Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(664)
- Faculty Publications (87)
- January – March 2012
- Article
Bond Risk, Bond Return Volatility, and the Term Structure of Interest Rates
By: Luis M. Viceira
This paper explores time variation in bond risk, as measured by the covariation of bond returns with stock returns and with consumption growth, and in the volatility of bond returns. A robust stylized fact in empirical finance is that the spread between the yield on... View Details
- Article
Inflation-Indexed Bonds and the Expectations Hypothesis
By: Carolin E. Pflueger and Luis M. Viceira
This paper empirically analyzes the Expectations Hypothesis (EH) in inflation-indexed (or real) bonds and in nominal bonds in the U.S. and in the U.K. We strongly reject the EH in inflation-indexed bonds and also confirm and update the existing evidence rejecting the... View Details
- September 2011
- Article
Information Risk and Fair Value: An Examination of Equity Betas
By: Edward J. Riedl and George Serafeim
Using a sample of U.S. financial institutions, we exploit recent mandatory disclosures of financial instruments designated as fair value level 1, 2, and 3 to test whether greater information risk in financial instrument fair values leads to higher cost of capital. We... View Details
- Article
Advertising, the Matchmaker
By: Bharat N. Anand and Ron Shachar
We empirically study the informational role of advertising in matching consumers with products when consumers are uncertain about both observable and unobserved program attributes. Our focus is on the network television industry, in which the products are television... View Details
- May 2011
- Article
Incentives and Problem Uncertainty in Innovation Contests: An Empirical Analysis
By: Kevin J. Boudreau, Nicola Lacetera and Karim R. Lakhani
Contests are a historically important and increasingly popular mechanism for encouraging innovation. A central concern in designing innovation contests is how many competitors to admit. Using a unique data set of 9,661 software contests, we provide evidence of two... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Crashes and Collateralized Lending
By: Jakub W. Jurek and Erik Stafford
This paper develops a parsimonious static model for characterizing financing terms in collateralized lending markets. We characterize the systematic risk exposures for a variety of securities and develop a simple indifference-pricing framework to value the systematic... View Details
- fall 2010
- Article
Lawsuits and Empire: On the Enforcement of Sovereign Debt in Latin America
By: Faisal Z. Ahmed, Laura Alfaro and Noel Maurer
The re-occurring phenomenon of sovereign default has prompted an enormous theoretical and empirical literature. Most of this research has focused on why countries ever chose to pay their debts (or why private creditors ever expected repayment). The problem originates... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Local R&D Strategies and Multi-location Firms: The Role of Internal Linkages
By: Juan Alcacer and Minyuan Zhao
This study looks at the role of firms' internal linkages in highly competitive technology clusters, where much of the world's R&D takes place. The leading players in these clusters are multi-location firms that organize and integrate knowledge across sites worldwide.... View Details
- January 2010 (Revised February 2010)
- Case
IFP, Indonesia
By: Roy D. Shapiro
IFP, Ltd. is a Europe-based multinational mining and minerals company contemplating an investment to produce forest products in Indonesia. The primary case decisions are 1) how to assess political and operating risk, 2) how to integrate economic and political risk... View Details
- November 2009
- Article
Responding to Public and Private Politics: Corporate Disclosure of Climate Change Strategies
By: Erin Marie Reid and Michael W. Toffel
The challenges associated with climate change will require governments, citizens, and firms to work collaboratively to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a task that requires information on companies' emissions levels, risks, and reduction opportunities. This paper... View Details
- September 22, 2008
- Article
How to Minimize the Risks of Hiring Outside Stars
By: Boris Groysberg, Lex Sant and Robin Abrahams
- September 2008
- Article
Firm Heterogeneity and Credit Risk Diversification
By: Samuel G. Hanson, M. Hashem Pesaran and Til Schuermann
This paper examines the impact of neglected heterogeneity on credit risk. We show that neglecting heterogeneity in firm returns and/or default thresholds leads to under estimation of expected losses (EL), and its effect on portfolio risk is ambiguous. Once EL is... View Details
- June 2008 (Revised May 2017)
- Case
Cook Composites and Polymers Co.
By: Deishin Lee, Michael W. Toffel and Rachel Gordon
This case describes how a company improves resource efficiency and process quality in its manufacturing process by developing a waste by-product into a new product. The case describes how CCP cleans production equipment between batches using styrene, which becomes a... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Global Competitors as Next-Door Neighbors: Competition and Geographic Concentration in the Semiconductor Industry
By: Minyuan Zhao and Juan Alcacer
Despite the many advantages offered by technology clusters, firms located in them face the risk of losing valuable knowledge to nearby competitors. In this study, we argue that multi-location firms strategically organize their R&D activities to appropriate the value of... View Details
- January 2007
- Article
Introducing the First Management Control Systems: Evidence from the Retail Sector
By: Tatiana Sandino
Focusing on a sample of US retailers, I study the management control systems (MCS) that firms introduce when they first invest in controls, and identify four categories of initial MCS, which are defined in terms of the purposes these MCS fulfill. The first category,... View Details
- 2006
- Other Unpublished Work
Does Competition Increase Patent Litigation? Empirical Evidence of Strategic Patenting in the Telecom Equipment Industry
By: Juan Alcacer and Rachelle C. Sampson
Anecdotal evidence suggests that patent litigation has increased in the last 20 years as firms in knowledge intensive industries use patents more frequently to protect their knowledge stocks and managers focus on extracting new revenue streams from existing patent... View Details
- April 2002
- Article
The Determination of Unemployment Benefits
By: Rafael Di Tella and Robert J. MacCulloch
While much empirical research exists on labor market consequences of unemployment benefits, there is remarkably little evidence on the forces determining benefits. We present a simple model where workers desire insurance against unemployment risk and benefits increase... View Details
- October 2001 (Revised March 2006)
- Case
Chad-Cameroon Petroleum Development and Pipeline Project (A), The
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Carrie Ferman
On June 6, 2000, the World Bank's and IFC's board of directors was scheduled to vote on whether to approve funding for the $4 billion Chad-Cameroon Petroleum Development and Pipeline project. Although the project presented a unique opportunity to alleviate poverty in... View Details
- June 1995 (Revised June 1996)
- Case
White Nights and Polar Lights: Investing in the Russian Oil Industry
By: Debora L. Spar
In the latter half of the 1980s, the collapse of the Soviet empire created an unprecedented opportunity for Western businesses. Among those most attracted were the oil firms, who rushed to investigate Russia's vast petroleum reserves. But, as they soon discovered,... View Details
- September 1992 (Revised October 1992)
- Case
Acid Rain: The Southern Co. (B)
In addition to the issues of expected cost minimization elucidated in Acid Rain: The Southern Co. (A), problems involving regulatory uncertainty are critical to the firm's Clean Air Act compliance strategy. The regulatory uncertainty affects, and is affected by, the... View Details