Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(7,216)
- Faculty Publications (1,747)
- April 2009
- Case
The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
By: Laura Alfaro and Renee Kim
The global economy was expected to suffer from negative growth for the full year in 2009, a phenomenon not seen since World War II. While the U.S. subprime mortgage disaster was blamed as the original instigator, it was noted that the "global imbalances" of the U.S.... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Taking a 'Deep Dive': What Only a Top Leader Can Do
By: Howard H. Yu and Joseph L. Bower
Unlike most historical accounts of strategic change inside large firms, empirical research on strategic management rarely uses the day-to-day behaviors of top executives as the unit of analysis. By examining the resource allocation process closely, we introduce the... View Details
- March 2009 (Revised February 2011)
- Background Note
Note: Fair Value Accounting for Investments in Debt Securities
The note describes how fair value accounting applies to debt securities that are classified by financial institutions as (1) "trading" securities, (2) "available for sale" securities, or (3) "hold to maturity" securities. It explains the hierarchy for inputs used in... View Details
- March 2009 (Revised July 2010)
- Case
State Street Corporation
To maximize their effectiveness, color cases should be printed in color. State Street Corp. reports a 13% gain in EPS in 2008 amidst a global financial crisis. The stock price declines 59% on the day of the earnings report. This one day decline was exceeded in the... View Details
- March 2009
- Case
The Hotel Bed Wars
By: Youngme E. Moon
This case describes the start of The Hotel Bed Wars, the competition among hotel chains to attract customers by offering better and more elaborate bedding. The case is written from the standpoint of Starwood Hotels & Resorts, which is credited with starting The Hotel... View Details
- March 2009
- Case
Bausch & Lomb, Inc.: Pressure to Perform (A)
By: Robert L. Simons
This case breaks the existing (and still available) Bausch & Lomb, Inc.: Pressure to Perform case into an (A) and a (B) case. The (A) case describes the revenue recognition concerns as of early-1994 and the organizational context within which the decisions were made. View Details
- March 2009
- Supplement
Bausch & Lomb, Inc.: Pressure to Perform (B)
By: Robert L. Simons
This case breaks the existing (and still available) Bausch & Lomb, Inc.: Pressure to Perform case into an (A) and a (B) case. The (B) case can be used in class to demonstrate the serious consequences of overly aggressive accounting. The (B) case should be used after... View Details
- March 2009
- Article
Earnings Management and Corporate Tax Shelters, and Book-Tax Alignment
By: Mihir Desai and Dhammika Dharmapala
This paper reviews recent evidence analyzing the link between earnings management and corporate tax avoidance and considers the implications for how policymakers should evaluate the financial reporting environment facing firms. A real-world tax shelter is dissected to... View Details
- Article
Households' Willingness to Pay for 'Green' Goods: Evidence from Patagonia's Introduction of Organic Cotton Sportswear
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Michael Crooke, Forest L. Reinhardt and Vishal Vasishth
To shed light on individuals' willingness to pay for "green" goods (i.e., goods that are supposed to have lower adverse environmental impacts either in production or in use), we study data from the introduction by Patagonia, Inc., of organic cotton sportswear in the... View Details
- March 2009
- Article
The Impact of Shareholder Activism on Financial Reporting and Compensation: The Case of Employee Stock Options Expensing
By: F. Ferri and Tatiana Sandino
We examine the economic consequences of more than 150 shareholder proposals to expense employee stock options (ESO) submitted during the proxy seasons of 2003 and 2004, the first case in which the SEC allowed a shareholder vote on an accounting matter. Our results... View Details
- February 2009
- Background Note
An Introduction to Consumer Credit
By: Peter Tufano
This note reviews a variety of shorter-term consumer credit products in the U.S. with an emphasis on the types of products that low- and moderate-income consumers use. Included here are the following: credit cards, bank overdraft products, payday lending, personal... View Details
- February 2009
- Article
Optimal Reserve Management and Sovereign Debt
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
Most models currently used to determine optimal foreign reserve holdings take the level of international debt as given. However, given the sovereign's willingness-to-pay incentive problems, reserve accumulation may reduce sustainable debt levels. In addition, assuming... View Details
- 2009
- Other Unpublished Work
The Pecora Hearings
By: David Moss, Cole Bolton and Eugene Kintgen
In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, the Senate Banking Committee began a much-publicized investigation of the nation's financial sector. The hearings, which came to be known as the Pecora hearings after the Banking Committee's lead counsel Ferdinand... View Details
- January 2009 (Revised June 2010)
- Case
Cisco Business Councils (2007): Unifying a Functional Enterprise with an Internal Governance System
By: Ranjay Gulati
In response to the 2001 market downturn, Cisco Systems implemented a major restructuring that transformed the company from a decentralized to centralized organization. While recognizing that a centralized, functional structure was necessary to avoid product and... View Details
- 6 Jan 2009
- Other Presentation
Introduction to Value-Based Health Care Delivery
This presentation draws on Michael E. Porter and Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg: Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results, Harvard Business School Press, May 2006, and ―How Physicians Can Change the Future of Health Care, Journal of the American... View Details
- 2009
- Article
Acting Globally but Thinking Locally? The Enduring Influence of Local Communities on Organizations
By: Christopher Marquis and Julie Battilana
We develop an institutionally oriented theory of how and why local communities continue to matter for organizations in a global age. Since globalization has taken center stage in both practitioner and academic circles, research has shifted away from understanding... View Details
- May 2009
- Article
Asymmetric Information Effects on Loan Spreads
The paper estimates the cost arising from information asymmetry between the lead bank and members of the lending syndicate. In a lending syndicate, the lead bank retains only a fraction of the loan but acts as the intermediary between the borrower and the syndicate... View Details
- Article
How Actors Change Institutions: Towards a Theory of Institutional Entrepreneurship
By: Julie Battilana, Bernard Leca and Eva Boxenbaum
As well as review the literature on the notion of institutional entrepreneurship introduced by Paul DiMaggio in 1988, we propose a model of the process of institutional entrepreneurship. We first present theoretical and definitional issues associated with the concept... View Details
- 2009
- Article
India Transformed: Insights from the Firm Level 1988–2007
By: Laura Alfaro and Anusha Chari
Using firm-level data, this paper analyzes the transformation of India's economic structure following the implementation of economic reforms. The focus of the study is on publicly listed and unlisted firms from across a wide spectrum of manufacturing and services... View Details
- August 2009
- Article
Mental Accounting and Small Windfalls: Evidence from an Online Grocer
By: John Beshears and Katherine L. Milkman
We study the effect of small windfalls on consumer spending decisions by comparing the purchases online grocery customers make when redeeming $10-off coupons with the purchases they make without coupons. Controlling for customer fixed effects and other variables, we... View Details