Publications

14 Dec 2010
Op-Ed

Tax US Companies to Spur Spending

been a saving grace in ensuring that the financial crisis did not cause further damage to the economy. With traditional monetary and fiscal policy instruments seemingly exhausted, the mobilization of that... View Details

Keywords: by Mihir A. Desai

Allison H. Mnookin

Allison Mnookin is a Senior Lecturer of Business Administration in the Technology and Operations Management (TOM) Unit at the Harvard Business School. She currently is the co-chair of the first-year MBA Technology and Operations Management course. In addition, she... View Details

How Is Foreign Aid Spent?

We use oil price fluctuations to test the impact of transfers from wealthy OPEC nations to their poorer Muslim allies. The instrument identifies plausibly exogenous variation in foreign aid. We investigate how aid is spent by tracking its short-run effect on... View Details

2009
Working Paper

Can a Continuously-Liquidating Tontine (or Mutual Inheritance Fund) Succeed where Immediate Annuities Have Floundered?

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

A new instrument (the Mutual Inheritance Fund or MIF) is proposed whose purpose is to help people carry their savings forward from the moment they retire into their old age. Like annuities, this instrument requires an up-front payment before people receive any benefits... View Details

Keywords: Age; Annuities; Investment Return; Investment Funds; Saving; Retirement

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July 2009
Article

How Is Foreign Aid Spent? Evidence from a Natural Experiment

By: Eric D. Werker, Faisal Z. Ahmed and Charles Cohen

We use oil price fluctuations to test the impact of transfers from wealthy OPEC nations to their poorer Muslim allies. The instrument identifies plausibly exogenous variation in foreign aid. We investigate how aid is spent by tracking its short-run effect on aggregate... View Details

Keywords: Foreign Aid; Money

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July 2003 (Revised January 2004)
Case

Swedish Lottery Bonds

Profiling nonsystematic risk for a bond investor, the case describes lottery bond issues by the Swedish National Debt Office (SNDO). Swedish lottery bonds are a specific type of financial fixed income instrument for Swedish retail investors. The distinctive feature of... View Details

Keywords: Bonds; Business and Government Relations; Public Administration Industry; Retail Industry; Sweden

October 2006 (Revised October 2007)
Case

Grosvenor Group Limited

By: Andre F. Perold, Arthur I Segel, Oliver Corlette and Soyoun Song

A global real estate investment firm is trying to decide whether to enter into a property-derivative transaction to help it effect a change in asset allocation. The market for real estate derivatives is beginning to grow quite rapidly and the firm is trying to... View Details

Keywords: Asset Management; Financial Instruments; Financial Markets; Business or Company Management; Property; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry

2009
Working Paper

Watch What I Do, Not What I Say: The Unintended Consequences of the Homeland Investment Act

By: Dhammika Dharmapala, C. Fritz Foley and Kristin J. Forbes

This paper analyzes the impact on firm behavior of the Homeland Investment Act of 2004, which provided a one-time tax holiday for the repatriation of foreign earnings by U.S. multinationals. The analysis controls for endogeneity and omitted variable bias by using... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Multinational Firms and Management; Government Legislation; Taxation; Business and Shareholder Relations; Behavior; United States

July 2021 (Revised December 2021)
Case

Pershing Square's Pandemic Trade (A)

By: Emil N. Siriwardane, Luis M. Viceira, Dean Xu and Lucas Baker

This case explores the decision that Bill Ackman, CEO and founder of the hedge fund Pershing Square Capital, was considering in late February 2020 about hedging the exposure of the fund’s portfolio from the potential financial fallout ensuing from an extreme event like... View Details

Keywords: Health Pandemics; Financial Liquidity; Cost Management; Decision Choices and Conditions; Risk Management

February 2022 (Revised November 2022)
Case

Fondeadora

By: Álvaro Rodríguez Arregui and Mitchell Weiss

Norman Müller and René Serrano, cofounders of Fondeadora, a Mexican “neobank,” had lined up a $12.5 million in Series A funding round in 2020 only to run into a major obstacle: The lead investor was Gradient Ventures, a venture firm launched by Alphabet, Inc., and... View Details

