Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,972)
- Faculty Publications (344)
- Winter 2021
- Article
Can Staggered Boards Improve Value? Causal Evidence from Massachusetts
By: Robert Daines, Shelley Xin Li and Charles C.Y. Wang
We study the effect of staggered boards (SBs) using a quasi-experiment: a 1990 law that imposed an SB on all Massachusetts-incorporated firms. The law led to an increase in Tobin's Q, investment in CAPEX and R&D, patents, higher-quality patented innovations, and... View Details
- November 2021
- Article
Venture Capitalists and COVID-19
By: Paul A. Gompers, Will Gornall, Steven N. Kaplan and Ilya A. Strebulaev
We survey over 1,000 institutional and corporate venture capitalists (VCs) at more than 900 different firms to learn how their decisions and investments have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. We compare their survey answers to those provided by a large sample of... View Details
- October 2021 (Revised December 2021)
- Case
Customer-Centric Design with Artificial Intelligence: Commonwealth Bank
By: Karim R. Lakhani, Yael Grushka-Cockayne, Jin Hyun Paik and Steven Randazzo
As Commonwealth Bank (CommBank) CEO Matt Comyn delivered the full financial year results in August 2021 over videoconference, it took less than two minutes for him to make his first mention of the organization's Customer Engagement Engine (CEE), the AI-driven customer... View Details
- Article
Decarbonization Factors
By: Alex Cheema-Fox, Bridget LaPerla, George Serafeim, David Turkington and Hui (Stacie) Wang
In the face of accelerating climate change, investors are making capital allocations seeking to decarbonize portfolios by reducing the carbon emissions of their holdings. To understand the performance of portfolio decarbonization strategies and investor behavior... View Details
- October 2021
- Article
Shareholder Activism and Firms' Voluntary Disclosure of Climate Change Risks
By: Caroline Flammer, Michael W. Toffel and Kala Viswanathan
This paper examines whether—in the absence of mandated disclosure requirements—shareholder activism can elicit greater disclosure of firms’ exposure to climate change risks. We find that environmental shareholder activism increases the voluntary disclosure of climate... View Details
Keywords: Transparency; Reporting; Shareholder Engagement; Shareholder Activism; Climate Change; Risk and Uncertainty; Environmental Management; Investment Activism; Corporate Disclosure; Communication Strategy; Information Publishing; Measurement and Metrics; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Problems and Challenges; United States
- August 2021 (Revised November 2021)
- Case
The NCB Capital Turnaround: Waking the Sleeping Giant
By: Sandra J. Sucher, Gamze Yucaoglu, Shalene Gupta and Fares Khrais
The case opens in 2019, five years after, Sarah Al Suhaimi, CEO of NCB Capital (NCBC), the investment arm of Saudi’s largest bank, NCB, took the helm. Having successfully turned the business to make it the market leader, she was contemplating her next steps as... View Details
- August 2021
- Supplement
Aligning Mission and Margin at Southern Bancorp
By: Brian Trelstad
Video Supplement for HBS Case No. 321-099. In October 2020, after spending almost a decade to turnaround Southern Bancorp, an Arkansan bank founded with the mission to provide financial services to rural, underserved communities, CEO Darrin Williams is wondering how... View Details
- July 2021
- Case
Bessemer Venture Partners: Century Fund
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
In July of 2021, Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) contemplated the future of its growth investing practice, known as “Century.” While still relatively new as a focused initiative, BVP’s growth investing already had significant momentum. The fund’s investment pace had... View Details
- July 2021
- Teaching Plan
Aligning Mission and Margin at Southern Bancorp
By: Rebecca Henderson, Brian Trelstad and Eren Kuzucu
Teaching Plan for HBS Case No. 321-099. In October 2020, after spending almost a decade to turnaround Southern Bancorp, an Arkansan bank founded with the mission to provide financial services to rural, underserved communities, CEO Darrin Williams is wondering how... View Details
- July 2021
- Article
Material Sustainability Information and Stock Price Informativeness
By: Jody Grewal, Clarissa Hauptmann and George Serafeim
As part of the SEC’s revision of Regulation S-K, many investors proposed the mandatory disclosure of sustainability information in the form of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data. However, progress is contingent on collecting evidence regarding which... View Details
Keywords: Voluntary Disclosure; Accounting Standards; Sustainability; Nonfinancial Information; Corporate Social Responsibility; Stock Price Informativeness; Synchronicity; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Disclosure; Corporate Accountability; Stocks; Price; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Accounting; Standards
