Publications

June 1994 (Revised September 1995)
Case

Leland O'Brien Rubinstein Associates, Inc.: SuperTrust

By: Peter Tufano

Leland O'Brien Rubinstein Associates, Inc. (LOR), which profited by selling portfolio insurance to institutional investors, attempts to rebuild itself after the 1987 stock market crash by creating new products to meet the unsatisfied needs of equity investors. LOR... View Details

Keywords: Product Development; Financial Services Industry; United States

Editorial

Why CEOs Should Share Their Long-Term Plans with Investors

By: Christina Rehnberg, George Serafeim and Brian Tomlinson

Rather than requiring less short-term information, the key to combating short-termism is to encourage companies to share more information about their long-term plans. Analysis of companies that have done so suggests that long-term plans are not mere marketing... View Details

Keywords: CEO; Investor Relations; Disclosure; Long-term Growth; Investing; Business and Shareholder Relations; Strategy; Corporate Disclosure

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April 2023
Article

Are Intermediary Constraints Priced?

By: Wenxin Du, Benjamin Hebert and Amy Wang Huber

Violations of no-arbitrage conditions measure the shadow cost of intermediary constraints. Intermediary asset pricing and intertemporal hedging together imply that the risk of these constraints tightening is priced. We describe a “forward CIP trading strategy” that... View Details

Keywords: Asset Pricing; Investment Return; Risk and Uncertainty; International Finance

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2018
Working Paper

OTC Intermediaries

By: Andrea L. Eisfeldt, Bernard Herskovic, Sriram Rajan and Emil Siriwardane

Over-the-counter (OTC) markets for financial assets are dominated by a relatively small number of core intermediaries and a large number of peripheral customers. In this paper, we develop a model of trade in a core-periphery network and estimate its key structural... View Details

Keywords: OTC Markets; Intermediaries; Dealers; Credit Default Swaps; Risk Sharing; Networks; Price; Risk and Uncertainty

SSRN

Research Summary

The new property: computational property, intellectual property, and cyberspace

The objective of this project is to design ownership regimes for property located in cyberspace, such as websites, links for e-travel, applets that run on distant processors, and other related computational species. The driving assumption of the project is that the... View Details

October 1990
Article

Bankruptcy, Boards, Banks, and Blockholders: Evidence on Changes in Corporate Ownership and Control When Firms Default

By: S. C. Gilson

In 111 publicly traded firms that either file for bankruptcy or privately restructure their debt between 1979 and 1985, bank lenders frequently become major stockholders or appoint new directors. On average, only 46% of incumbent directors remain when bankruptcy or... View Details

Keywords: Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Governance; Banks and Banking; Change; Business Ventures; Ownership

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Article

Matching in Networks with Bilateral Contracts

By: John William Hatfield and Scott Duke Kominers

We introduce a model in which firms trade goods via bilateral contracts which specify a buyer, a seller, and the terms of the exchange. This setting subsumes (many-to-many) matching with contracts, as well as supply chain matching. When firms' relationships do not... View Details

Keywords: Contracts; Market Design; Marketplace Matching; Supply Chain

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November 2020 (Revised March 2021)
Case

Sercomm: Operating in China Amid COVID-19 and Beyond

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Gary P. Pisano and Bonnie Yining Cao

The COVID-19 pandemic had forced a production cut in the factory of Sercomm, one of the world’s major telecom equipment producers, in China. The case explores and highlights the challenges that Chief Executive Officer James Wang faced: How could Sercomm recover and... View Details

Keywords: Emerging Markets; Information Technology; Operations; Management; Health Pandemics; Strategy; Telecommunications Industry; Manufacturing Industry; China

August 2008
Case

Thoma Bravo - Citect Corporation Take-Private

In 2006, Citect Corporation, a publicly traded Australian software company, was the target of a takeover battle between a financial sponsor and a strategic buyer. Thoma Bravo, the U.S.-based private equity firm, had to decide on its acquisition strategy in the face of... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Private Equity; Investment; Negotiation Deal; Privatization; Valuation; Australia

