Publications
Publications
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(1,831)
- Faculty Publications (305)
- July 2020
- Teaching Note
COVID-19: The Global Shutdown
By: Laura Alfaro and Sarah Jeong
In the first months of 2020, a pandemic overwhelmed the world. COVID-19, commonly known as the coronavirus, spread from China and created a severe public health emergency across countries. While an immediate fear of the disease’s impact on human life permeaacted... View Details
- July 2020
- Article
Higher Economic Inequality Intensifies the Financial Hardship of People Living in Poverty by Fraying the Community Buffer
By: Jon M. Jachimowicz, Barnabas Szaszi, Marcel Lukas, David Smerdon, Jaideep Prabhu and Elke U. Weber
The current research investigates whether higher economic inequality disproportionately intensifies the financial hardship of low-income individuals. We propose that higher economic inequality increases financial hardship for low-income individuals by reducing their... View Details
- June 2020 (Revised October 2020)
- Case
Muddy Waters vs. eHealth: The Debate of a 'Lifetime'
By: Jonas Heese and Cristo Liautaud
In May 2020, an analyst was assessing eHealth’s performance. eHealth was an online / tele-sales broker of health insurance products. The stock had recently hit all-time highs, closing at a peak of $146 on March 4, 2020. But now, May 4, 2020, eHealth traded at $103. The... View Details
- June 2020
- Article
U.S. Monetary Policy and Emerging Market Credit Cycles
By: Falk Bräuning and Victoria Ivashina
Foreign banks’ lending to firms in emerging market economies (EMEs) is large and denominated predominantly in U.S. dollars. This creates a direct connection between U.S. monetary policy and EME credit cycles. We estimate that over a typical U.S. monetary easing cycle,... View Details
Keywords: Global Business Cycle; Monetary Policy; Reaching For Yield; Money; Policy; Credit; Emerging Markets
- May 2020 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
The Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic and the Global Economy (A)
By: Alberto Cavallo and Christian Godwin
In April 2020, the world struggled to contain the exponential escalation of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Dozens of countries had imposed restrictions on travel, work, and social gatherings. A large share of the global population was under lockdowns and... View Details
Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Demand and Consumers; Supply and Industry; Finance; Central Banking; Financial Markets; International Finance; Globalization; Government and Politics; Health Pandemics; Decision Making; Macroeconomics; Employment; Crisis Management; Supply Chain; Risk and Uncertainty; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Asia; China; Europe; Latin America; Africa; United States
- May 2020 (Revised July 2020)
- Case
COVID-19: The Global Shutdown
By: Laura Alfaro and Sarah Jeong
In the first months of 2020, a pandemic overwhelmed the world. COVID-19, commonly known as the coronavirus, spread from China and created a severe public health emergency across countries. While an immediate fear of the disease’s impact on human life permeated society,... View Details
- Working Paper
Rebates in the Pharmaceutical Industry: Evidence from Medicines Sold in Retail Pharmacies in the U.S.
By: Pragya Kakani, Michael Chernew and Amitabh Chandra
Rising list prices are often used to illustrate the burden of prescription drug spending, but payers routinely negotiate rebates from manufacturers that generate differences between list and net prices. List prices are easily available and affect patient cost-sharing,... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Intelligent Design of Inclusive Growth Strategies
By: Robert S. Kaplan, George Serafeim and Eduardo Tugendhat
Improving corporate engagement with society, as advocated in the Business Roundtable’s 2019 statement, should not be viewed as a zero-sum proposition where attention to new stakeholders detracts from delivering shareholder value. Corporate programs for sustainable and... View Details
- September 2019
- Article
The Effect of Enforcement Transparency: Evidence from SEC Comment-Letter Reviews
By: Miguel Duro, Jonas Heese and Gaizka Ormazabal
This paper studies the effect of the public disclosure of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) comment-letter reviews (CLs) on firms’ financial reporting. We exploit a major change in the SEC’s disclosure policy: in 2004, the SEC decided to make its CLs... View Details
- June 2019
- Case
The Shale Revolution: America's Energy Independence?
By: Richard H.K. Vietor and Howaida Kamel
The shale revolution has upended oil and gas markets for nearly a decade and has positioned the U.S. to become a net energy exporter by 2020. Technological improvements pushed productivity forward which has had positive overall positive affects for the U.S. economy.... View Details
- December 2018 (Revised August 2022)
- Teaching Note
Revenue Recognition at HBP
By: Siko Sikochi and Paul Healy
In early 2014, Corporate Learning, one of three business units at Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), was in the process of revamping its flagship product, Harvard Manage-Mentor (HMM) from version 11.0 (HMM11) to version 12.0 (HMM12). The revamped software would be... View Details
- 2018
- Working Paper
Corporate Refinancing, Covenants, and the Agency Cost of Debt
By: Daniel Green
How valuable are restrictive debt covenants in reducing the agency costs of debt? I exploit the revealed preference decision to refinance fixed-coupon bonds, which weighs observable interest rate savings against the unobservable costs of a change in restrictive... View Details
Keywords: Covenants; Refinancing; Corporate Bonds; Agency Costs; Debt Policy; Borrowing and Debt; Bonds; Interest Rates
- 2020
- Working Paper
Arbitration with Uninformed Consumers
By: Mark Egan, Gregor Matvos and Amit Seru
This paper studies the impact of the arbitrator selection process on consumer outcomes by examining roughly 9,000 consumer arbitration cases in the securities industry. Securities disputes present a good laboratory: arbitration is mandatory for all disputes,... View Details
- October 2018 (Revised January 2019)
- Case
The Financial Crisis: Timothy Geithner and the Stress Tests
In February and March 2009, the U.S. economy was in the midst of a terrifying financial and economic crisis. Between the beginning of 2008 and early 2009, four of the 25 largest U.S. financial institutions had failed, and nine of these 25 institutions had taken... View Details
- September 2018 (Revised January 2020)
- Case
Apple Pay and Mobile Payments in Australia (A)
By: Feng Zhu, Susan Athey and David Lane
In summer 2016, four of Australia’s top five banks petitioned regulators for permission to bargain collectively with Apple over the terms under which they would support its digital wallet, Apple Pay. They argued that doing so would force concessions from Apple that... View Details
- September 2018 (Revised January 2020)
- Supplement
Apple Pay and Mobile Payments in Australia (B)
By: Feng Zhu, Susan Athey and David Lane
Supplements the (A) case. View Details
- August 2018 (Revised July 2020)
- Case
Revenue Recognition at HBP
By: Paul Healy and Siko Sikochi
In early 2014, Paul Bills, CFO of Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), sat down with David Wan, the company’s CEO, to discuss budget preparations for the coming year. Bills noted that the performance of Corporate Learning, one of HBP’s three business units, would be... View Details
- August 2018
- Article
Pension Policy and the Financial System
- June 2018
- Article
The Fed, the Bond Market, and Gradualism in Monetary Policy
By: Jeremy C. Stein and Adi Sunderam
We develop a model of monetary policy with two key features: (i) the central bank has some private information about its long-run target for the policy rate, and (ii) the central bank is averse to bond-market volatility. In this setting, discretionary monetary policy... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Government-Brokerage Analysts and Market Stabilization: Evidence from China
By: Sheng Cao, Xianjie He, Charles C.Y. Wang and Huifang Yin
We show analysts at government-controlled brokerage firms serve as a market stabilization tool
in China. Using earnings forecasts from 2005–2019, we find government-brokerage analysts
issue relatively more optimistic—yet less accurate and timely—forecasts during... View Details