Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(717)
- Faculty Publications (158)
- 2015
- Working Paper
The Probability of Rare Disasters: Estimation and Implications
By: Emil Siriwardane
I analyze a rare disasters economy that yields a measure of the risk neutral probability of a macroeconomic disaster, p*t. A large panel of options data provides strong evidence that p*t is the single factor driving option-implied jump risk measures in the cross... View Details
- Article
Reaching for Yield in the Bond Market
By: Bo Becker and Victoria Ivashina
Reaching for yield—the propensity to buy riskier assets in order to achieve higher yields—is believed to be an important factor contributing to the credit cycle. This paper analyzes this phenomenon in the corporate bond market. Specifically, we show evidence for... View Details
- September 2015
- Article
Banks as Patient Fixed-Income Investors
By: Samuel G. Hanson, Andrei Shleifer, Jeremy C. Stein and Robert W. Vishny
We examine the business model of traditional commercial banks when they compete with shadow banks. While both types of intermediaries create safe "money-like" claims, they go about this in different ways. Traditional banks create money-like claims by holding illiquid... View Details
- November 2014 (Revised March 2016)
- Background Note
Mental Health and the American Workplace
By: John A. Quelch and Carin-Isabel Knoop
Mental illness has been described as an epidemic affecting nearly a quarter of all Americans in their lifetimes, often during their most productive working years. Managers who can design organizations that maximize mental health can minimize these risks and boost... View Details
Keywords: Public Health; Productivity; Competitiveness; Stress Management; Depression; Absenteeism; Presenteeism; Work Culture; Business or Company Management; Work-Life Balance; Performance Productivity; Organizational Culture; Medical Specialties; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; United States
- June 2014
- Article
Frictions in Shadow Banking: Evidence from the Lending Behavior of Money Market Funds
By: Sergey Chernenko and Adi Sunderam
We document the consequences of money market fund risk taking during the European sovereign debt crisis. Using a novel data set of security-level holdings of prime money market funds, we show that funds with large exposures to risky Eurozone banks suffered significant... View Details
- May 2014
- Article
Dynamics of Demand for Index Insurance: Evidence from a Long-Run Field Experiment
By: Shawn A. Cole, Daniel Stein and Jeremy Tobacman
This paper estimates how experimentally-manipulated experiences with a novel financial product, rainfall index insurance, affect subsequent insurance demand. Using a seven-year panel, we develop three main findings. First, recent experience matters for demand,... View Details
- August 2013 (Revised November 2015)
- Case
Prudential Financial - General Motors Pension Risk Transfer: Back to the Future?
By: Luis M. Viceira and Emily A. Chien
In November 2012, Prudential Financial and General Motors closed on a $25.1B pension risk transfer (PRT) transaction, the largest of its kind to date by an order of magnitude both in the U.S. market and globally. In exchange for an in-kind transfer of $25.1B in... View Details
- Article
Sustainability in Financial Services Is Not About Being Green
By: Robert G. Eccles and George Serafeim
- 2013
- Working Paper
How Does Risk Management Influence Production Decisions? Evidence from a Field Experiment
By: Shawn Cole, Xavier Gine and James Vickery
Weather is a key source of income risk, particularly in emerging market economies. This paper uses a randomized controlled trial involving a sample of Indian farmers to study how an innovative rainfall insurance product affects production decisions. We find that... View Details
- January 2013 (Revised April 2017)
- Supplement
Maxum Petroleum, Inc.
By: W. Carl Kester
Maxum seeks an oil-price hedging strategy that yields substantial cash during oil price spikes, is affordable under ordinary circumstances, and is easily managed. It is striving to avoid a repeat of the challenging situation encountered in 2008 when spiking oil prices... View Details
- 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
- September 2012
- Case
BASIX (Abridged)
By: Shawn Cole and Peter Tufano
BASIX, an Indian microfinance corporation, must decide whether to continue to sell weather insurance to its clients. A brand-new financial product, weather insurance pays if measured rainfall during the growing season falls below a pre-specified limit. Mr. Sattaiah,... View Details
Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Microfinance; Household; Risk Management; Insurance; Banking Industry; India
- 2012
- Working Paper
Reaching for Yield in the Bond Market
By: Bo Becker and Victoria Ivashina
Reaching-for-yield—the propensity to buy riskier assets in order to achieve higher yields—is believed to be an important factor contributing to the credit cycle. This paper analyses this phenomenon in the corporate bond market. Specifically, we show evidence for... View Details
- Spring 2012
- Article
The Need for Sector-Specific Materiality and Sustainability Reporting Standards
By: Robert G. Eccles, Michael P. Krzus, Jean Rogers and George Serafeim
Even though the supply of sustainability information has increased considerably in the last decade, companies are still failing to disclose material information in a comparable format. We believe this has two downsides. On the one hand, companies are not adequately... View Details
- Article
Marketing Complex Financial Products in Emerging Markets: Evidence from Rainfall Insurance in India
By: Sarthak Gaurav, Shawn A. Cole and Jeremy Tobacman
Recent financial liberalization in emerging economies has led to the rapid introduction of new financial products. Lack of experience with financial products, low levels of education, and low financial literacy may slow adoption of these products. This article reports... View Details
- September 2011 (Revised January 2012)
- Case
Telemonitoring at Visiting Nurse Health System
By: F. Warren McFarlan, Mark Keil and Mala Kaul
The Telemonitoring at Visiting Nurse Health System case presents one home healthcare organization's efforts to use telemonitoring to improve the quality of care provided to at-risk patients who were discharged from hospitals and needed home care. After two years of... 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
- 2011
- Chapter
The Economics of Housing Finance Reform
By: David S. Scharfstein and Adi Sunderam
This paper analyzes the two leading types of proposals for reform of the housing finance system: (i) broad-based, explicit, priced government guarantees of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and (ii) privatization. Both proposals have drawbacks. Properly-priced... 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
- March 2011 (Revised March 2011)
- Case
Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey - Managing in the Shadow of Health Care Reform
Per the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), which President Obama signed in 2010, states would be required to create state-wide health insurance marketplaces - the Health Benefit Exchanges (HBEs) - in which individuals and small employers could choose... View Details