Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,168)
- Faculty Publications (335)
- 2015
- Working Paper
Customers and Investors: A Framework for Understanding Financial Institutions
By: Robert C. Merton and Robert T. Thakor
Financial institutions have both investors and customers. Investors, such as those who invest in stocks and bonds or private/public-sector guarantors of institutions, expect an appropriate risk-adjusted return in exchange for the financing and risk-bearing that they... View Details
Keywords: Financial Institutions
- April 2015 (Revised April 2022)
- Case
Bankruptcy in the City of Detroit
By: Stuart Gilson, Kristin Mugford and Annelena Lobb
The June 2013 bankruptcy of the city of Detroit, Michigan was, at the time, the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. Detroit had struggled for years with a weakening tax base, high unemployment, a heavy debt load and increasing retiree costs. These... View Details
Keywords: Chapter 9; Chapter 11; Bankruptcy; Municipal Finance; Restructuring; Financial Liquidity; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; City; Government Administration; Public Sector; Financial Crisis; Financial Management; Failure; Labor Unions; Urban Development; Budgets and Budgeting; Decision Making; Demographics; Economics; Finance; Public Administration Industry; Michigan; Detroit
- Article
A Case for Contextual Intelligence
By: Tarun Khanna
In this perspective, I make a case for entrepreneurs and academics alike to focus on what I have referred to elsewhere as Contextual Intelligence, the ability to understand the limits of our knowledge, and to adapt that knowledge to a context different from the one in... View Details
- March 2015
- Article
Vulnerable Banks
By: Robin Greenwood, Augustin Landier and David Thesmar
We present a model in which fire sales propagate shocks across bank balance sheets. When a bank experiences a negative shock to its equity, a natural way to return to target leverage is to sell assets. If potential buyers are limited, then asset sales depress prices,... View Details
- 2015
- Other Unpublished Work
Do Managers Have a Role to Play in Sustaining the Institutions of Capitalism?
By: Rebecca Henderson and Karthik Ramanna
In a capitalist system based on free markets, do managers have responsibilities to the system itself? If they do, should these responsibilities shape their behavior when they engage in the political processes that structure the institutions of capitalism? The... View Details
- December 2014
- Article
Market Competition, Earnings Management, and Persistence in Accounting Profitability Around the World
We examine how cross-country differences in product, capital, and labor market competition, and earnings management affect mean reversion in accounting return on assets. Using a sample of 48,465 unique firms from 49 countries, we find that accounting returns mean... View Details
- Article
Did Bank Distress Stifle Innovation During the Great Depression?
By: Ramana Nanda and Tom Nicholas
We find a negative relationship between bank distress and the level, quality, and trajectory of firm-level innovation during the Great Depression, particularly for R&D firms operating in capital intensive industries. However, we also show that because a sufficient... View Details
- 2014
- Working Paper
Crony Capitalism, American Style: What Are We Talking About Here?
This paper seeks to reduce the ambiguity surrounding our understanding of what crony capitalism is, what it is not, what costs crony capitalism leaves in its wake, and how we might contain it. View Details
- 2014
- Chapter
Business History and the Impact of MNEs on Host Economies
By: Geoffrey Jones
Business history has long been recognized as providing an important dimension in international business studies. Much of this historical work has focused on mapping historical growth patterns of multinationals and exploring the determinants of their growth. However,... View Details
- Article
Contextual Intelligence
By: Tarun Khanna
The author has come to a conclusion that may surprise you: trying to apply management practices uniformly across geographies is a fool's errand. Best practices simply don't travel well across borders. That's because conditions not just of economic development but of... View Details
- 2014
- Contribution
Entrepreneurship in Emerging Markets: Contextual Intelligence for the Study of Two Thirds of the World's Population
By: Tarun Khanna
In this paper, I review the concept of "institutional voids" that provides a way to understand the structure of emerging markets. These voids impede would-be buyers from getting together with would-be sellers, and hence compromise the functioning of markets.... View Details
- September 2014
- Article
Metropolitan Blueprints of Colonial Taxation? Lessons from Fiscal Capacity Building in British and French Africa, 1880-1940
By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg
The historical and social science literature is divided about the importance of metropolitan blueprints of colonial rule for the development of colonial states. We exploit historical records of colonial state finances to explore the importance of metropolitan identity... View Details
Keywords: Colonial Administration; Quantitative Sources; Governance; Money; Taxation; Trade; History; Africa
- 2014
- Article
Corporate Governance and the Financial Crisis in Italy
By: Dante Roscini
The financial crisis hit Italy harder than many other Eurozone countries. In part this was due to the fact that the crisis came upon a system that was weakened by years of sub-par economic growth. One of the several endogenous factors that explain the stagnation of the... View Details
- 2014
- Chapter
Too Big To Trust? Managing Stakeholder Trust in Business in the Post-Bail-Out Economy
By: Deepak Malhotra
This chapter considers the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, and specifically the subsequent “bail-out” of the large financial institutions by the American government, from the perspective of trust in the post-bail-out economy. The author considers the impacts... View Details
- May 2014
- Case
Goldman Sachs: Anchoring Standards After the Financial Crisis
By: Rajiv Lal and Lisa Mazzanti
Goldman Sachs, a longtime venerable financial institution headquartered in New York City, had a partnership culture that was known to value its clients. But when the financial crisis hit in 2008 and Goldman Sachs emerged relatively unscathed, its public image took a... View Details
- 2014
- Chapter
Firms and Global Capitalism
By: Geoffrey Jones
This chapter forms part of the two-volume Cambridge History of Capitalism, a definitive new reference work that traces the history of capitalism from its origins to the present day. The chapter focuses on the role of business enterprises as powerful actors in... View Details
- March 2014
- Article
Cyclicality of Credit Supply: Firm Level Evidence
By: Bo Becker and Victoria Ivashina
Theory predicts that there is a close link between bank credit supply and the evolution of the business cycle. Yet fluctuations in bank-loan supply have been hard to quantify in the time series. While loan issuance falls in recessions, it is not clear if this is due to... View Details
- 2014
- Article
Corporate Governance and the Financial Crisis in Italy
By: Dante Roscini
The financial crisis hit Italy harder than many other Eurozone countries. In part this was due to the fact that the crisis came upon a system that was weakened by years of sub-par economic growth. One of the several endogenous factors that explain the stagnation of the... View Details
- December 2013
- Article
Land Politics and Local State Capacities: The Political Economy of Urban Change in China
By: Meg Rithmire
Despite common national institutions and incentives to remake urban landscapes to anchor growth, generate land-lease revenues, and display a capacious administration, Chinese urban governments exhibit varying levels of control over land. This article uses a paired... View Details
- November 2013 (Revised August 2015)
- Case
Janet Yellen and the Bernanke Fed
By: Matthew Weinzierl and Katrina Flanagan
The unelected Federal Reserve Chairman exerts exceptional influence over the U.S., in fact global, economy. As Janet Yellen prepared to take over the position, she would look back on Chairman Bernanke's tenure during the Great Recession. During that time, Bernanke was... View Details