Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(705)
- Faculty Publications (152)
- 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
- 2011
- Working Paper
Do U.S. Market Interactions Affect CEO Pay? Evidence from UK Companies
By: Joseph J. Gerakos, Joseph D. Piotroski and Suraj Srinivasan
This paper examines the extent that interactions with U.S. markets impact the compensation practices of non-U.S. firms. Using a sample of large U.K. companies, we find that the total compensation of U.K. CEOs is positively related to the extent of the firm's... View Details
- December 2010
- Article
Management and the Financial Crisis (We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us...)
The financial crisis of 2008-2009 has revealed that our broad model of corporate governance is broken, independent of the shortcomings in the regulatory system. Managers and boards of directors in scores of systemically important firms failed to protect employees,... 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
- July 2010 (Revised March 2016)
- Case
MacroMarkets LLC
By: Robin Greenwood and Luis M. Viceira
MacroMarkets co-founder and CEO Samuel Masucci III is meeting with a strategic partner for his firm. Co-founded with Yale University Professor Robert Shiller, MacroMarkets' main innovation is the "MacroShare," which allows investors to take long or short, levered or... View Details
- May 2010 (Revised January 2014)
- Case
Water Shortage and Property Investing in Mexico City
By: John D. Macomber, Regina Garcia-Cuellar and Griffin James
A commercial property company evaluates water risks including the government's ability to remedy, the company's operating exposure and mitigation, and whether to relocate because of water risk. A real estate fund manager assesses investment prospects in Mexico City in... View Details