September–October 2023
Article

Building Brand Engagement: Lessons from NFTs and Collectibles

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Ben Plomion

The financial hype about Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) has cooled considerably since trading in that market went from more than $780 million on May 1, 2022 to less than $295 million for the entire month of May, 2023. But brands launch marketing campaigns in this medium,... View Details

Keywords: Opportunities; Digital Strategy; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy

Article

Core Earnings: New Data and Evidence

By: Ethan Rouen, Eric C. So and Charles C.Y. Wang

Using a novel dataset, we show that components of firms' GAAP earnings stemming from ancillary business activities or transitory shocks are significant in frequency and magnitude. These components have grown over time and are dispersed across various sections of the... View Details

Keywords: Core Earnings; Transitory Earnings; Non-operating Earnings; Quantitative Disclosures; Equity Valuation; Big Data; Business Earnings; Financial Reporting; Valuation; Analytics and Data Science

May 2009 (Revised December 2009)
Case

Reliance Baking Soda: Optimizing Promotional Spending

By: John A. Quelch and Heather Beckham

Reliance Baking Soda is Stewart Corporation's oldest and most established product. The new Domestic Brand Director needs to create a 2008 marketing budget that delivers a profit increase of 10% over 2007 levels. She must first evaluate the effectiveness of past... View Details

Keywords: Communication Strategy; Quantitative Analysis; Consumer Marketing; Marketing Planning; Product Management; Sales Promotions; Program Budgeting; Marketing Strategy; Advertising; Product Marketing; Budgets and Budgeting; Sales; Consumer Products Industry

Forthcoming
Article

Segmented Arbitrage

By: Emil Siriwardane, Adi Sunderam and Jonathan Wallen

We use arbitrage activity in equity, fixed income, and foreign exchange markets to characterize the frictions and constraints facing intermediaries. The average pairwise correlation between the 32 arbitrage spreads that we study is 22%. These low correlations are... View Details

Keywords: Financial Intermediation; Arbitrage; Intermediary-based Asset Pricing; Finance; Segmentation

June 2006 (Revised September 2006)
Case

Euronext.liffe and the Over-the-Counter Derivatives Market (A)

Euronext.liffe, a derivatives trading exchange, had just finished rolling out three new services targeted at the over-the-counter (OTC) market in 2004. The services offered automated confirmation and clearing for OTC equity derivatives. Yet, developments in the... View Details

Keywords: Value Creation; Product Positioning; Competition; Financial Markets; Network Effects; Cooperation

September 2003 (Revised May 2004)
Case

New Partnership for Africa's Development, The

By: Laura Alfaro, Debora L. Spar and Cate Reavis

In a world context of international institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund and their interaction with developing countries, this case looks at an African development initiative to address its own problems: The New Economic... View Details

Keywords: Development Economics; Developing Countries and Economies; International Finance; Investment; Poverty; Africa

October 2023
Case

JPMorgan Chase in Paris

By: Joseph L. Bower, Dante Roscini, Elena Corsi and Michael Norris

In 2019, Daniel Pinto, President and COO of JPMorgan Chase, has to make a recommendation to the bank’s Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, about where to physically locate the bank’s European trading operations after Brexit takes effect in 2020. The decision-making process... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Banks and Banking; Financial Markets; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Globalized Firms and Management; Globalized Markets and Industries; Decisions; Banking Industry; Europe; European Union; France; United Kingdom; Paris

2023
Working Paper

Competition and Speculation in Cryptocurrencies

By: Alex A. Wu and Justin Katz

We examine how mutual fund managers' performance incentives generated speculative demand during the 2020-2022 cryptocurrency boom and bust. Managers with strong relative performance incentives began investing in crypto after their competitors began investing in it,... View Details

Keywords: Cryptocurrency; Mutual Funds; Competition; Investment; Decision Making

January 2008 (Revised January 2010)
Background Note

Finding Information for Industry Analysis

By: Jan W. Rivkin and Ann Cullen

This note provides detailed instructions on finding resources for conducting industry analysis, with a special focus on resources available at Harvard Business School. It allows students to transition from doing a Five Forces analysis on the basis of a case, where all... View Details

Keywords: Information; Five Forces Framework; Research; Competitive Strategy; Internet