Publications

March 2006
Course Overview Note

International Finance: A Course Overview Note

By: Mihir A. Desai

Describes the International Finance course at Harvard Business School, which argues that the forces of globalization have fundamentally changed the scope and activities of firms, thereby altering the practice of finance within these firms. As a consequence of an... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management; Business Ventures; Integration; Change Management; Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment; Risk Management; Competitive Advantage; Motivation and Incentives; International Finance; Capital Markets

02 Dec 2017
News

A Leveraged Investment

Omar, Hesham (OPM 37, 2008), Adlina (OPM 46, 2015), and Adam Hafez Hesham Hafez, who was born in Egypt and grew up in Austria, launched the Paper Distribution International Group in Dubai while in his 30s, and within a decade he had grown... View Details

2024
Working Paper

Internal and External Capital Markets of Large Banks

By: Lina Lu, Marco Macchiavelli and Jonathan Wallen

Despite regulatory restrictions, large U.S. bank holding companies have sizable and dynamic internal capital markets. They raise long-term debt at the holding company and deposits at the commercial bank to internally make unsecured loans to affiliated broker-dealers.... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; International Finance; Financial Markets

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08 Dec 2014
Research & Ideas

A Manager’s Guide to International Strategy

In the new book International Strategy: Context, Concepts, and Implications, Harvard Business School Adjunct Professor David J. Collis presents a comprehensive guide to a topic of ever-increasing relevance for managers across all sectors... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

2021
Chapter

Multinationals' Need for State Protection: The Creation of the Swiss Investment Risk Guarantee in the 1960s

By: Sabine Pitteloud

This chapter focuses on the role of Industrie-Holding, the Federation of Swiss Industrial Multinational Companies, in the introduction of an investment risk guarantee during the 1960s. The chapter therefore contributes to a) the growing body of literature on how... View Details

Keywords: Investments; Multinational Companies; Political Risk; Business ＆ Government Relations; Investment; Multinational Firms and Management; Risk and Uncertainty; Business and Government Relations; Switzerland

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June 2008 (Revised October 2008)
Case

International Carbon Finance and EcoSecurities

By: Andre F. Perold, Forest L. Reinhardt and Mikell Hyman

In late 2007, EcoSecurities had to decide whether to undertake a new Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project in China. EcoSecurities was an aggregator of carbon credits and also invested directly in projects that produced carbon credits. Governments and firms... View Details

Keywords: Non-Renewable Energy; Cost Management; Investment Return; Business and Government Relations; Risk and Uncertainty; Investment; Cash Flow; Valuation; Pollutants; Environmental Sustainability; Financial Services Industry; China

A long stream of literature shows that investors significantly underweight foreign investments, a phenomenon referred to as home bias, which is consistently observed across different classes of investments and types of investors. One common explanation for the... View Details

August 2007
Case

Lightspeed Venture Partners -- International Expansion

By: Krishna G. Palepu and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld

Looks at various international expansion models for a venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley. Lightspeed Venture Partners believed that India had tremendous potential for venture capital returns--the question was how best to tap into that potential while also... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Expansion; Investment Return; Global Strategy; Emerging Markets; Investment; International Finance; Organizational Structure; India; Israel

05 Mar 2007
Research & Ideas

Risky Business? Protecting Foreign Investments

Foreign investment in developing countries has always involved an element of risk. Just ask Verizon Communications, which could lose hundreds of millions of dollars in Venezuela should President Hugo Chávez follow through with plans... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Energy; Utilities

June 2012 (Revised September 2015)
Case

The Paris Opera Hotel

By: Arthur I. Segel and Chad M. Carr

Real estate investor Javier Faus invests in a luxury hotel development in central Paris, and must select a management company. View Details

Keywords: Real Estate; International Business; Capital Investments; Investment; Property; Business or Company Management; Real Estate Industry; Paris

11 Jul 2005
Research & Ideas

The New International Style of Management

deceptive veneer of familiarity, cultural gulfs and local differences often remain hidden. There is an increasingly international style of management.— John Quelch, HBS Amid these conflicting realities, however, Harvard Business School... View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons

2005
Article

Increasing Exploration: Evidence from International Expansion

By: Juan Alcacer, Heather Berry and Wilbur Chung

While firms balance exploitation and exploration to maximize profits, specifics of how firms pursue this balance are scarce. We focus on how firms increase their exploration after obtaining greater capabilities and experience via sequential international expansion.... View Details

Keywords: Price Bubble; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Industry Growth; Research and Development; Profit; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Disruptive Innovation; Five Forces Framework; SWOT Analysis; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Manufacturing Industry; Japan; United States

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17 Apr 2009
Working Paper Summaries

The Investment Strategies of Sovereign Wealth Funds

Keywords: by Shai Bernstein, Josh Lerner & Antoinette Schoar; Financial Services

17 Jan 2020
Blog Post

Going the Distance for Investment Excellence

undergraduate at Princeton University, Cameron majored in economics with a minor in finance and spent much of his senior year at the university’s interdisciplinary research centers, The Bendheim Center for Finance and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and View Details

16 Oct 2014
News

Innovating for International Aid

and make the government’s international outreach efforts—from agriculture and education to health care—more effective and scalable. Wu describes the work at USAID as “essentially a two-and-a-half year-old venture capital fund housed in... View Details

Keywords: Constantine von Hoffman

2007
Other Unpublished Work

Influence and Inefficiency in the Internal Capital Market

By: Julie Wulf

I model inefficient resource allocations in M-form organizations due to influence activities by division managers that skew capital budgets in their favor. Corporate headquarters receives two types of signals about investment opportunities: private signals that can be... View Details

Keywords: Capital Budgeting; Investment; Knowledge Acquisition; Managerial Roles; Resource Allocation; Power and Influence

September 2014
Article

Accounting Standards and International Portfolio Holdings

By: Gwen Yu and Aida Sijamic Wahid

Do differences in countries' accounting standards affect global investment decisions? We explore this question by examining how accounting distance, the difference in the accounting standards used in the investor's and the investee's countries, affects the asset... View Details

Keywords: IFRS; Home Bias; Cross-cultural/cross-border; Information Asymmetry; Mutual Funds; International Relations

SSRN

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25 May 2011
HBS Case

QuikTrip’s Investment in Retail Employees Pays Off

It's a much believed assumption in the retail world: If you're going to compete on the basis of low cost, then you can't afford to invest in your employees. Extensive training—who has the time to give? Regularly scheduled hours?—way too... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail

May 2023
Article

Political Ideology and International Capital Allocation

By: Elisabeth Kempf, Mancy Luo, Larissa Schäfer and Margarita Tsoutsoura

Does investors' political ideology shape international capital allocation? We provide evidence from two settings—syndicated corporate loans and equity mutual funds—to show ideological alignment with foreign governments affects the cross-border capital allocation by... View Details

Keywords: Capital Flows; Syndicated Loans; Mutual Funds; Partisanship; Polarization; Elections; Political Ideology; Banks and Banking; Institutional Investing; Behavioral Finance; Decision Choices and Conditions