Publications

December 2014 (Revised November 2015)
Case

Alibaba Goes Public (A)

By: Krishna Palepu, Suraj Srinivasan, Charles C.Y. Wang and David Lane

In 2014 Alibaba debuted on the New York Stock Exchange, creating not only the largest IPO in history but this initial desire to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange was denied due to the company's desire to preserve its partner's control over decision rights. Why did... View Details

Keywords: Dual-class Share Structure; Alibaba; IPOs; VIE; Corporate Governance; Financial Services Industry; United States; Hong Kong; China

March 2014 (Revised September 2019)
Teaching Note

Say on Pay: Qualcomm, Inc. Shareholders Vote 'Maybe'

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Charles C.Y. Wang

This case centers around Qualcomm shareholders' 2012 Say-on-Pay vote and the dispute between the Institutional Shareholder Services and management regarding the appropriateness of the CEO's compensation plan. Was ISS right that Qualcomm CEO's pay was inflated and... View Details

Keywords: ISS; Proxy Advisor; Investor Communication; Investor Relations; Peers; Say-on-Pay; Benchmarking; Peer Group; Compensation Committee; Board Of Directors; Governing and Advisory Boards; Executive Compensation; Corporate Governance; Business and Shareholder Relations

2021
Working Paper

Stock Investors' Returns Are Exaggerated

By: Jesse M. Fried, Paul Ma and Charles C.Y. Wang

The stock market generates less wealth than it appears. We show that total shareholder return (TSR), the standard measure of stock investor performance, substantially exaggerates returns earned by these investors in aggregate, and thus by most investors. The main... View Details

Keywords: All-shareholder Returns; Capital Flows; Dividend Reinvestment; Equity Premium; Total Shareholder Returns; Stocks; Investment Return; Market Timing

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December 2013
Article

How Do Staggered Boards Affect Shareholder Value? Evidence from a Natural Experiment

By: Alma Cohen and Charles C.Y. Wang

The well-established negative correlation between staggered boards (SBs) and firm value could be due to SBs leading to lower value or a reflection of low-value firms' greater propensity to maintain SBs. We analyze the causal question using a natural experiment... View Details

Keywords: Staggered Board; Takeover Defense; Antitakeover Provision; Proxy Fight; Tobin's; Firm Value; Agency Cost; Delaware; Chancery Court; Airgas; Governing and Advisory Boards; Corporate Governance

March 2020
Article

Governance Through Shame and Aspiration: Index Creation and Corporate Behavior

By: Akash Chattopadhyay, Matthew D. Shaffer and Charles C.Y. Wang

After decades of deprioritizing shareholders' economic interests and low corporate profitability, Japan introduced the JPX-Nikkei400 in 2014. The index highlighted the country's "best-run" companies by annually selecting the 400 most profitable of its large and liquid... View Details

Keywords: JPX-Nikkei 400 Index; Status Incentives; Return On Equity; Capital Efficiency; Social Norms; Index Inclusion; Reputation Incentives; Motivation and Incentives; Corporate Governance; Behavior; Investment Return; Status and Position; Japan

July 2013 (Revised September 2019)
Case

Say on Pay: Qualcomm, Inc. Shareholders Vote 'Maybe'

By: Suraj Srinivasan, Charles C.Y. Wang and Kelly Baker

This case centers around Qualcomm shareholders' 2012 Say-on-Pay vote and the dispute between the Institutional Shareholder Services and management regarding the appropriateness of the CEO's compensation plan. Was ISS right that Qualcomm's CEO's pay was inflated and... View Details

Keywords: ISS; Proxy Advisor; Investor Communication; Investor Relations; Peers; Say-on-Pay; Benchmarking; Peer Group; Compensation Committees; Board Of Directors; Governing and Advisory Boards; Executive Compensation; Corporate Governance; Business and Shareholder Relations; Telecommunications Industry

22 Nov 2016
First Look

November 22, 2016

some policy implications for regulators designing third-party monitoring regimes. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=51917 The Search for Peer Firms: When Do Crowds Provide Wisdom? By: Lee, Charles M.C., Paul... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Web

Student Research - Doctoral

Entrepreneurial Management , Finance 1 results Elie Ofek Marketing 1 results Leslie A. Perlow Organizational Behavior 1 results Maria P. Roche Strategy 1 results David S. Scharfstein Finance 1 results Adi Sunderam Finance 1 results Peter Tufano General Management 1... View Details

