Publications
Publications
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(1,769)
- Faculty Publications (403)
- July 2019
- Case
Piramal Foundation: The Business of Philanthropy
By: Vikram Gandhi and Mahima Rao-Kachroo
The Piramal Foundation was launched by diversfied Indian conglomerate, the Piramal Group, to improve the healthcare services and quality of education of India’s economically and socially disadvantaged. The foundation operates under three verticals—‘Piramal Foundation... View Details
- July 2019
- Article
Market Reaction to Mandatory Nonfinancial Disclosure
By: Jody Grewal, Edward J. Riedl and George Serafeim
We examine the equity market reaction to events associated with the passage of a directive in the European Union (EU) mandating increased nonfinancial disclosure. These disclosures relate to firms’ environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and would be... View Details
Keywords: Nonfinancial Information; Nonfinancial Performance; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Investor Behavior; Disclosure; Disclosure Regulation; Regulation; Sustainability; Corporate Performance; Information; Corporate Disclosure; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Performance; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Governance; Outcome or Result
- May 16, 2019
- Article
To Improve Food Inspections, Change the Way They're Scheduled
By: Maria Ibanez and Michael W. Toffel
Health inspections are an important tool to increase food safety, but there are still 48 million cases of food-borne illnesses and 128,000 hospitalizations every year in the United States. Our research finds that inspectors reported fewer health code violations as they... View Details
- May 2019
- Article
The Role of Gatekeepers in Capital Markets
By: Sugata Roychowdhury and Suraj Srinivasan
Gatekeepers in financial markets have the power to provide the institutional stability, fortitude and direction necessary for the development and the smooth functioning of capital markets. At the same time, they are often motivated by their own private incentives.... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
rTSR: Properties, Determinants, and Consequences of Benchmark Choice
By: Paul Ma, Jee-Eun Shin and Charles C.Y. Wang
We develop a measurement-error framework for assessing the quality of relative-performance metrics designed to filter out the systematic component of performance and analyze relative total shareholder return (rTSR)—the predominant metric market participants use to... View Details
- Article
Four Things No One Will Tell You About ESG Data
By: Sakis Kotsantonis and George Serafeim
As the ESG finance field and the use of ESG data in investment decision-making continue to grow, the authors seek to shed light on several important aspects of ESG measurement and data. This article is intended to provide a useful guide for the rapidly rising number of... View Details
Keywords: ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Reporting; Data Analytics; Sustainability; Sustainability Reporting; CSR; Transparency; Investment Management; Socially Responsible Investing; Sustainable Finance; Sustainable Development; Inclusion; Inclusive Growth; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Corporate Accountability; Investment; Management; Climate Change; Corporate Governance; Diversity; Integrated Corporate Reporting
- 2019
- Working Paper
Biometric Monitoring, Service Delivery and Misreporting: Evidence from Healthcare in India
By: Thomas Bossuroy, Clara Delavallade and Vincent Pons
Developing countries increasingly use biometric identification technology in hopes of improving the reliability of administrative information and delivering social services more efficiently. This paper exploits the random placement of biometric tracking devices in... View Details
- February 2019 (Revised September 2019)
- Case
Theranos: The Unicorn That Wasn't
By: Joseph B. Fuller and John Masko
In 2003, 19-year-old Elizabeth Holmes founded a startup dedicated to making blood testing easier and more affordable. By 2015, her company, Theranos, was worth $9 billion. It boasted a star-studded board and contracts with national pharmacy and supermarket chains... View Details
Keywords: Theranos; Blood; Lab Testing; Fraud; Holmes; Balwani; Shultz; Carreyrou; Securities And Exchange Commission; Food And Drug Administration; FDA; SEC; Health Testing and Trials; Corporate Accountability; Organizational Culture; Misleading and Fraudulent Advertising; Crime and Corruption; Entrepreneurship; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry
- Article
Multivariate Unsupervised Machine Learning for Anomaly Detection in Enterprise Applications
By: Daniel Elsner, Pouya Aleatrati Khosroshahi, Alan MacCormack and Robert Lagerström
Existing application performance management (APM) solutions lack robust anomaly detection capabilities and root cause analysis techniques that do not require manual efforts and domain knowledge. In this paper, we develop a density-based unsupervised machine learning... View Details
- January 2019 (Revised February 2020)
- Case
Should a Pension Fund Try to Change the World? Inside GPIF's Embrace of ESG
By: George Serafeim
In the fall of 2018, Hiro Mizuno, the Chief Investment Officer (CIO) of GPIF, the Japanese Government Pension Fund, was reflecting on his efforts to integrate Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues into every aspect of GPIF’s portfolio. His efforts ranged... View Details
- 2018
- Working Paper
Corporate Sustainability: A Strategy?
