Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,354)
- Faculty Publications (103)
- 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
- July 2007
- Article
Earnings Announcement Premia and Limits to Arbitrage
By: Daniel Cohen, Aiyesha Dey, Thomas Lys and Shyam Sunder
We examine the factors underlying the presence of earnings announcement premia. We find that the premia persist beyond the sample period examined in prior studies (ending in 1988), although they decline in magnitude after 1988. Further, premia are lower on the expected... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Highbrow Films Gather Dust: Time-inconsistent Preferences and Online DVD Rentals
By: Katherine L. Milkman, Todd Rogers and Max H. Bazerman
We report on a field study demonstrating systematic differences between the preferences people anticipate they will have over a series of options in the future and their subsequent revealed preferences over those options. Using a novel panel data set, we analyze the... View Details
- Article
Real Estate Opportunity Funds
By: Nori Gerardo Lietz, Thea C. Hahn and David Geltner
Real estate opportunity funds are one of the fastest-growing segments of the real estate investment industry, similar in some basic respects to other private equity and alternative investment asset classes that seek high returns by taking on more risk in highly... View Details
- 2005
- Working Paper
Can Mutual Fund Managers Pick Stocks? Evidence from Their Trades Prior to Earnings Announcements
By: Malcolm Baker, Lubomir Litov, Jessica Wachter and Jeffrey Wurgler
We consider measures of stock-picking skill of mutual fund managers based on the earnings announcement returns of the stocks that they hold and trade. Relative to standard approaches, this approach focuses on an especially informative subset of the returns data,... View Details
- November 2004 (Revised March 2007)
- Case
10 Uncommon Values®: Optimizing the Stock-Selection Process
By: Paul M. Healy and Boris Groysberg
In 2003, Steve Hash, research director at Lehman Brothers, prepared to initiate the firm's "Ten Uncommon Values" stock-picking process for the year. An investment committee had to pick the 10 best stocks from about 100 stock ideas presented by the firm's analysts. The... View Details
- November 2004
- Article
Unemployment Benefits As a Substitute for a Conservative Central Banker
By: Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch
In the many years since their introduction, positive theories of inflation have rarely been tested. This paper documents a negative relationship between inflation and the welfare state (proxied by the parameters of the unemployment benefit program) that is to be... View Details
- 2004
- Working Paper
Judging Fund Managers by the Company They Keep
By: Randolph Cohen, Joshua Coval and Luboš Pástor
We develop a performance evaluation approach in which a fund manager's skill is judged by the extent to which his investment decisions resemble the decisions of managers with distinguished performance records. The proposed performance measures are estimated more... View Details
- July 2002 (Revised August 2003)
- Case
Unilever Superannuation Fund vs. Merrill Lynch, The
By: Andre F. Perold and Joshua Musher
In 2001, the Unilever Superannuation Fund sued Merrill Lynch for damages of 130 million British pounds. Over the period 1977 to 1998, the Unilever Fund had significantly underperformed the benchmark, and its trustees contended that the poor returns resulted from... View Details
- April 2002
- Article
Limited Arbitrage in Mergers and Acquisitions
By: Malcolm Baker and Serkan Savasoglu
A diversified portfolio of risk arbitrage positions produces an abnormal return of 0.6-0.9% per month over the period from 1981 to 1996. We trace these profits to practical limits on risk arbitrage. In our model of risk arbitrage, arbitrageurs' risk-bearing capacity... View Details
- November 2001 (Revised April 2002)
- Case
Taking Charge at Dogus Holding (A)
By: Rakesh Khurana, Gina Carioggia and Simon Johnson
Describes 37-year-old Ferit Sahenk's challenges in taking over his father's traditionally managed $14 billion Turkish conglomerate in a period of economic instability. Leading the large holding company into the 21st century will require the establishment of a more... View Details
- October 2000
- Article
The Equity Share in New Issues and Aggregate Stock Returns
By: Malcolm Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler
The share of equity issues in total new equity and debt issues is a strong predictor of U.S. stock market returns between 1928 and 1997. In particular, firms issue more equity than debt just before periods of low market returns. The equity share in new issues has... View Details
- August 1999 (Revised January 2002)
- Case
Brita Products Company, The
By: John A. Deighton
Clorox's Brita skillfully exploits a tide of water safety concerns, growing a home water (filtration) business from inception to a 15% U.S. household penetration in ten years. The dilemma in the case arises as the period of increasing returns seems to be drawing to a... View Details
- February 1999
- Case
Volant Skis
By: Steven C. Wheelwright and Matt Verlinden
Volant brought innovation to the ski equipment industry in 1989 by developing a stainless steel ski. He claimed the skis could turn more easily, could hold an edge in icy conditions, and were more stable than aluminum or fiberglass skis. The company's "soft-flex"... View Details
- May 1996
- Case
First Capital Holdings Corp.
By: Stuart C. Gilson, Harry DeAngelo and Linda DeAngelo
The manager of a money-management firm considers whether to invest in the securities of a large, financially troubled, California-based life insurance holding company that holds 40% of its assets in high-yield junk bonds. Over the past year, the value of its portfolio... View Details
- March 1995 (Revised December 1995)
- Case
Dividend Policy at FPL Group, Inc. (A)
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Craig F Schreiber
A Wall Street analyst has just learned that FPL (the holding company for Florida's largest electric utility) may cut its dividend in several days despite a 47-year streak of consecutive dividend increases. In response to the deregulation of the electric utility... View Details
- June 1993 (Revised April 1998)
- Case
COMCO Holding AG (B): COMCO Martech
COMCO Martech was a new breed of joint venture for COMCO Holding, a mid-sized Swiss-German company that had grown over a five-year period through tie-ups with small, start-up companies. Whereas a typical COMCO venture provided services to a large German retailer, was... View Details
- 1993
- Working Paper
Currency Hedging Over Long Horizons
By: K. A. Froot
This paper reexamines the widely-held wisdom that the currency exposure of international investments should be entirely hedged. It finds that the previously documented ability of hedges to reduce portfolio return variance holds at short horizons, but not at long... View Details
- February 1992 (Revised March 1993)
- Case
Intel Corp.--1992
By: Kenneth A. Froot
Intel Corp., the world's dominant designer and manufacturer of microprocessors (the "brains" of the personal computer), has accumulated a large amount of cash (net of debt). Furthermore, it expects to continue to accumulate cash at an unprecedented rate. Has the... View Details
- Article
Optimal Capital-Gains Taxation under Limited Information
By: Jerry R. Green and Eytan Sheshinski
Taxation of capital gains at realization may distort individuals' decisions regarding holding or selling during an asset's lifetime. This creates the problem of designing a tax structure for capital gains so as to induce efficient patterns of holding and selling.... View Details