- June 2021
- Case
Modern Endowment Management: Paula Volent and the Bowdoin Endowment
By: Luis M. Viceira, Emily R. McComb and Dean Xu
This case examines modern endowment investment management through the lens of a leadership transition between Chief Investment Officers (CIOs). In March 2021, Paula Volent is about to step down as the CIO of the endowment of Bowdoin College after twenty-one years, and... View Details
- June 2021
- Case
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments): April 2021
By: Josh Lerner, Reza Satchu and Alys Ferragamo
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) is one of the largest pools of investment capital in the world and follows a rigorous “Total Portfolio Framework” in its approach to investment management. In April of 2021, John Graham was just two months into his role... View Details
- May 2021
- Case
Inclusive Innovation at Mass General Brigham
By: Katherine Baldiga Coffman and Olivia Hull
Massachusetts General Brigham (MGB) Chief Innovation Officer Christopher Coburn had overseen a period of exciting transformation and growth in healthcare innovation at MGB. In November 2019, the health system was the largest recipient of National Institutes of Health... View Details
Keywords: Inclusion; Innovation; Invention; Gender; Business Startups; Investment Funds; Private Equity; Health Care and Treatment; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Intellectual Property; Copyright; Patents; Research; Research and Development; Diversification; Technology; Health Industry; Massachusetts; Boston
- May 2021
- Teaching Note
BlackRock: Linking Purpose to Profit
By: Aiyesha Dey
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 120-042 View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Going by the Book: Valuation Ratios and Stock Returns
By: Ki-Soon Choi, Eric So and Charles C.Y. Wang
We study the use of firms’ book-to-market ratios (B/M) in value investing and its implications for comovements in firms’ stock returns and trading volumes. We show B/M has become increasingly detached from common alternative valuation ratios over time while also... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Property Rights and Urban Form
By: Simeon Djankov, Edward L. Glaeser, Valeria Perotti and Andrei Shleifer
How do the different elements in the standard bundle of property rights, including those of possession and transfer, influence the shape of cities? This paper incorporates insecure property rights into a standard model of urban land prices and density, and makes... View Details
- May 2021
- Article
The Firm Next Door: Using Satellite Images to Study Local Information Advantage
By: Jung Koo Kang, Lorien Stice-Lawrence and Forester Wong
We use novel satellite data that track the number of cars in the parking lots of 92,668 stores for 71 publicly listed U.S. retailers to study the local information advantage of institutional investors. We establish car counts as a timely measure of store-level... View Details
- April 2021
- Case
JPMorgan Chase's Path Forward
By: Joseph L. Bower, Nien-hê Hsieh and Michael Norris
In 2020, JPMorgan Chase announced a $30 billion Commitment to Advance Racial Equity. The Commitment included investments in housing, small businesses, and financial literacy across the U.S., and diversity, equity, and inclusion within the bank. It was part of a broader... View Details
- April 22, 2021
- Article
Shareholders Are Pressing for Climate Risk Disclosures. That's Good for Everyone
By: Caroline Flammer, Michael W. Toffel and Kala Viswanathan
Does shareholder activism induce firms to voluntarily disclose climate change risks? And how do markets respond to these disclosures? New research finds that the extent of climate-risk disclosure increases by approximately 4.6% for each environment-related proposal... View Details
- Spring 2021
- Article
Corporate Resilience and Response During COVID-19
By: Alex Cheema-Fox, Bridget LaPerla, George Serafeim and Hui (Stacie) Wang
The coronavirus pandemic caused a sharp market decline while raising heterogeneous responses across companies related to their employees, supply chain, and repurposing of operations to provide needed products and services. We study whether during the 2020 COVID-19... View Details
Keywords: ESG; COVID-19; Coronavirus; Crisis Response Plans; Crisis; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Ratings; Leadership & Corporate Accountability; Big Data; Machine Learning; Investor Behavior; Institutional Investors; Corporate Performance; Health Pandemics; Crisis Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Human Capital; Supply Chain; Operations; Leadership; Corporate Accountability; Institutional Investing; Performance