Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,249)
- Faculty Publications (360)
- June 2022
- Case
PFA Pensions: The Climate Plus Product
By: Daniel Green, Victoria Ivashina and Alys Ferragamo
The case explores whether alternative investments play a unique role in achieving low carbon dioxide emissions at the portfolio level. This case is set in April of 2020 and follows Kasper Ahrndt Lorenzen, Chief Investment Officer, and Peter Tind Larsen, Head of... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Retail Investors’ Contrarian Behavior Around News, Attention, and the Momentum Effect
By: Cheng (Patrick) Luo, Enrichetta Ravina, Marco Sammon and Luis M. Viceira
Using a large panel of U.S. brokerage accounts trades and positions, we show that a large fraction of retail investors trade as contrarians after large earnings surprises, especially for loser stocks, and that such contrarian trading contributes to post earnings... View Details
- May 2022
- Case
What's Next
By: Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff
Is there a typical long-term career path for people who become entrepreneurs through acquisition? What choices do searchers and investors make subsequent to their first search? The former searchers profiled here identified five common longer-term career paths and... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
On the Estimation of Demand-Based Asset Pricing Models
A growing literature uses portfolio holdings data to quantify the impact of investor demand on equilibrium prices via counterfactual experiments. The key parameter in relating demand and equilibrium prices is investors’ elasticity of demand with respect to the price.... View Details
- March 2022
- Article
Gender Gaps in Venture Capital Performance
By: Paul A. Gompers, Vladimir Muhkarlyamov, Emily Weisburst and Yuhai Xuan
We explore gender differences in performance in a comprehensive sample of venture capital investments in the United States. Investments by female venture capital investors have significantly lower success rates than investments by their male colleagues when controlling... View Details
- February 2022 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
MicroStrategy's Investment in Bitcoin
By: C. Fritz Foley
At the end of the second quarter of 2020, MicroStrategy, a Virginia based provider of analytics software and services, announced plans to acquire and hold bitcoin as a part of the firm’s treasury reserve policy and corporate strategy. Within a year, the firm purchased... View Details
- January 2022 (Revised December 2022)
- Case
TotalEnergies’ Investment in Hyzon Motors
By: Vikram S. Gandhi and David Lane
In November 2021, Girish Nadkarni, the head of TotalEnergies’ corporate venture capital arm (TEV) was considering whether, and on what terms, to exit an investment in Hyzon Motors, a start-up supplier of hydrogen-powered trucks. TEV had invested $4 million in Hyzon,... View Details
Keywords: Business Units; Communication Intention and Meaning; Renewable Energy; Venture Capital; Growth and Development Strategy; Market Design; Standards; Commercialization; Investment Portfolio; Market Transactions; Energy Industry; Financial Services Industry; Transportation Industry; Europe; New York (city, NY)
- January 2022
- Article
Replicating Private Equity with Value Investing, Homemade Leverage, and Hold-to-Maturity Accounting
By: Erik Stafford
The contributions of asset selection and incremental leverage to buyout investment performance are more important than typically assumed or estimated to be. Buyout funds select small firms with distinct value characteristics. Public equities with these characteristics... View Details
- December 2021
- Case
Grace Capital
By: Sara Fleiss, Robin Greenwood, Eren Kuzucu and Denise Han
In March 2020, the global pandemic was delivering a dose of volatility to the U.S. economy. Catherine Faddis, the CIO of Grace Capital, a Boston-based long-only equity manager, analyzed movements in her portfolio while eyeing previously shelved opportunities to invest... View Details
- December 2021
- Article
Trade Policy Uncertainty and Stock Returns
By: Marcelo Bianconi, Federico Esposito and Marco Sammon
A recent literature has documented large real effects of trade policy uncertainty (TPU) on trade, employment, and investment, but there is little evidence that investors are compensated for bearing such risk. To quantify the risk premium associated with TPU, we exploit... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
What Drives Variation in Investor Portfolios? Estimating the Roles of Beliefs and Risk Preferences
By: Mark Egan, Alexander MacKay and Hanbin Yang
We present an empirical model of portfolio choice that allows for the nonparametric estimation of investors' (subjective) expectations and risk preferences. Utilizing a comprehensive dataset of 401(k) plans from 2009 through 2019, we explore heterogeneity in asset... 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
- 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
- September 2021
- Case
Brown Capital Management
By: Luis M. Viceira, Emily R. McComb and Sarah Mehta
Set in July 2021, this case looks at several growth strategies under consideration at Brown Capital, the second-oldest Black-owned asset management firm in the U.S. Since its 1983 founding, Baltimore-based Brown Capital has specialized in small company growth... View Details
Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Growth and Development Strategy; Diversity; Race; Finance; Equity; Public Equity; Stocks; Financial Management; Financial Strategy; Investment; Investment Portfolio; Employee Stock Ownership Plan; Recruitment; Retention; Selection and Staffing; Employee Ownership; Strategy; Financial Services Industry; United States; Maryland; Baltimore
- September 2021 (Revised November 2022)
- Case
MAYA Capital
By: Robert F. White, Carla Larangeira and Pedro Levindo
MAYA Capital co-founders Lara Lemann and Monica Saggioro raised $41.5 million through a series of closings for their early-stage Latin American venture capital fund. The two women had met for the first time in mid-2016 when Lemann was contemplating scaling her angel... View Details
- August 2021
- Case
Apax Digital
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
The Apax Digital team faced important decisions as they contemplated raising a second fund. Apax Digital Fund I was a $1.1 billion vehicle focused on mid-market growth equity and growth buyouts in the technology sector. The fund had performed well, and the Managing... View Details
- August 2021
- Article
Don't Take Their Word for It: The Misclassification of Bond Mutual Funds
By: Huaizhi Chen, Lauren Cohen and Umit Gurun
We provide evidence that bond fund managers misclassify their holdings, and that these misclassifications have a real and significant impact on investor capital flows. In particular, many funds report more investment grade assets than are actually held in their... View Details
- 2021
- Article
Decarbonizing Everything
By: Alex Cheema-Fox, Bridget LaPerla, George Serafeim, David Turkington and Hui (Stacie) Wang
We analyze how the use of different climate risk measures leads to different portfolio carbon outcomes and risk-adjusted returns. Our findings are synthesized in a rules-based investment framework, which selects a different type of climate metric across industries and... View Details
Keywords: Climate Risk; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Disclosure; ESG Disclosure Metrics; ESG Ratings; Investing; Investing For Impact; Investment Strategy; Environment; Decarbonization; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Environmental Management; Environmental Accounting; Investment; Strategy; Investment Portfolio; Investment Return
- 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