Publications

January 2014
Article

The Consequences of Entrepreneurial Finance: Evidence from Angel Financings

By: William R. Kerr, Josh Lerner and Antoinette Schoar

This paper documents that ventures that are funded by two successful angel groups experience superior outcomes to rejected ventures: they have improved survival, exits, employment, patenting, web traffic, and financing. We use strong discontinuities in angel funding... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Financing and Loans; Interests; Employment; Patents; Internet and the Web; Operations; Entrepreneurship; Business Exit or Shutdown

2023
Working Paper

Financial and Informational Integration Through Oracle Networks

By: Lin William Cong, Eswar Prasad and Daniel Rabetti

Oracles are software components that enable data exchange between siloed blockchains and external environments, enhancing smart contract capabilities and platform interoperability. We find that oracle integration is positively associated with total value locked and... View Details

Keywords: Decentralized Finance; Blockchain; Smart Contract; International Economy; Interoperability; Risk Sharing; Applications and Software; Financial Markets; Economics; Risk Management

SSRN

01 Mar 2014
News

Generation Next

Nisa Godrej Illustration by Anita Kunz In the summer of 2007, Mark Kahn (MBA 2006) received an unusual call from Mumbai. A former HBS classmate had a problem. She wanted him to look over strategic and financial documents for a diversified... View Details

Keywords: Mark Bergen; Godrej Group; Management

31 May 2011
First Look

First Look: May 31

Abstract Theories of the firm have been dominated by a legacy of ideas from early industrialization that pose zero-sum opposition between capital and labor (or capital and nearly everything else), differentiating the economy from society... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

April 2006 (Revised April 2012)
Background Note

The Company Sale Process

By: William E. Fruhan Jr.

Lays out the steps, the timeline, and the process by which a company is sold. Focuses on the sale of companies with enterprise values greater than $100 million. These transactions are large enough to require the help of a financial adviser and attract both strategic... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Auctions; Bids and Bidding; Agreements and Arrangements; Sales

November 2016 (Revised May 2017)
Case

Hyperloop One

By: William A. Sahlman, Ramana Nanda, Robert White, Allison Ciechanover and Jeff Huizinga

This case explores the attempt of Shervin Pishevar, a prominent Silicon Valley investor, to shepherd hyperloop, a futuristic pod-in-tube transportation technology, from concept to transformative reality via Hyperloop One and Sherpa Capital, both companies he... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Startup; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Finance; Transportation; Product Development; Innovation and Invention; Transportation Industry

10 Dec 2013
First Look

First Look: December 10

Pekkala Kerr, and William R. Kerr Abstract—Measures of entrepreneurship, such as average establishment size and the prevalence of start-ups, correlate strongly with employment growth across and within... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

October 2022
Case

EducationSuperHighway 2.0

By: William A. Sahlman, Allison M. Ciechanover and Emily Grandjean

In 2012, Evan Marwell launched EducationSuperHighway (ESH) to address a major problem: though most public K-12 schools in the US had access to the Internet, only roughly 30% had true broadband access that would enable every student to have high speed connectivity. ... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Social Entrepreneurship; Social Issues; Leading Change; Early Childhood Education; Infrastructure; Internet and the Web; Telecommunications Industry; Education Industry; Technology Industry; United States; San Francisco

March 2019
Article

The New Silk Road: Implications for Higher Education in China and the West?

By: William C. Kirby and Marijk C. van der Wende

Recent geopolitical events, such as Brexit and the retreat from multilateral trade and cooperation by the USA, have created waves of uncertainty, especially in the field of higher education, regarding international cooperation. Meanwhile, China is publicly seeking to... View Details

Keywords: New Silk Road; Globalization; Higher Education; Global Range; International Relations; Cooperation

18 Dec 2012
First Look

First Look: December 18

consistency between instrument, research question, and context. Paper: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1838538 Working PapersGrowth through Heterogeneous Innovations Authors:Akcigit, Ufuk, and William R. Kerr... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

September 2021
Article

Did Technology Contribute to the Housing Boom? Evidence from MERS

By: Stefan Lewellen and Emily Williams

We examine the effects of the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, or MERS, on mortgage origination volumes and foreclosure rates prior to the Great Recession. MERS was introduced in the late 1990s and significantly reduced the cost and time associated with... View Details

Keywords: Credit Supply; Housing Boom; Financial Innovation; Nonbank Lenders; Mortgages; Credit; Expansion; Information Technology; Outcome or Result

Find at Harvard

29 May 2012
First Look

First Look: May 29

will adopt the change. By contrast, strong ties to potentially influential organization members who disapprove of a change outright (resistors) are an effective means of affective cooptation only when a change diverges little from... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 2011
Case

AXA Private Equity: The Diana Investment

By: Michael J. Roberts and William A. Sahlman

The case focuses on an investment made by AXA Private Equity, a French manufacturer of food ingredients. The investment is made at the height of the financial markets, and financed with significant debt. Soon thereafter, the financial crisis impacted the company's... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Ethics; Investment; Financial Crisis

January 2018 (Revised March 2019)
Case

Autonomous Vehicles: The Rubber Hits the Road...but When?

By: William Kerr, Allison Ciechanover, Jeff Huizinga and James Palano

The rise of autonomous vehicles has enormous implications for business and society. Despite the many headlines and significant investment in the technology by early 2019, it was still unclear when truly autonomous vehicles would be a commercial reality. Students will... View Details

Keywords: Technology Management; Artificial Intelligence; General Management; Robotics; Technological Innovation; Transportation; Disruption; Information Technology; Decision Making; AI and Machine Learning; Auto Industry; Technology Industry

2012
Working Paper

Is India's Manufacturing Sector Moving Away from Cities?

By: Ejaz Ghani, Arti Grover Goswami and William R. Kerr

This paper investigates the urbanization of the Indian manufacturing sector by combining enterprise data from formal and informal sectors. We find that plants in the formal sector are moving away from urban and into rural locations, while the informal sector is moving... View Details

Keywords: Urban Development; Policy; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Geographic Location; Education; Infrastructure; Manufacturing Industry; India

24 Jan 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research: January 24, 2017

January 2017 Review of Financial Studies Being Surprised by the Unsurprising: Earnings Seasonality and Stock Returns By: Chang, Tom Y., Samuel M. Hartzmark, David H. Solomon, and Eugene F. Soltes Abstract—We present evidence consistent... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

28 Jun 2016
First Look

June 28, 2016

raise funds from outside investors. The relationship appears not to be causal but instead driven by selection effects across heterogeneous teams with varying degrees of inequality aversion. Publisher's link:... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2022
Working Paper

Many Markets Make Good Neighbors: Multimarket Contact and Deposit Banking

By: John William Hatfield and Jonathan Wallen

We investigate the relationship between the interest rates offered to consumers in a deposit banking market and the contact that banks in that market have with each other in other markets. We show, in a simple theoretical model, that such overlapping relationships... View Details

Keywords: Antitrust; Deposit Banking; Market Power; Multimarket Contact; Banks and Banking; Markets; Competition