Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,108)
- Faculty Publications (143)
- October 2012 (Revised April 2017)
- Case
Brazil's Enigma: Sustaining Long-Term Growth
By: Laura Alfaro, Hilary White and Haviland Sheldahl-Thomason
Over the past decade, Brazil's future as a leading world economic power appeared certain. An expanding middle class and commodity boom had fueled economic growth, with GDP growth hitting a peak of 7.5% in 2010. However, the high cost of conducting business in Brazil,... View Details
- April 2012 (Revised May 2012)
- Case
Merck: Operating Science-Based Business
By: Ananth Raman, Inga Maurer and William Schmidt
Merck is known for its commitment to investing in basic R&D. Are Merck's long-term investments justifiable when the firm faces extreme earnings pressure? View Details
- January – March 2012
- Article
Bond Risk, Bond Return Volatility, and the Term Structure of Interest Rates
By: Luis M. Viceira
This paper explores time variation in bond risk, as measured by the covariation of bond returns with stock returns and with consumption growth, and in the volatility of bond returns. A robust stylized fact in empirical finance is that the spread between the yield on... View Details
- December 2011
- Case
PepsiCo India: Performance with Purpose
In 2010, PepsiCo India's management is working to translate PepsiCo's new mission, "Performance with Purpose," into practice in the India market. The mission calls for continued financial performance and market leadership, as well as greater emphasis on healthy... View Details
- September 2011 (Revised January 2012)
- Case
Telemonitoring at Visiting Nurse Health System
By: F. Warren McFarlan, Mark Keil and Mala Kaul
The Telemonitoring at Visiting Nurse Health System case presents one home healthcare organization's efforts to use telemonitoring to improve the quality of care provided to at-risk patients who were discharged from hospitals and needed home care. After two years of... View Details
- September 2011
- Module Note
Orientation to Leadership Intelligence Days, 2011
By: Joshua D. Margolis and Anthony J. Mayo
Julie Bornstein, senior vice president of Sephora Direct, is seeking to double her budget for social media and other digital marketing initiatives for 2011. A number of digital efforts implemented in the past two years seem to be bearing fruit and there is a desire to... View Details
- June 2011 (Revised June 2012)
- Case
Sephora Direct: Investing in Social Media, Video, and Mobile
By: Elie Ofek and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld
Julie Bornstein, senior vice president of Sephora Direct, is seeking to double her budget for social media and other digital marketing initiatives for 2011. A number of digital efforts implemented in the past two years seem to be bearing fruit and there is a desire to... View Details
- June 2011 (Revised August 2012)
- Case
Coca-Cola in 2011: In Search of a New Model
By: David B. Yoffie and Renee Kim
Muhtar Kent, CEO of the Coca-Cola Company, faced a critical decision in 2011 after closing a $12 billion deal to buy its troubled North America bottling operations from its biggest bottler, Coca-Cola Enterprises. The decision was prompted by several changes in the U.S.... View Details
- April 2011
- Article
Private Equity and Long-Run Investment: The Case of Innovation
By: Josh Lerner, Morten Sorensen and Per Stromberg
A long-standing controversy is whether LBOs relieve managers from short-term pressures of dispersed shareholders, or whether LBO funds themselves are driven by short-term profit motives and sacrifice long-term growth to boost short-term performance. We investigate 495... View Details
- November 2010 (Revised May 2012)
- Background Note
Assessing a Company's Future Financial Health
By: Thomas R. Piper
The case provides students with (1) an understanding of the essence of long-term financial health; (2) familiarity with the calculation and meaning of various financial ratios; and (3) an understanding of the influence of a company's operating and competitive... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Making the Numbers? 'Short Termism' and the Puzzle of Only Occasional Disaster
By: Nelson P. Repenning and Rebecca Henderson
Much recent work in strategy and popular discussion suggests that an excessive focus on "managing the numbers"—delivering quarterly earnings at the expense of longer-term investments—makes it difficult for firms to make the investments necessary to build competitive... View Details
- June 2010
- Article
A Gap-Filling Theory of Corporate Debt Maturity Choice
By: Robin Greenwood, Samuel G. Hanson and Jeremy C. Stein
We argue that time-series variation in the maturity of aggregate corporate debt issues arises because firms behave as macro liquidity providers, absorbing the large supply shocks associated with changes in the maturity structure of government debt. We document that... View Details
- April 2010 (Revised October 2010)
- Case
Vale: Global Expansion in the Challenging World of Mining
By: Tarun Khanna, Aldo Musacchio and Ricardo Reisen de Pinho
In 2009 the management of Vale, a Brazilian diversified mining company and the largest iron ore producer in the world, was under pressure from at least two fronts. First, the emergence of China as the most important consumer of iron ore in the last few years had... View Details
- December 2009 (Revised February 2010)
- Case
The Investment Fund for Foundations (TIFF) in 2009
By: Luis M. Viceira and Brendon Christopher Parry
In late June 2009, management at The Investment Fund for Foundations (TIFF) was considering expanding the footprint of the TIFF Diversified Fund (TDF), the first truly comprehensive endowment management vehicle offered under the TIFF banner. The recent large capital... View Details
- November 2009
- Article
What Would Peter Say?
Heeding the wisdom of Peter Drucker might have helped us avoid - and will help us solve - numerous challenges, from restoring trust in business to tackling climate change. He issued early warnings about excessive executive pay, the auto industry's failure to adapt and... View Details
- Article
Debt Maturity: Is Long-Term Debt Optimal?
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
We model and calibrate the arguments in favor and against short-term and long-term debt. These arguments broadly include: maturity premium, sustainability, and service smoothing. We use a dynamic equilibrium model with tax distortions and government... View Details
- Article
Investor Activism and Takeovers
By: Robin Greenwood and Michael Schor
Recent work documents large positive abnormal returns around the time that a hedge fund announces its activist intentions with a publicly listed firm. We show that these returns are largely explained by the ability of activists to force target firms into a takeover: In... View Details
- 2008
- Simulation
Strategic Innovation Simulation: Back Bay Battery
By: Willy C. Shih and Clayton Christensen
This online simulation allows students to play the role of a business unit manager at Back Bay Battery Company who faces the dilemma of balancing a portfolio of investment strategies across products in the rechargeable battery space. Players have to manage R&D... View Details
- Article
A Head Start on Succession
By: Joseph L. Bower
Our studies of CEO succession over the past several years have shown some improvements in the trends in CEO turnover, often resulting from outside pressures for improved oversight and better corporate governance. The next step in improving CEO succession—and ultimately... View Details
- March 2008
- Case
Novartis AG: Science-Based Business
By: H. Kent Bowen and Courtney Purrington
Novartis is a science-based drug company, which has important implications for its business strategy. It is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world with over $38B in sales in 2007. Pharmaceuticals account for slightly over $24B of that total. In 2007,... View Details