywords: Deborah E. Blagg

March 2010 (Revised January 2012)
Case

Bank of America-Merrill Lynch

By: Guhan Subramanian and Nithyasri Sharma

In September 2008, as Lehman Brothers struggled to survive, John Thain, CEO of Merrill Lynch, realized that his bank was also on the brink of failure. Throughout the weekend of September 13–14, 2008, Thain successfully negotiated a deal with Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Financial Crisis; Financing and Loans; Negotiation Deal; Business and Government Relations; Banking Industry; United States

29 Jan 2018
Working Paper Summaries

Do Banks Have an Edge?

Keywords: by Juliane Begenau and Erik Stafford; Banking

July 2010
Technical Note

Note on the Banking Industry

By: Clayton S. Rose and Scott Waggoner

This note provides an overview of the structure and function of the banking industry, with a primary focus on the U.S. It was designed to support the HBS MBA course "Managing the Financial Firm." View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Business or Company Management; Industry Structures; Banking Industry; United States

02 May 2017
Working Paper Summaries

The Cross Section of Bank Value

Keywords: by Mark Egan, Stefan Lewellen, and Adi Sunderam; Banking

12 May 2023
Blog Post

Independent Project: The Rise of Electric Heat Pumps

How do you assess the viability of a heat pump? Through an Independent Project with Professor George Serafeim, Meghavi Talati (MBA 2023) set out to develop a tool to help the average consumer navigate this decision. The Rise of Electric... View Details

August 2011
Article

Independent Invention During the Rise of the Corporate Economy in Britain and Japan

By: Tom Nicholas

Independent inventors accounted for approximately half of all patents in Britain and Japan by 1930, despite the rise of the corporate economy and the spread of industrial R&D. A mixture of patent renewal and historical citations data reveals that the quality of... View Details

Keywords: Independent Innovation and Invention; Development Economics; Research and Development; Patents; System; Motivation and Incentives; Tokyo; London; United States

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March 2024
Case

Nomad: A License to Bank

By: Paul A. Gompers and Pedro Levindo

In late 2023, Lucas Vargas, CEO and co-founder of Nomad, a fintech that offered financial services in the United States for Brazilian residents, had to decide what to do to ensure the company’s continued expansion. Nomad launched its first product, a U.S. digital bank... View Details

April 2002 (Revised March 2006)
Background Note

Economics of Retail Banking Note

By: Frances X. Frei and Dennis Campbell

Explains the financial operations of retail banking, highlighting profitability challenges facing the industry. For U.S. banks, it is quite common for more than half of the customer base to be unprofitable and to have relatively few customers make up the vast majority... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Economics; Cost; Banks and Banking; Profit; Revenue; Service Operations; Banking Industry; United States

20 May 2015
Working Paper Summaries

Career Concerns of Banking Analysts

Keywords: by Joanne Horton, George Serafeim & Shan Wu; Banking; Banking

March 2006 (Revised November 2006)
Case

China: To Float or Not To Float? (D)- Bank of America's Strategic Investment in China Construction Bank

By: Laura Alfaro, Rafael M. Di Tella and Ingrid Vogel

With its $3 billion investment in Chinese state bank China Construction Bank, Bank of America--the second U.S. bank behind Citigroup in terms of assets and market capitalization--was one of several foreign banks directly participating in China's banking sector reform.... View Details

Keywords: Currency Exchange Rate; Banks and Banking; Foreign Direct Investment; International Relations; Banking Industry; China; United States

Minimum capital requirements are a central tool of banking regulation. Setting them balances a number of factors, including any effects on the cost of capital and in turn the rates available to borrowers. Standard theory predicts that, in perfect and efficient... View Details

Web

Independent Projects | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

presence. Recommended and designed business partnerships and product designs for a Chinese telecom company to pursue mobile banking and microfinance for rural Chinese population to access financing. Dates & Deadlines Students work on... View Details

April 2012
Article

Bouncing Out of the Banking System: An Empirical Analysis of Involuntary Bank Account Closures

By: Dennis Campbell, F. Asis Martinez-Jerez and Peter Tufano

Using a new database, we document the factors that relate to the extent of involuntary consumer bank account closure resulting from excessive overdraft activity. Consumers who have accounts involuntarily closed for overdraft activity may have limited or no access to... View Details

Keywords: Mathematical Methods; Customers; Social Issues; Outcome or Result; Budgets and Budgeting; Forecasting and Prediction; Competition; Banks and Banking; Policy; Personal Characteristics; Credit; Employment; United States

2025
Working Paper

Bank Financing of Global Supply Chains

By: Laura Alfaro, Mariya Brussevich, Camelia Minoiu and Andrea Presbitero

Finding new international suppliers is costly, so most importers source inputs from a single country. We examine the role of banks in mitigating trade search costs during the 2018–2019 U.S.-China trade tensions. We match data on shipments to U.S. ports with the U.S.... View Details

Keywords: Financial Institutions; International Finance; Trade; Credit; United States; Asia

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February 2016
Case

Banking and Politics in Antebellum New York

By: David Moss and Colin Donovan

After a long period of solid Democratic control, Whigs secured a majority of seats in the New York State Assembly in 1837, the same year that a major financial panic had crippled the banking system and shaken public confidence in the state's governance. The next year,... View Details

Keywords: Governance; Central Banking; Ethics; Laws and Statutes; Business and Government Relations; Government and Politics; History; New York (state, US)

28 Sep 2009
Research & Ideas

Improving Accountability at the World Bank

organizations around the world was delivered to the IMF's managing director in the first week of September, 2009 (Lombardi, 2009). Long-term governance reforms are central to the Bank's legitimacy as a global public institution. At the... View Details

Keywords: by Alnoor Ebrahim

Article

The Cross Section of Bank Value

By: Mark Egan, Stefan Lewellen and Adi Sunderam

We study the determinants of value creation in U.S. commercial banks. We develop novel measures of individual banks' productivities at collecting deposits and making loans. We relate these measures to bank market values and find that deposit productivity is responsible... View Details

Keywords: Productivity; Banks and Banking; Valuation; Performance Productivity; Value Creation; United States