Pension Funds - Publications - Faculty & Research

2020
Working Paper

Cutting the Gordian Knot of Employee Health Care Benefits and Costs: A Corporate Model Built on Employee Choice

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Barak D. Richman

The U.S. employer-based health insurance tax exclusion created a system of employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) with limited insurance choices and transparency that may lock employed households into health plans that are costlier or different from those they prefer to... View Details

Keywords: After-tax Income; Consumer-driven Health Care; Health Care Costs; Health Insurance; Income Inequality; Tax Policy; Health Care and Treatment; Cost; Insurance; Employees; Income; Taxation; Policy; United States

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Article

ESG Integration in Investment Management: Myths and Realities

By: Sakis Kotsantonis, Christopher Pinney and George Serafeim

The authors’ aim in this article is to set the record straight on the financial performance of sustainable investing while also correcting a number of other widespread misconceptions about this rapidly growing set of principles and methods. Myth Number 1:... View Details

Keywords: ESG; Sustainability; Investment Management; Finance; Corporate Social Responsibility; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Investment; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Governance

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19 Mar 2006
Research & Ideas

Unlocking Your Investment Capital

How can the equity swap help alleviate the common mismatch between pension assets and liabilities that companies often carry? A: If the pension fund holds equities, then these... View Details

Keywords: by Ann Cullen; Financial Services

16 Feb 2021
Research & Ideas

To Fight Climate Change, Should Green Investors Reconsider Big Oil?

allocated to sustainable funds that invest in companies with specific environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors and goals. Since 2015, when the US Department of Labor began allowing pension View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Energy

22 Apr 2002
Research & Ideas

Profits and Prophets: The Role of Values in Investment

provided a good return for a pension fund holder at some point, but that investor and society pay more in the end through increased health care costs. Hayes said that Domini's picture of a system run amok,... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

07 Dec 2015
Research & Ideas

The Rise of Personalized Entrepreneurial Finance and Other VC Trends

industries in different ways. Venture capital, for example, was once mostly reserved for institutional investors backed by endowments and pension funds. Today, it increasingly includes individual investors who are using technological... View Details

Keywords: Re: Josh Lerner; Financial Services; Banking

05 Jun 2012
First Look

First Look: June 5

environment of scientific and industrial expansion. Venture funding occurred more widely in the United States than it ever had done before. While the roots of the American venture capital industry are long-standing and multifaceted, they... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

08 Jul 2014
First Look

First Look: July 8

retirement crisis in the wake of the dot-com crash, when companies in major industries went bankrupt in large part because of their inability to meet their pension obligations. The result was an acceleration of America's shift away from... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

12 Feb 2008
First Look

First Look: February 12, 2007

Risk Management to Equity and Credit Analysis Author:Robert C. Merton Publication:CFA Institute Conference Proceedings Quarterly 24 (December 2007) Abstract Traditional conventions of accounting and actuarial science distort the valuation of capital risk in... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

13 Dec 2022
Research & Ideas

The Color of Private Equity: Quantifying the Bias Black Investors Face

minority-owned group raising a fund is 60 percent higher in these periods of high racial awareness. They also looked at public pension fund data in states where a minority... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds; Financial Services

14 Mar 2023
In Practice

What Does the Failure of Silicon Valley Bank Say About the State of Finance?

exhaustion after several years of dealing with surprises ranging from shortages and runs on basic goods to the Fed’s limited ability to control or even forecast inflation. Something will also have to be said eventually about the profitable business of inciting runs... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Financial Services; Banking

11 Apr 2023
Research & Ideas

Is Amazon a Retailer, a Tech Firm, or a Media Company? How AI Can Help Investors Decide

been the attitude toward artificial intelligence within institutional investing? Are investors embracing it? Is there skepticism? Awada: I can tell you from my previous work [as a hedge fund manager] I think that we’re always on the... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Consumer Products; Real Estate; Financial Services; Retail

12 Sep 2023
What Do You Think?

Who Gets the Loudest Voice in DEI Decisions?

social, and governance issues at the heart of so-called “stakeholder capitalism.” Corporations that become too visible in support of stakeholder capitalism run the risk of losing public investors, such as pension View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

20 Apr 2010
First Look

First Look: April 20

http://icc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/dtq013?ijkey=WB7zzaO3bsqcw4t&keytype=ref Pension Fund Design in Developing Economies Author: Luis M. Viceira Publication: In Evaluating the Financial... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

11 Oct 2006
What Do You Think?

How Do We Respond to the “Dependency Ratio” Dilemma?

growing dependency ratios at the level of the firm tell us, regardless of where we are in the world. But several deplored what has been done about them. According to Francine McKenna, "There's no pension crisis in the executive suite... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

02 Mar 2021
HBS Case

The Tulsa Massacre: Is Racial Justice Possible 100 Years Later?

able to begin talking about such a difficult episode and fraught question.” Those opposed to reparations point to the fact that so much time has passed since the damage, and that neither the victims nor the perpetrators are still living. Providing compensation with... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

17 Nov 2015
Lessons from the Classroom

How Activist Investors Became Respectable

described as a vulture capitalist, now gets a serious hearing when he urges Apple to make better use of its billions in cash or Dell to improve the terms of a management buyout. Today, university endowments and state pension View Details

Keywords: by Joseph Fuller; Financial Services; Banking

24 Jul 2013
Op-Ed

Detroit Files for Bankruptcy: HBS Faculty Weigh In

Standards Board (GASB) required local governments to publicly report their OPEB liabilities. But GASB did not require cities to fund their OPEB shortfalls. As a result, even the worst funded city View Details

Keywords: by John Macomber, Robert C. Pozen, Eric D. Werker & Benjamin Kennedy; Auto

10 Sep 2013
First Look

First Look: September 10

of exiting or continuing to build her business. Purchase this case: http://hbr.org/search/313149-PDF-ENG Harvard Business School Case 313-139 Note on Pension Guarantee Funds The United States and the United... View Details