Publications

05 Nov 2019
News

Bond mutual funds may hold riskier holdings than reported, NBER study finds

Nov 05 2018
Interview

Savvy Investing for the Family Office

September 2023
Case

Diamond Standard

By: Lauren H. Cohen, Zhaoheng Gong and Grace Headinger

Cormac Kinney, Founder and CEO of Diamond Standard, was on a mission to transform the U.S. diamond market through unlocking the precious gems as market-traded assets. As a serial FinTech entrepreneur, he hoped to add an additional service to his vault: Carats. The... View Details

September 2023 (Revised October 2023)
Case

Ghassan Nuqul and the Nuqul Group: Preserving a Father's Legacy

By: Christina R. Wing, Lauren Cohen and Alpana Thapar

The Nuqul Group was established in 1952 by Elia Nuqul, a Palestinian refugee who fled his hometown in 1948 with his family to Jordan. He overcame many hardships in his initial years there, but subsequently started a trading business that grew to become one of Jordan’s... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Family Ownership; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Management Succession; Jordan

2020
Working Paper

The ESG-Innovation Disconnect: Evidence from Green Patenting

By: Lauren Cohen, Umit G. Gurun and Quoc H. Nguyen

No firm or sector of the global economy is untouched by innovation. In equilibrium, innovators will flock to (and innovation will occur where) the returns to innovative capital are the highest. In this paper, we document a strong empirical pattern in green patent... View Details

Keywords: ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Investment; Decision Making; Policy; Energy; Green Technology; Technological Innovation; Patents

Read Now

May 2022
Case

Rawbank's Illico Cash: Can 'Fast Money' Overcome Cash Dependency in the DRC?

By: Lauren Cohen and Grace Headinger

Thomas de Dreux-Brézé, the Head of Strategy and Project Management at Rawbank Congo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was perplexed as he reviewed annual adoption rates for the bank’s launch of Illico Cash 2.0. As the bank’s mobile money app, Illico Cash... View Details

June 2018
Background Note

Introduction to Life Settlements

By: Alexander Braun, Lauren H. Cohen, Christopher J. Malloy and Jiahua Xu

Life insurance is an asset owned by the majority of American adults (61%). Note that this 61% penetration rate is essentially at parity with home ownership (64%) and higher than that of 401(k) retirement account ownership (53%). Life settlements, or life insurance... View Details

Keywords: Insurance; Assets; Value; Markets; Investment Return

September 2017 (Revised June 2019)
Case

Dianrong: Marketplace Lending, Blockchain, and 'The New Finance' in China

By: Christopher J. Malloy, Lauren H. Cohen and Anthony K. Woo

This case examines the strategic positioning of Dianrong, one of the largest online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms in China, in its attempt to become a foundational player in the expansion of the FinTech sector in Asia. Dianrong had recently announced the... View Details

Keywords: Financing and Loans; Internet and the Web; Supply Chain; Finance; Innovation and Invention; Competition; Product Positioning; Strategy; Financial Services Industry; China

04 May 2010
First Look

First Look: May 4

supplement:http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/810011-PDF-ENG Miracle Life Inc. Lauren H. Cohen and Christopher MalloyHarvard Business School Case 210-039 Miracle Life is a... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

November 2020
Case

The 1,000-Year Plan: Lee Kum Kee and Sustaining a Family Culture

By: Lauren Cohen, Dawn H. Lau and Billy Chan

The Lee family, whose Hong Kong-based Lee Kum Kee company has established itself as a legend within the Chinese and Asian sauce world, sets out to create a daring new vision of what family legacy means. With the family business having been established in 1888, and by... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Mission and Purpose; Values and Beliefs; Business and Community Relations; Organizational Structure; Strategic Planning

December 2016
Article

Industry Window Dressing

By: Huaizhi Chen, Lauren Cohen and Dong Lou

We explore a new mechanism by which investors take correlated shortcuts and present evidence that managers undertake actions—in the form of sales management—to take advantage of these shortcuts. Specifically, we exploit a regulatory provision wherein a firm’s primary... View Details

Keywords: Investor Shortcuts; Industry Classification; Opportunistic Managerial Behavior; Discontinuity; Management Practices and Processes; Investment; Sales