Publications

2021
Working Paper

The Changing Role of Business in Society

By: Michael E. Porter

Business interaction with the U.S. government, historically based on securing industry or company special interests at the expense of the public good, has enabled and furthered government dysfunction. Gridlock within the American political system has precluded the... View Details

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October 2013
Case

Oaktree and the Restructuring of CIT Group (A)

By: Victoria Ivashina and David Scharfstein

CIT's prepackaged bankruptcy marked the first time a major financial institution was able to successfully restructure and emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy, challenging conventional views that a financial firm could not survive bankruptcy proceedings as a going... View Details

Keywords: Debt Securities; Restructuring; Financial Services Industry

04 Nov 2013
Research & Ideas

The Real Cost of Bribery

analyze the negative effects of bribery on corporate performance. The results of his study, detailed in the paper Firm Competitiveness and Detection of Bribery, surprised him. As it turns out, the biggest problem with View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

Luis M. Viceira

Luis M. Viceira is the George E. Bates Professor in the Finance Unit and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research, course development, and teaching focus on the areas of investment management... View Details

Keywords: banking; education industry; financial services; nonprofit industry; retail financial services

March 2009 (Revised May 2011)
Case

Risk Management at Wellfleet Bank: Deciding about "Megadeals"

By: Anette Mikes

Inspired by one of the few banks that successfully weathered the 2007-2009 credit crisis, the case illustrates risk management in a corporate finance business. Chief executive Alastair Dowes has to decide if the risk governance process is adequate to uncover mega-risks... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Decision Making; Performance Evaluation; Credit; Balance and Stability; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Decision Choices and Conditions; Negotiation Offer; Performance Effectiveness; Corporate Finance; Banking Industry

April 2008
Tutorial

Finance: An Introductory Online Course

By: Timothy A. Luehrman, Brenda W. Chia and Michelle Rendall

The Finance Online Course provides a fundamental understanding of the principles, analytical tools, and knowledge needed to make good investment and financing decisions. The course introduces students to finance ratios, forecasting methods, capital structure theory,... View Details

Keywords: Financial Management; Forecasting and Prediction; Investment; Corporate Finance

Teaching Interest

MBA Elective Curriculum: Investment Strategies

By: Malcolm P. Baker

This is a CORE course for students pursuing careers in finance. Thus, students interested in pursuing careers in mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, endowments, wealth management, financial consulting, marketing and client service, sales and trading,... View Details

January 2009
Case

Berkshire Hathaway

By: Bharat N. Anand and Samhita Patwardhan Jayanti

Berkshire Hathaway describes the history and strategy of one of the best known investment firms over the last forty years. The case describes the investment philosophy of Warren Buffett, its legendary chairman and CEO, the gradual diversification of its portfolio, its... View Details

Keywords: History; Private Equity; Diversification; Resource Allocation; Investment Portfolio; Corporate Strategy; Investment; Corporate Governance

Ria is a JD/PhD student at Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. At HLS, she was a John M. Olin Fellow and the winner of the 2021 Victor Brudney Writing Prize. She previously studied Economics and Mathematics at Columbia University, where she was nominated... View Details

24 Jul 2014
Op-Ed

Reform Tax Law to Keep US Firms at Home

along partisan lines, from overhauling the US corporate tax to punishing companies who choose to move elsewhere. On July 22, 2014, Mihir A. Desai, Miuzho Financial Group Professor of Finance at Harvard... View Details

Keywords: by Mihir Desai; Pharmaceutical

Tatiana Sandino

Tatiana Sandino is the Arthur Lowes Dickinson Professor of Business Administration in the Accounting and Management Unit, most recently teaching and undertaking the role of course head for the required first-year MBA course Financial Reporting and Control. She has... View Details

Keywords: retailing; service industry

Emily R. McComb

Emily McComb is a Senior Lecturer in the Finance Unit at HBS, teaching "Finance 2" in the required curriculum of the MBA program, as well as a co-leader of the HBS Impact Investment Fund in the elective curriculum. Prior to joining the HBS faculty in 2017, Emily was... View Details

Keywords: financial services; health care

2004
Working Paper

Are Perks Purely Managerial Excess?

By: Raghuram G. Rajan and Julie Wulf

Why do some firms tend to offer executives a variety of perks while others offer none at all? A widespread view in the corporate finance literature is that executive perks are a form of agency or private benefit and a way for managers to misappropriate some of the... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Performance Productivity; Executive Compensation; Corporate Finance

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April 1993 (Revised October 1995)
Case

ALZA and Bio-Electro Systems (A): Technological and Financial Innovation

By: Josh Lerner and Peter Tufano

To develop the next generation of risky products, ALZA, a mature and profitable biotechnology firm specializing in drug delivery systems, must raise $40 million. Organizational constraints and competitive concerns demand that the work be done inside the firm. However,... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Technological Innovation; Business Subsidiaries; Decision Choices and Conditions; Corporate Finance; Biotechnology Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

May 2000 (Revised April 2003)
Case

Contractual Innovation in the UK Energy Markets: Enron Europe, The Eastern Group, and the Sutton Bridge Project

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Peter Tufano

In December 1996, Enron Europe and The Eastern Group were on the verge of signing an innovative transaction in the utility industry. Eastern was going to buy a long-term option to convert natural gas into electricity from Enron, thereby giving it the economic right to... View Details

Keywords: Project Finance; Infrastructure; Supply and Industry; Corporate Finance; Utilities Industry; Energy Industry

Research Summary

Overview

Professor Schreger studies international finance and macroeconomics, with an emphasis on sovereign debt. Following a series of sovereign debt crises in the 1980s and 1990s, which caused defaults among emerging markets governments on their foreign currency obligations,... View Details

June 2015
Article

The Organization of Enterprise in Japan

By: Tom Nicholas

Recent research reveals that the joint stock corporation was not a superior form of business organization in many countries historically. In Japan, however, it played a more fundamental role. Between 1896 and 1939 joint stock enterprises accounted for 44 percent of... View Details

Keywords: Japan; Legal Form; Enterprise; Modernization; Business Organization; Entrepreneurship; Japan

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Brian Trelstad is a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School in the General Management Unit and the Faculty Chair of the Advanced Leadership Initiative. He teaches elective courses on Social Entrepreneurship and Systems... View Details

Keywords: education industry; health care; service industry; emerging market private equity; private equity (other); venture capital industry

2016
Book

Why They Do It: Inside the Mind of the White-Collar Criminal

By: Eugene F. Soltes

From the financial fraudsters of Enron, to the embezzlers at Tyco, to the Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff, the failings of corporate titans are regular fixtures in the news. But what drives wealthy and powerful people to white-collar crime? I draw from extensive personal... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Corporate Finance

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