Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(5,233)
- Faculty Publications (1,072)
- May 2008 (Revised July 2009)
- Case
Sovereign Wealth Funds: For Profits or Politics?
By: Laura Alfaro and Renee Kim
On March 21, 2008, the U.S. government secured an agreement from two leading sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) to adopt a new set of investment principles to govern the Funds' activities. SWFs, broadly defined as an investment fund owned by a national or a government, were... View Details
- May 2008 (Revised March 2009)
- Case
SKS Microfinance
By: Shawn A. Cole and Theresa Chen
Vikram Akula, CEO of SKS Microfinance, seeks a venture capital investment to fund his firm. SKS, one of the largest and fastest growing microfinance institutions in India, is a profitable, for-profit institution with a social mission. In what is one of the first... View Details
- Article
Optimal Life-Cycle Investing with Flexible Labor Supply: A Welfare Analysis of Life-Cycle Funds
By: Francisco J. Gomes, Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Luis M. Viceira
- April 2008 (Revised April 2010)
- Background Note
The Hedge Fund Industry
This note describes the hedge fund industry as of the end of the year 2007. View Details
- 2008
- Mimeo
Do Hedge Funds Profit from Mutual-Fund Distress?
By: Joseph Chen, Samuel G. Hanson, Harrison Hong and Jeremy C. Stein
This paper explores the question of whether hedge funds engage in frontrunning strategies that exploit the predictable trades of others. One potential opportunity for front-running arises when distressed mutual funds—those suffering large outflows of assets under... View Details
- March 2008 (Revised February 2009)
- Case
Transparent Value LLC
By: Sharon P. Katz, Krishna G. Palepu and Aldo Sesia, Jr.
Leading index company Dow Jones recently signed a license and joint marketing agreement with Transparent Value LLC, the creator of a new fundamentals-based valuation methodology. The agreement allowed Dow Jones to offer a family of indexes based on the Transparent... View Details
Keywords: Asset Management; Stocks; Price; Performance Expectations; Mathematical Methods; Valuation
- March 2008 (Revised June 2009)
- Case
Actis: January 2008
By: Felda Hardymon, Josh Lerner and Ann Leamon
Paul Feltcher, the CEO of Actis, a leading private equity investor in emerging markets, is preparing for an executive retreat at which the management team will consider how best to position the firm for the future. Actis could move in a number of different directions... View Details
- February 2008 (Revised November 2011)
- Case
The International Monetary Fund in Crisis
By: Rawi Abdelal, David Moss and Eugene Kintgen
When Dominique Strauss-Kahn became the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund in late 2007, he faced a number of significant changes. The organization had lost much of its legitimacy over the previous decade, and countries seemed increasingly reluctant to... View Details
- Article
Coarse Thinking and Persuasion
By: Sendhil Mullainathan, Joshua Schwartzstein and Andrei Shleifer
We present a model of uninformative persuasion in which individuals "think coarsely": they group situations into categories and apply the same model of inference to all situations within a category. Coarse thinking exhibits two features that persuaders take advantage... View Details
- 2008
- Chapter
Life-Cycle Funds
By: Luis M. Viceira
The U.S. retirement system has experienced a substantial transformation in recent years. It has evolved from a system in which employees relied mainly on Social Security and professionally managed defined benefit (DB) pension plans sponsored by their employers to... View Details
- January 2008 (Revised September 2009)
- Case
Financing American Housing Construction in the Aftermath of War
By: David Moss and Cole Bolton
At the start of WWI, the United States faced a significant housing shortage. Public officials feared the spread of disease—and even communism—in the nation's cramped urban centers where vacancy rates held near zero and families often "doubled up" in single-housing... View Details
- January 2008
- Background Note
Measuring Investment Performance
By: Andre F. Perold and Kenneth A. Froot
Examines various approaches to measuring investment performance. The approaches include the use of risk exposure and the Sharpe and Information Ratios. Applies the approaches to a variety of mutual funds to demonstrate the effect of using different metrics to measure... View Details
- January 2008 (Revised May 2009)
- Case
Restructuring at Delphi Corporation (A)
By: Stuart C. Gilson and Sarah L. Abbott
Delphi Corporation, operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, has filed a plan of reorganization with the court, under which a consortium of hedge funds led by Appaloosa Management will invest up to $2.6 billion in new equity. Also participating in the plan is... View Details
- January 2008 (Revised March 2009)
- Case
Fortress Investment Group
By: Malcolm Baker, Carlos M. Galvez and James Quinn
CEO Wesley Edens and the five Fortress principals are contemplating a move unprecedented in the industry: becoming the first hedge fund and private equity firm to complete an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). This case examines potential reasons for a leading... View Details
- January 2008 (Revised July 2008)
- Case
Opportunity Partners
By: Robin Greenwood and James Quinn
Philip Goldstein, the principal in a growing hedge fund and prominent activist investor, has taken a position in a Mexico-based closed-end fund. Following a hard-fought proxy contest in which he advocated for management to eliminate the fund's substantial discount,... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Attracting Flows by Attracting Big Clients: Conflicts of Interest and Mutual Fund Portfolio Choice
By: Lauren Cohen and Breno Schmidt
We explore a new channel for attracting inflows using a unique dataset of corporate 401(k) retirement plans and their mutual fund family trustees. Families secure substantial inflows by being named trustee of a 401(k) plan. This affords the plan sponsor potential... View Details
- January 2008
- Article
How to Change the World
Alan Wilson has a decision to make. The CEO of his company, Grepter, wants him to relocate to Zurich, where he can gain valuable experience for a rise to the top. Karl, his best friend, hopes to lure him to a hedge fund that promises big money fast. Shiori, an enticing... View Details
- 2008
- Chapter
The Importance of Default Options for Retirement Saving Outcomes: Evidence from the United States
By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian
This paper summarizes the empirical evidence on how defaults impact retirement savings outcomes. After outlining the salient features of the various sources of retirement income in the U.S., the paper presents the empirical evidence on how defaults impact retirement... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
The Small World of Investing: Board Connections and Mutual Fund Returns
By: Lauren Cohen, Andrea Frazzini and Christopher J. Malloy
This paper uses social networks to identify information transfer in security markets. We focus on connections between mutual fund managers and corporate board members via shared education networks. We find that portfolio managers place larger bets on firms they are... View Details
- December 2007
- Case
The Campaign for Bank Insurance in Antebellum New York
By: David A. Moss and Cole Bolton
The New York State Legislature had come to a standstill in 1829 as lawmakers refused to charter any new banks or recharter any existing banks. Four of New York's forty banks had failed since 1825, and many legislatures believed that a significant change in the banking... View Details