Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,005)
- Faculty Publications (196)
- March 2011 (Revised December 2019)
- Case
Wealth Management Crisis at UBS (A)
By: Paul M. Healy
The case describes the challenges that UBS faced as a result of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation for tax fraud, that claimed that UBS had helped some 52,000 U.S. residents hide billions of dollars in untaxed assets in secret Swiss accounts between... View Details
Keywords: Fraud; Regulatory Enforcement; Reputation Incentives; Crony Capitalism; Tax Havens; Legitimacy; Multinational; Strategic Change; Incentives; Transparency; Financial Services; Taxation; Crime and Corruption; Global Range; Asset Management; Ethics; Problems and Challenges; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Corporate Governance; Financial Services Industry; United States; Switzerland
- March 2011 (Revised February 2018)
- Supplement
Wealth Management Crisis at UBS (B)
By: George Serafeim
The case describes the resolution of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation for tax fraud and the increasing pressure on the wealth management business. View Details
Keywords: Fraud; Regulatory Enforcement; Reputation Incentives; Crony Capitalism; Tax Havens; Legitimacy; Multinational; Strategic Change; Corporate Governance; Incentives; Transparency; Financial Services; Wealth; Taxation; Crime and Corruption; Global Range; Governance; Business and Government Relations; Asset Management; United States
- March 2011
- Article
Do Sell-Side Stock Analysts Exhibit Escalation of Commitment?
By: John Beshears and Katherine L. Milkman
This paper presents evidence that when an analyst makes an out-of-consensus forecast of a company's quarterly earnings that turns out to be incorrect, she escalates her commitment to maintaining an out-of-consensus view on the company. Relative to an analyst who was... View Details
- February 2011
- Article
Welfare Payments and Crime
By: C. Fritz Foley
Analysis of daily reported incidents of major crimes in twelve U.S. cities reveals an increase in crime over the course of monthly welfare payment cycles. This increase reflects an increase in crimes that are likely to have a direct financial motivation like burglary,... View Details
- September 2011
- Article
What Drives Sell-Side Analyst Compensation at High-Status Investment Banks?
By: Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and David A. Maber
We use proprietary data from a major investment bank to investigate factors associated with analysts' annual compensation. We find compensation to be positively related to "All-Star" recognition, investment-banking contributions, the size of analysts' portfolios, and... View Details
- December 2010
- Article
Management and the Financial Crisis (We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us...)
The financial crisis of 2008-2009 has revealed that our broad model of corporate governance is broken, independent of the shortcomings in the regulatory system. Managers and boards of directors in scores of systemically important firms failed to protect employees,... View Details
- October 2010 (Revised June 2014)
- Case
Volkswagen do Brasil: Driving Strategy with the Balanced Scorecard
By: Robert S. Kaplan and Ricardo Reisen de Pinho
A new management team at VW do Brazil develops and deploys a strategy map and Balanced Scorecard to accomplish a turnaround and cultural change after eight consecutive years of financial losses and market share declines. The team uses the strategy map to align... View Details
- fall 2010
- Article
Lawsuits and Empire: On the Enforcement of Sovereign Debt in Latin America
By: Faisal Z. Ahmed, Laura Alfaro and Noel Maurer
The re-occurring phenomenon of sovereign default has prompted an enormous theoretical and empirical literature. Most of this research has focused on why countries ever chose to pay their debts (or why private creditors ever expected repayment). The problem originates... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Prosocial Spending and Well-Being: Cross-Cultural Evidence for a Psychological Universal
By: Lara B. Aknin, Christopher P. Barrington-Leigh, Elizabeth W. Dunn, John F. Helliwell, Robert Biswas-Diener, Imelda Kemeza, Paul Nyende, Claire Ashton-James and Michael I. Norton
This research provides the first support for a possible psychological universal: human beings around the world derive emotional benefits from using their financial resources to help others (prosocial spending). Analyzing survey data from 136 countries, we show that... View Details
