Publications

December 2013
Case

Grupo Beta San Miguel

By: David E. Bell and Natalie Kindred

In November 2013, Dr. Jose Pinto, head of Grupo Beta San Miguel (BSM), Mexico's largest private sugar producer, is weighing the future prospects of the Mexican sugar industry as he considers whether BSM should bid on one of the state-owned sugar mills slated for... View Details

Keywords: Mexico; Jose Pinto; Beta San Miguel; Polycrom; Sugar; World Sugar Trade; NAFTA; Strategy; Trade; Futures and Commodity Futures; Agribusiness; Price; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Mexico; United States; North America

July 1991 (Revised August 1991)
Case

Philip Morris Companies, Inc. (B)

By: Samuel L. Hayes III

Looks at the company's plans for a new debt offering under the Rule 415 shelf underwriting provision--in this instance from the vantage point of the lead investment banker for the deal. The decision-maker must assess the risks of the issuer, the tone of the market, the... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Stocks; Initial Public Offering; Consumer Products Industry; United States

19 Sep 2023
HBS Case

How Will the Tech Titans Behind ChatGPT, Bard, and LLaMA Make Money?

subscription without usage limits as we are used to today. Usage pricing is going to be much more important. A second distinction is that a significant portion of the core technology is open source, and a lot of the data being used to... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Information Technology; Information Technology

Spring 2016
Article

Net Neutrality: A Fast Lane to Understanding the Tradeoffs

By: Shane Greenstein, Martin Peitz and Tommaso Valletti

The last decade has seen a strident public debate about the principle of "net neutrality." The economic literature has focused on two definitions of net neutrality. The most basic definition of net neutrality is to prohibit payments from content providers to internet... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Policy

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17 Nov 2015
First Look

November 17, 2015

governance to an increased number of startups that they are more likely to abandon, but where early experiments significantly inform beliefs about the future potential of the venture. We also highlight how this adaptation by financial... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

January 2017 (Revised August 2019)
Supplement

X Fire Paintball & Airsoft: Is Amazon a Friend or Foe? (B)

By: Feng Zhu and Angela Acocella

Three years after launching his brick-and-mortar store, X Fire Paintball and Airsoft, Steve Herbert Sr. and his sons began selling products on Amazon.com’s third-party Marketplace and online sales expanded rapidly. Over time, X Fire noticed that products of which it... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Competition; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Small Business; Retail Industry; Canada

Web

Curriculum - Case Method Project

Confederation—including debt, contraction of trade, recession, inflation, and Shays’ Rebellion—and how those problems informed key features of the U.S. Constitution. Coverage: 1763 – 1787; American Revolution; Articles of Confederation;... View Details

March 2024 (Revised July 2024)
Case

AMC: The Zero Revenue Case

By: C. Fritz Foley and Donal O'Cofaigh

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic put theatre company AMC’s already perilous financial situation under even further strain. The company’s high levels of debt resulted in a monthly cash-burn which left it facing an imminent Chapter-11 filing in the absence of... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Public Equity; Stock Shares; Health Pandemics; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

A native of North Dakota, Dr. Goldberg received his A.B. from Harvard University in 1948, his MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration in 1950 and his Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Minnesota in 1952.

... View Details

Keywords: information; information; information; information; information; information; information; information; information; information; information; information; information; information; information; information; information

17 Aug 2006
Working Paper Summaries

Corporate Governance and Networks: Bankers in the Corporate Networks of Brazil, Mexico, and the United States circa 1910

Keywords: by Aldo Musacchio

16 Sep 2008
First Look

First Look: September 16, 2008

the product has all features. The important implication is that price alone cannot serve as a signal of quality in this setting. In contrast, a "buyer-initiated information revelation" format,... View Details

2014
Working Paper

Search-Based Peer Firms: Aggregating Investor Perceptions Through Internet Co-Searches

By: Charles M.C. Lee, Paul Ma and Charles C.Y. Wang

Applying a "co-search" algorithm to Internet traffic at the SEC's EDGAR web-site, we develop a novel method for identifying economically-related peer firms and for measuring their relative importance. Our results show that firms appearing in chronologically adjacent... View Details

Keywords: Peer Firm; EDGAR Search Traffic; Revealed Preference; Co-search; Industry Classification; Analytics and Data Science; Internet and the Web; Mathematical Methods; Corporate Finance

SSRN

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12 Feb 2008
First Look

First Look: February 12, 2007

informativeness and credibility, we also document that the information content of management earnings forecasts, as measured by the strength of share price responses to... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

June 2024
Case

Arete Research on Unity Software

By: Joseph Pacelli and Tonia Labruyere

Richard Kramer had founded Arete Research, an independent financial research provider, in 2000 after a successful career as a sell-side analyst at Goldman Sachs. He reflects on his team's coverage of Unity Software, a U.S.-based mobile games software company, that... View Details

Keywords: Analysis; Initial Public Offering; Analytics and Data Science; Applications and Software; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Valuation; Value Creation; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Model; Reports; Financial Services Industry; Video Game Industry; United Kingdom; United States

11 Sep 2017
Research & Ideas

Why Employers Favor Men

prejudice against women, so it’s not that people in this setting don’t like hiring women. Instead, employees are drawing on the information about average performance and are not hiring members of lower-performing groups.” Women are more... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

2018
Working Paper

The Welfare Effects of Peer Entry in the Accommodation Market: The Case of Airbnb

By: Chiara Farronato and Andrey Fradkin

We study the effects of enabling peer supply through Airbnb in the accommodation industry. We present a model of competition between flexible and dedicated sellers - peer hosts and hotels - who provide differentiated products. We estimate this model using data from... View Details

Keywords: Peer To Peer; Digital Platforms; Market Entry and Exit; Competition; Accommodations Industry

Find at Harvard

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Web

South Asia - Global

conglomerate with operations spanning hospitals, clinics, retail pharmacies, and diagnostic centers across India and the GCC. After its 2018 listing on India’s National Stock Exchange, Aster’s stock... View Details

Web

Great American Business Leaders of the 20th Century - Leadership

Limited, 1914–1922 Robert T. Powers Nalco Chemical Company, 1971–1979 Edmund T. Pratt, Jr. Pfizer, 1972–1992 Andrew W. Preston United Fruit Company, 1882–1924 James E. Preston Avon Products, 1988–1998 Robert E. Price View Details

April 2017 (Revised November 2017)
Case

BlackRock (B): Acquire MLIM? (with video links)

By: Ranjay Gulati, Jan W. Rivkin, Stuart C. Gilson and Aldo Sesia

In early 2006, BlackRock, Inc. is considering acquiring Merrill Lynch’s asset management business. The asset management industry was in a state of transition. In the prior year, more than 130 mergers and acquisitions had taken place. The proposed deal between BlackRock... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Competition; Information Technology; Asset Management; Mergers and Acquisitions; Decision Choices and Conditions; United States