Keywords: Fundraising; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Financial Institutions; Business Startups; Government Legislation; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Financial Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Mexico City; Latin America

December 2022
Article

Cost Standard Set Program: Moving Forward to Standardization of Cost Assessment Based on Clinical Condition

By: Anna Paula Beck da Silva Etges, Richard D. Urman, Anne Geubelle, Robert Kaplan and Carisi Anne Polanczyk

This communication announces the International Cost Standard Set Program. Its goal is to establish global standardized frameworks for measuring the costs of treating specific clinical conditions. A scientific committee, including 16 international healthcare cost... View Details

Keywords: Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing; Value-based Health Care; Cost; Health Care and Treatment; Activity Based Costing and Management; Health Industry

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March 2019
Article

Evidence of Upcoding in Pay-for-Performance Programs

By: Hamsa Bastani, Joel Goh and Mohsen Bayati

Recent Medicare legislation seeks to improve patient care quality by financially penalizing providers for hospital-acquired infections (HAIs). However, Medicare cannot directly monitor HAI rates and instead relies on providers accurately self-reporting HAIs in claims... View Details

Keywords: Medical Coding; Health Policy; Healthcare-acquired Conditions; Medicare; Health Care and Treatment; Policy; Performance Improvement; Quality; Measurement and Metrics; Government Legislation

SSRN

2022
Working Paper

On the Estimation of Demand-Based Asset Pricing Models

By: Philippe van der Beck

A growing literature uses portfolio holdings data to quantify the impact of investor demand on equilibrium prices via counterfactual experiments. The key parameter in relating demand and equilibrium prices is investors’ elasticity of demand with respect to the price.... View Details

Keywords: Price; Investment Portfolio; Institutional Investing; Financial Instruments

SSRN

September 2010 (Revised October 2010)
Background Note

Note on International Trade Finance

By: C. Fritz Foley, Matthew Johnson and David Lane

This note provides an introduction to the financing terms and payment arrangements that support international trade. It describes the principal instruments of trade finance, the limited evidence on their relative use, and the international trade dispute resolution... View Details

Keywords: Trade; Credit; Financial Instruments; Financing and Loans; International Finance; Conflict and Resolution

2016
Working Paper

The Attenuating Effect of Banking Relationships on Credit Market Disruption

By: Stefan Dimitriadis and Mike Horia Teodorescu

This article examines how the relationship between banks and corporations moderates the effect of credit market disruptions. The 2008-09 financial crisis led to a dramatic restriction in the supply of credit to corporations via the syndicated loan market... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Relationships; Financial Markets; System Shocks; Banking Industry; United States

September 2002 (Revised April 2004)
Background Note

A Note on Depositary Receipts

Provides an introduction to depositary receipts. Recently, these instruments have been used with increasing frequency by firms seeking to list their shares on stock exchanges in other countries, especially in the United States. Describes different types of depositary... View Details

Keywords: International Finance; Financial Instruments; Financial Markets

Article

Resources and Relationships in Entrepreneurship: An Exchange Theory of the Development and Effects of the Entrepreneur-Investor Relationship

By: Laura Huang and Andrew P. Knight

We develop a theoretical model, grounded in exchange theory, about the process through which relationships between entrepreneurs and investors develop and influence the growth of new ventures. Our theory highlights the multifaceted relationships that entrepreneurs and... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Relationships; Business Startups; Business and Shareholder Relations; Theory

2016
Working Paper

Does Firm Innovation Affect Corporate Social Responsibility?

By: Rui Shen, Yi Tang and Ying Zhang

This study examines the relationship between firm innovation and CSR. Stakeholders’ concern over transaction-specific investments exacerbates when firms engage heavily in innovation activities. To secure stakeholders’ support, firms adopt CSR effectively as an ex ante... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility; Firm Innovation; Transaction-specific Investments; Firm Risk; Environmental Munificence; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Innovation and Invention