Publications

August 2008 (Revised March 2010)
Case

Finland's S Group: Competing with a Cooperative Approach to Retail

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Tarun Khanna, Samuli Skurnik and Jordan Mitchell

The case looks at the two dominant Finnish retailers: S Group and Kesko. S Group is a customer-owned cooperative, which has a unique holding structure whereby 1.7 million residents (or 70 percent of Finnish households) own 22 regional cooperatives. In turn, the... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Cooperative Ownership; Public Ownership; Competitive Advantage; Retail Industry; Finland

June 2015 (Revised May 2017)
Case

LOYAL3: Own What You Love™

By: Luis M. Viceira and Allison M. Ciechanover

This case features San Francisco–based financial technology startup, LOYAL3. Founded in 2008, the company seeks to disrupt the capital markets and democratize access to those markets for retail investors. By the fall of 2014, LOYAL3 had three products. In the first,... View Details

Keywords: Capital Markets; Stocks; Strategic Planning

January 2013 (Revised April 2017)
Supplement

Maxum Petroleum, Inc.

By: W. Carl Kester

Maxum seeks an oil-price hedging strategy that yields substantial cash during oil price spikes, is affordable under ordinary circumstances, and is easily managed. It is striving to avoid a repeat of the challenging situation encountered in 2008 when spiking oil prices... View Details

Keywords: Hedging; Options; Commodities; Credit Derivatives and Swaps; Risk Management; Futures and Commodity Futures; Financial Strategy; Volatility

April 2005
Case

FBI: Mission Extended

Following the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, there was consensus that the FBI needed to make organizational changes. The FBI had long distinguished itself as the world's pre-eminent organization for conducting after-the-fact investigations that laid the... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Law Enforcement; United States

16 May 2023
HBS Case

How KKR Got More by Giving Ownership to the Factory Floor: ‘My Kids Are Going to College!’

performing as a whole, may not hold much value when an employee goes to exercise them, Rouen says. They also can be complicated to administer from legal and tax perspectives. Employees are skeptical of programs that View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

January 2023
Article

Inequality Regimes in Sub-Saharan Africa from Precolonial Times to the Present

By: Ewout Frankema, Michiel de Haas and Marlous van Waijenburg

While current levels of economic inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa receive ample attention from academics and policymakers, we know little about the long-run evolution of inequality in the region. Even the new and influential ‘global inequality literature’ that is... View Details

Keywords: Economic Inequalty; Equality and Inequality; History; Africa

09 Dec 2002
Research & Ideas

Unilever—A Case Study

animal feeds. In Europe, its food business spanned all stages of the industry, from fishing fleets to retail shops. Among its range of ancillary services were shipping, paper, packaging, plastics, and... View Details

Keywords: by Geoffrey Jones; Consumer Products; Entertainment & Recreation; Food & Beverage; Manufacturing; Retail

Teaching Interest

Overview

By: John F. Batter

As as Senior Lecturer I teach the EC course Law, Management and Entrepreneurship (cross-listed in the General Management and Entrepreneurial Management Units) in both the Fall and Spring semesters. While I have retired from my public and private company litigation... View Details

Keywords: Fiduciary Duty; Securities; Private Equity; Entrepreneurship; Mergers; Law

14 Dec 2021
Cold Call Podcast

How Japan’s Recruit Holdings Regained Trust after a Scandal

Keywords: Re: Sandra J. Sucher

Article

Using Internet Data for Economic Research

By: Benjamin Edelman

The data used by economists can be broadly divided into two categories. First, structured datasets arise when a government agency, trade association, or company can justify the expense of assembling records. The Internet has transformed how economists interact with... View Details

Keywords: Data and Data Sets; Research; Internet; Cost Management; Information Management; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Reports; Archives; Surveys; Economics

Fourth Quarter 2007
Article

Contingent Claims Approach to Measuring and Managing Sovereign Credit Risk

By: Dale . F. Gray, Robert C. Merton and Zvi Bodie

This paper proposes a new approach to measure, analyze, and manage sovereign risk based on the theory and practice of modern contingent claims analysis (CCA). The paper provides a new framework for adapting the CCA model to the sovereign balance sheet in a way that can... View Details

Keywords: Credit; Investment; Sovereign Finance; Risk Management; Emerging Markets; Market Transactions; Mathematical Methods; Valuation

Find at Harvard

July 2021 (Revised October 2023)
Case

K.C. Li: The Tungsten King

By: Geoffrey Jones and Casey Verkamp

This case examines the business career of Kuo-Ching Li, who was born in China in 1892, and built a successful minerals trading business called Wah Chang in the United States during the interwar years. He acquired a prominent role in tungsten, the strongest natural... View Details

Keywords: Immigration Acts; Racial Bias; Globalization; Government and Politics; Business History; Entrepreneurship; Business and Government Relations; Mining Industry; China; United States; Latin America

June 2019
Case

ClearLife: From Prospect to Platform

By: Alexander Braun, Lauren Cohen, Mauro Elvedi and Jiahua Xu

ClearLife’s first product was a trading and analytics platform for participants in the U.S. life settlement market, the secondary market for life insurance. ClearLife played a key role in facilitating transactions and devising a common language for expressing value and... View Details

Keywords: Digital Platforms; Insurance; Entrepreneurship; Expansion; Diversification; Strategy

2024
Working Paper

Ponzi Funds

By: Philippe van der Beck, Jean-Philippe Bouchaud and Dario Villamaina

Many active funds hold concentrated portfolios. Flow-driven trading causes price pressure, which pushes up the funds’ existing positions resulting in realized returns. We decompose fund returns into a price pressure (self-inflated) and a fundamental component and... View Details

Keywords: Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Investment Return; Price Bubble; Financial Reporting; Financial Liquidity

SSRN

September 2002 (Revised May 2003)
Case

X-IT and Kidde (A)

By: Constance E. Bagley and David Lane

Involves a start-up, X-IT Products LLC, whose founders had designed an innovative, lightweight, and easy-to-use--yet strong--escape ladder. After X-IT had filed a patent application for the ladder in the United States, X-IT was approached by Kidde PLC, one of the... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Negotiation Process; Agreements and Arrangements; Ethics; Lawsuits and Litigation; Business Startups; Consumer Products Industry

During weeklong January-term trips to New York City in 2013 and 2014, students from across Harvard University studied cultural entrepreneurship: new ventures in fashion, food, fine arts, and design. Students explored how such ventures are launched, and how proximity... View Details

July 2016
Article

Do Prices Determine Vertical Integration?

By: Laura Alfaro, Paola Conconi, Harald Fadinger and Andrew F. Newman

What is the relationship between product prices and vertical integration? While the literature has focused on how integration affects prices, this paper provides evidence that prices can affect integration. Many theories in organizational economics and industrial... View Details

Keywords: Price; Vertical Integration; Product