- August 2010 (Revised December 2010)
- Supplement
Urban Water Partners (A) (CW)
By: Karthik Ramanna and George Serafeim
The case explores a new venture to bring clean water to Tanzanians who otherwise cannot access or afford it. Management has enough money to get their company through August 2010, but needs more capital. An HBS alum is interested in investing in the company;... View Details
- August 2010 (Revised January 2013)
- Case
Urban Water Partners (A)
By: Karthik Ramanna, George Serafeim and Aldo Sesia
The case explores a new business venture to bring clean water to residents of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, who otherwise cannot afford it. Management has enough money to get the company through August 2010 but needs more capital thereafter. An HBS alumnus is interested in... View Details
- August 2010 (Revised January 2013)
- Supplement
Urban Water Partners (B)
By: Karthik Ramanna, George Serafeim and Aldo Sesia
The case explores a new business venture to bring clean water to residents of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, who otherwise cannot afford it. Management has enough money to get their company through August 2010, but needs more capital thereafter. An HBS alumnus is interested... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Employee Selection as a Control System
By: Dennis Campbell
Theories from the economics, management control, and organizational behavior literatures predict that when it is difficult to align incentives by contracting on output, aligning preferences via employee selection may provide a useful alternative. This study... View Details
- Article
Signaling Firm Performance Through Financial Statement Presentation: An Analysis Using Special Items
By: Edward J. Riedl and Suraj Srinivasan
This paper investigates whether managers' presentation of special items within the financial statements reflects economic performance or opportunism. Specifically, we assess special items presented as a separate line item on the income statement (income statement... View Details
- February 2010 (Revised January 2014)
- Case
CommonAngels (A)
By: Lynda M. Applegate and Kaitlyn Simpson
Describes the motivations behind the founding of CommonAngels—a group of successful business owners who provide capital, connections, and expertise to entrepreneurs who are building new ventures. In 2005, the group is considering increasing its investment focus to... View Details
- January 2010 (Revised April 2013)
- Case
Aubrey McClendon's Special Incentive Compensation at Chesapeake Energy (A)
By: Paul Healy, Clayton S. Rose and Aldo Sesia
Aubrey McClendon, founder and CEO of Chesapeake Energy, was, according to Fortune Magazine, the highest paid U.S. CEO in 2008 receiving over $100 million in total compensation. McClendon received this compensation despite a significant drop in the company's stock price... View Details
- 2010
- Chapter
The Impact of Employer Matching on Savings Plan Participation under Automatic Enrollment
By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian
Existing research has documented the large impact that automatic enrollment has on savings plan participation. All the companies examined in these studies, however, have combined automatic enrollment with an employer match. This raises a question about how effective... View Details
- December 2009
- Article
Catering Through Nominal Share Prices
By: Malcolm Baker, Robin Greenwood and Jeffrey Wurgler
We propose and test a catering theory of nominal stock prices. The theory predicts that when investors place higher valuation on low-price firms, managers will maintain share prices at lower levels, and vice-versa. Using measures of time-varying catering incentives... View Details
- Article
The Economics of Structured Finance
By: Joshua D. Coval, Jakub W. Jurek and Erik Stafford
This paper investigates the spectacular rise and fall of structured finance. The essence of structured finance activities is the pooling of economic assets like loans, bonds, and mortgages, and the subsequent issuance of a prioritized capital structure of claims, known... View Details
Keywords: Financial Crisis; Asset Management; Debt Securities; Investment; Risk Management; Behavior
- November 2009 (Revised May 2017)
- Case
Miracle Life, Inc.
By: Lauren Cohen and Christopher Malloy
Miracle Life is a firm with a unique setup and organizational structure. Specifically, it is a network marketing firm, also known as multi-level marketing (MLM) firm, which utilizes a large distributor base and depends on this individual distributor base to sell its... View Details