By: George Serafeim
We explore the conditions under which firms maintain their competitive advantage through sustainability-based differentiation when faced with imitation pressures by industry peers. We document growing intraindustry convergence on sustainability actions over time for... View Details
Keywords: Sustainability; Corporate Performance; Industry Analysis; CSR; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Environment; Social Responsibility; Strategy And Execution; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Strategy; Performance; Corporate Strategy
- December 2018
- Case
Corporate Transformation at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany
By: Joseph B. Fuller, Amy C. Edmondson, Daniela Beyersdorfer and Tonia Labruyere
When Stefan Oschmann became CEO and chairman of the executive board of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, in 2016, the company had started its transformation from a mid-tier traditional German industry player to a global modern science and technology player. The... View Details
- November 2018 (Revised July 2023)
- Case
The Weir Group: Reforming Executive Pay (A)
By: Lynn S. Paine and Federica Gabrieli
In February 2018, the Remuneration Committee together with the full Board of Directors of the Scotland-based engineering company The Weir Group had to decide whether to seek a shareholder vote at the upcoming Annual General Meeting in April on a proposal to reform the... View Details
Keywords: General Management; Board Of Directors; Executive Committees; Human Resource Management; Compensation; Pay For Performance; Incentives; Bonuses; Incentive Programs; Employee Stock Ownership Plans; Performance Measurement; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Human Resources; Management; Executive Compensation; Change; Performance Evaluation; Employee Stock Ownership Plan; Europe; United Kingdom; Scotland
- Third Quarter 2018
- Article
Why and How Investors Use ESG Information: Evidence from a Global Survey
By: Amir Amel-Zadeh and George Serafeim
Using survey data from a sample of senior investment professionals from mainstream (i.e., not SRI funds) investment organizations, we provide insights into why and how investors use reported environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information. Relevance to... View Details
- August 2018 (Revised April 2019)
- Case
Fair Value Accounting at Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (A)
By: Jonas Heese, Suraj Srinivasan, Francois Brochet and Christine Johnson
In May 2018, Berkshire Hathaway announced an unprecedented loss of more than $1 billion for the first quarter of 2018. Warren Buffett blamed this loss on the new accounting rules for equity securities which he criticized. In the case ‘Fair Value Accounting at Berkshire... View Details
- August 2018
- Article
The Effect of Graphic Warnings on Sugary-Drink Purchasing
By: Grant Donnelly, Laura Y. Zatz, Daniel Svirsky and Leslie John
Governments have proposed text warning labels to decrease consumption of sugary drinks – a contributor to chronic diseases like diabetes. However, they may be less effective than more evocative, graphic warning labels. We field-tested the effectiveness of graphic... View Details
- Article
Evaluating the Effectiveness of Corporate Compliance Programs: Establishing a Model for Prosecutors, Courts, and Firms
By: Eugene F. Soltes
When prosecutors, courts, and regulators make charging and sentencing decisions, they must evaluate whether firms have effective compliance programs. Such evaluations are difficult because of the challenges associated with measuring effectiveness. Notably, these... View Details
- May 2018
- Article
Managing the Family Firm: Evidence from CEOs at Work
By: Oriana Bandiera, Renata Lemos, Andrea Prat and Raffaella Sadun
We present evidence on the labor supply of CEOs and on whether family and professional CEOs differ on this dimension. We do so through a new survey instrument that allows us to codify CEOs’ diaries in a detailed and comparable fashion and to build a bottom-up measure... View Details
- April 2018
- Case
Happy UAE
By: Joshua Schwartzstein, Brian J. Hall, Tiffany Y. Chang, Karim Sameh and Alpana Thapar
This case centers on the United Arab Emirates' (UAE) national goal of raising the happiness of its residents and visitors through ambitious government initiatives. They combined this bold national goal with an accountability structure (incentive plan) built on Key... View Details
- March 2018
- Supplement
Improving Access at VA
By: Ryan W. Buell and Robert S. Huckman
In 2015, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) ran the largest healthcare system in the United States, with over 1,700 sites of care that served nearly 9 million veterans. One year earlier, a scandal had erupted over a cover-up of the excessive wait times veterans... View Details