Publications

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17 Mar 2021
Research & Ideas

Beyond Pajamas: Sizing Up the Pandemic Shopper

When working professionals were shifting to home offices a year ago as COVID-19 was spreading, comedians and pundits predicted that people would no longer need bras and pants... View Details

Keywords: by Ayelet Israeli, Eva Ascarza, and Laura Castrillo; Retail

October 2005 (Revised February 2010)
Background Note

Calculating Free Cash Flows

By: Robin Greenwood and David S. Scharfstein

Outlines the mechanics of calculating free cash flows from historical and proforma financial statements. Focuses on the mechanical process of transforming numbers from financial forecasts into cash flows. View Details

Keywords: Financial Statements; Forecasting and Prediction; Cash Flow; Mathematical Methods

29 Jun 2017
Research & Ideas

Why Uber Is Worth Saving and How To Do It

entrenched interests are going to resist and regulators are too slow to catch up,” she says. But Kanter calls financial results a “lagging indicator” of a company’s health. “They tell you what you’ve just done. They don’t View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Transportation

24 Oct 2006
First Look

First Look: October 24, 2006

Working PapersManaging Functional Biases in Organizational Forecasts: A Case Study of Consensus Forecasting in Supply Chain Planning Authors:Rogelio Oliva and Noel Watson Abstract To date, little research... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

09 Jan 2014
News

Tapping into Opportunity

the world: growing demand and limited supply. According to US research, the world's demand for fresh and pure water is forecast to exceed supply by 50 percent by 2025. Other... View Details

Keywords: Constantine von Hoffman; Business and Environment Initiative; Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services; Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services

07 Oct 2013
Research & Ideas

The Case for Combating Climate Change with Nuclear Power and Fracking

Robert Hargraves, an energy policy instructor at Dartmouth College, which forecasts a hypothetical but startling scenario for the world's electricity consumption. [Click the image to see the slide.]"Even if we were capable of cutting US... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Energy; Utilities

May 1993
Case

Kaufmann Manufacturing Company (A)

By: Julie H. Hertenstein and William J. Bruns Jr.

A management team at Kaufmann is studying the latest year's operations and sales, which seem to have led to very confusing financial results. Sales exceeded forecast and production for the first six months, however Kaufmann reported a loss. Yet, when sales were below... View Details

Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Earnings Management; Cost Accounting; Financial Reporting; Cost vs Benefits; Capital Budgeting; Cost Management; Profit; Outcome or Result

24 Jul 2018
News

How Amy Hood Won Back Wall Street and Helped Reboot Microsoft

Hood needed to correct missteps made on Ballmer’s watch. First up: the $9.5 billion Nokia deal. Less than a year after closing, it was foundering and had missed Hood’s initial forecast for sales View Details

2023
Working Paper

Do Active Funds Do Better in What They Trade?

By: Marco Sammon and John J. Shim

We develop two new, simple measures to quantify active fund decisions at the individual position level. The intuition is to separate passive rebalancing induced by flows and position changes from active rebalancing decisions. We find that additive active rebalancing --... View Details

Keywords: Investment Funds; Financial Management

SSRN

March 2015
Article

Inside the “Black Box” of Sell-Side Financial Analysts

By: Lawrence D. Brown, Andrew C. Call, Michael B. Clement and Nathan Y. Sharp

Our objective is to penetrate the “black box” of sell-side financial analysts by providing new insights into the inputs analysts use and the incentives they face. We survey 365 analysts and conduct 18 follow-up interviews covering a wide range of topics, including the... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Use and Leverage; Investment; Analysis; Forecasting and Prediction; Stocks; Financial Services Industry

Find at Harvard

August 2005 (Revised March 2007)
Case

Leitax (A)

By: Noel H. Watson, Rogelio Oliva and Laura Winig

Leitax, a young digital camera manufacturer selling its cameras mainly through retailers, experienced poor matching of inventory availability with demand for new and existing products in 2002. Describes the implementation and details of a consensus forecasting... View Details

Keywords: Demand and Consumers; Supply Chain Management; Forecasting and Prediction; Supply and Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Retail Industry

16 Oct 2013
Op-Ed

Response to Readers: Combating Climate Change with Nuclear Power and Fracking

newly approved Gen III+ nuclear reactors (e.g., AP-1000 variants or even the still-to-be-approved, but largely derivative Small Modular Reactors) are not likely to produce power cheaply enough to change the currently forecast build out of... View Details

Keywords: by Joe Lassiter; Energy; Utilities

22 Aug 2024
Research & Ideas

Reading the Financial Crisis Warning Signs: Credit Markets and the 'Red-Zone'

at the same time there's a lot of household credit expansion it's a measure that you're in the Red-zone. We found that that is very predictive of crises. Generally, that and a couple of other papers that Sam... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Banking

04 Sep 2019
Research & Ideas

'I Know Why You Voted for Trump' and Other Motivation Misperceptions

She hopes the results make business leaders think twice about how they size up their customers and rely on previous purchases to predict the products they want. “For instance, imagine you see a person buy a... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

July 1987 (Revised October 2009)
Background Note

A Method For Valuing High-Risk, Long-Term Investments: The "Venture Capital Method"

By: William A. Sahlman and Daniel R Scherlis

Describes a method for valuing high-risk, long-term investments such as those confronting venture capitalists. The method entails forecasting a future value (e.g., five years from the present) and discounting that terminal value back to the present by applying a high... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Investment; Risk Management; Valuation

08 Jun 2023
News

Three Alumni Clubs Celebrate Leadership, Community, and History over Dinner

Clubs News Clubs News New York Alumni Honor Outstanding Leaders at Annual Dinner The HBS Club of New York held its 54th Annual Leadership Dinner on April 24, honoring three alumni who embody the HBS mission to "educate leaders who make a difference in the world," and... View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley

October 2017 (Revised April 2018)
Case

Improving Worker Safety in the Era of Machine Learning (A)

By: Michael W. Toffel, Dan Levy, Jose Ramon Morales Arilla and Matthew S. Johnson

Managers make predictions all the time: How fast will my markets grow? How much inventory do I need? How intensively should I monitor my suppliers? Which potential customers will be most responsive to a particular marketing campaign? Which job candidates should I... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning; Policy Implementation; Empirical Research; Inspection; Occupational Safety; Occupational Health; Regulation; Analysis; Forecasting and Prediction; Policy; Operations; Supply Chain Management; Safety; Manufacturing Industry; Construction Industry; United States