2012
Working Paper

Can Implicit Regulation Change Financial Market Behavior? Evidence from Spitzer's Attack on Market Timers

By: Charles C.Y. Wang

This paper explores a natural experiment setup from the 2003-2004 mutual fund scandals to evaluate the effectiveness of implicit regulation on financial markets behavior. On average, buy-and-hold investors lost 218 basis points annually from 1998 to 2002 to market... View Details

Keywords: Financial Markets; Market Timing; United States

Web

ハーバード - Global

招関開催教授 HBS 得新掘下管理職労働者対実際需要程度組織展開議論卒業生等参加者教授活発議論楽 AUGUST 2023 In-Person Event: The Stock Buyback Controversy: Facts, Fictions, and Policies by HBS Professor Charles View Details

19 Mar 2018
News

Warren Buffett Is Just an Average Employee

February 2018 (Revised June 2021)
Case

New Constructs: Disrupting Fundamental Analysis with Robo-Analysts

By: Charles C.Y. Wang and Kyle Thomas

This case highlights the business challenges associated with a financial technology firm, New Constructs, that created a technology that can quickly parse complicated public firm financials to paint a clearer economic picture of firms, remove accounting distortions,... View Details

Keywords: Fundamental Analysis; Machine Learning; Robo-analysts; Financial Statements; Financial Reporting; Analysis; Information Technology; Accounting Industry; Financial Services Industry; Information Technology Industry; North America; Tennessee

09 May 2017
First Look

New Research and Ideas, May 9

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=52605 Relative Performance Benchmarks: Do Boards Follow the Informativeness Principle? By: Ma, Paul, Jee Eun Shin, and Charles C.Y. View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Article

Search-Based Peer Firms: Aggregating Investor Perceptions Through Internet Co-Searches

By: Charles M.C. Lee, Paul Ma and Charles C.Y. Wang

Applying a "co-search" algorithm to Internet traffic at the SEC's EDGAR website, we develop a novel method for identifying economically-related peer firms and for measuring their relative importance. Our results show that firms appearing in chronologically adjacent... View Details

Keywords: Peer Firm; EDGAR Search Traffic; Revealed Preference; Co-search; Industry Classification; Perception; Internet and the Web; Investment

April 2021
Article

Evaluating Firm-Level Expected-Return Proxies: Implications for Estimating Treatment Effects

By: Charles M.C. Lee, Eric C. So and Charles C.Y. Wang

We introduce a parsimonious framework for choosing among alternative expected-return proxies (ERPs) when estimating treatment effects. By comparing ERPs’ measurement-error variances in the cross section and in time series, we provide new evidence on the relative... View Details

Keywords: Implied Cost Of Capital; Expected Returns; Cost of Capital; Investment Return; Performance Evaluation

2014
Working Paper

Search-Based Peer Firms: Aggregating Investor Perceptions Through Internet Co-Searches

By: Charles M.C. Lee, Paul Ma and Charles C.Y. Wang

Applying a "co-search" algorithm to Internet traffic at the SEC's EDGAR web-site, we develop a novel method for identifying economically-related peer firms and for measuring their relative importance. Our results show that firms appearing in chronologically adjacent... View Details

Keywords: Peer Firm; EDGAR Search Traffic; Revealed Preference; Co-search; Industry Classification; Analytics and Data Science; Internet and the Web; Mathematical Methods; Corporate Finance

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February 2021
Case

Measuring Impact at JUST Capital

By: Charles C.Y. Wang and Ethan Rouen

JUST Capital is a nonprofit organization that seeks to make public companies more "just" by measuring and ranking their overall impact on society, based on the priorities most important to the average American. This case examines JUST's strategy for influencing... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Ethics; Measurement and Metrics; Performance Evaluation; Social Issues; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact

January 2022
Background Note

The Florange Law: Encouraging Long-Termism in Equity Markets?

By: Charles C.Y. Wang and Tonia Labruyere

This note provides background information on a French law (“the Florange law”) passed in 2014 that the French government said would encourage long-term shareholdings. The note describes the law, what led to it, the reactions it evoked, and similar initiatives in other... View Details

Keywords: Equity; Financial Markets; Investment Activism; Institutional Investing; Corporate Governance; Policy; Rights; Laws and Statutes; Business and Government Relations; Accounting Industry; France