Publications

September 2019
Article

The Effect of Enforcement Transparency: Evidence from SEC Comment-Letter Reviews

By: Miguel Duro, Jonas Heese and Gaizka Ormazabal

This paper studies the effect of the public disclosure of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) comment-letter reviews (CLs) on firms’ financial reporting. We exploit a major change in the SEC’s disclosure policy: in 2004, the SEC decided to make its CLs... View Details

Keywords: Disclosure; SEC Comment-Letter Reviews; Public Enforcement; Governance; Information Publishing; Policy; Financial Reporting; Capital Markets; Organizational Change and Adaptation

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Find at Harvard

Robert Simons is a Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School. For over 35 years, Simons has taught accounting, management control, and strategy execution courses in both the Harvard MBA and Executive Education Programs. For 2023/24, he is... View Details

Charles C.Y. Wang

Charles C.Y. Wang is the Tandon Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is a research member of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) and an associate editor of Management Science and Journal of Accounting Research,... View Details

2016
Case

Advanced Leadership Pathways: Alberto Mora and the Costs and Consequences of Torture

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Benjamin Summers

Alberto Mora's time as General Counsel of the Navy from 2001–2006 greatly influenced his mission to illuminate the policy consequences of torture. Mora's drive to restore the nation's awareness and conscience against torture was gaining traction. Prominent... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Skills; Torture; Costs And Consequences; Humane; Restraint; Human Dignity; Treatment Of Prisoners; Prison; Repression; Opposition; Revolution; Democracy; Communism; International Affairs; Public Service; September 11; War On Terror; Operation Enduring Freedom; Guantanamo; Cuba; Coalition; Working Group; Cruelty; Interrogation; Memorandum; American Law; Authority; Authoritative; Quadrennial Defense Review; National Defense Authorization Act; Public Engagement; Advocacy; Law; Accountability; Center For The Victims Of Torture; Human Rights; Public Policy; Legality; Morality; Legal System; Tactical Military Operations; West Point; NGO; Human Rights First; American Civil Liberties Union; Human Rights Watch; Amnesty International; Constitution Project; Center For Constitutional Rights; Strategic Military Effect; National Security; Weapon; Terrorism; Prisoners Of War; Abu Ghraib; Pentagon; Ethics; Moral Sensibility; Leadership; Rights; Policy; Public Opinion; United States

17 Sep 2019
News

How a New Leader Broke Through a Culture of Accuse, Blame, and Criticize

24 Jul 2000
Research & Ideas

Value Maximization and Stakeholder Theory

choose among alternative policy options), what would it be? Or, even more simply, How do we want the firms in our economy to measure better versus worse?" It's tempting to consider value simply as a matter of maximizing the... View Details

Keywords: by Michael C. Jensen

August 2018 (Revised July 2020)
Case

Revenue Recognition at HBP

By: Paul Healy and Siko Sikochi

In early 2014, Paul Bills, CFO of Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), sat down with David Wan, the company’s CEO, to discuss budget preparations for the coming year. Bills noted that the performance of Corporate Learning, one of HBP’s three business units, would be... View Details

Keywords: Accrual Accounting; Budgets and Budgeting; Revenue Recognition; Financial Reporting; Publishing Industry; Education Industry; United States

Educators

September 2009
Article

Spousal Control and Intra-Household Decision Making: An Experimental Study in the Philippines

By: Nava Ashraf

Using an experimental design I elicit causal effects of spousal observability and communication on financial choices of married individuals in the Philippines. Making choices public moves men from putting money into their own account to consumption; communication with... View Details

Keywords: Intra-household; Bargaining; Experiments; Economic Development; Saving; Governance Controls; Decision Choices and Conditions; Personal Finance; Family and Family Relationships; Household; Gender

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I am a second-year PhD student in the Health Policy and Management program at Harvard Business School where my advisor is Dr. Rob Huckman. I live in Brookline with my fiance Natalie and our two cats, Joe and Huey. Before grad school I was a research assistant in the... View Details

09 Jan 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Economic Transition and Private-Sector Labor Demand: Evidence from Urban China

Keywords: by Lakshmi Iyer, Xin Meng, Nancy Qian & Xiaoxue Zhao

05 Feb 2014
News

United States: Where’s the Strategy?

July 1997 (Revised September 2004)
Case

Depreciation at Delta Air Lines and Singapore Airlines (A)

By: William J. Bruns Jr. and Jeremy Cott

Depreciation policies at Delta Air Lines and Singapore Airlines are compared and contrasted against a summary of operating data from each airline. Questions focus attention on differing depreciation policies. View Details

Keywords: Cost Accounting; Policy; Financial Statements; Air Transportation Industry

Educators

August 2000 (Revised January 2006)
Case

Sears, Roebuck and Co. vs. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

This case is designed to familiarize students with the use of financial ratios. Two retailers, Sears, Roebuck and Co. and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., have a very similar value for return on equity (ROE) in the 1997 fiscal year. Students use the information in the case and... View Details

Keywords: Value Creation; Financial Statements; Retail Industry; United States

Educators

2024
Working Paper

Contributing to Growth? The Role of Open Source Software for Global Startups

By: Nataliya Langburd Wright, Frank Nagle and Shane Greenstein

How does participating in open source software (OSS) communities spur entrepreneurial growth? To address this question, we analyze novel data matching accounts from GitHub—the largest OSS hosting platform—to the universe of global software venture-backed firms... View Details

Keywords: Applications and Software; Open Source Distribution; Entrepreneurship; Business Growth and Maturation; Human Capital; Valuation; Corporate Strategy

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winter 2000
Article

Assessing the Impact of Venture Capital to Innovation

By: Samuel Kortum and Josh Lerner

We examine the influence of venture capital on patented inventions in the United States across twenty industries over three decades. We address concerns about causality in several ways, including exploiting a 1979 policy shift that spurred venture capital fundraising.... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Innovation and Invention

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December 2023
Article

Intermediary Balance Sheets and the Treasury Yield Curve

By: Wenxin Du, Benjamin Hebert and Wenhao Li

We document a regime change in the Treasury market post-Global Financial Crisis (GFC): dealers switched from net short to net long Treasury bonds. We construct “net-long” and “net-short” curves that account for balance sheet and financing costs, and show that actual... View Details

Keywords: Bonds; Financial Markets; Financial Crisis; Asset Pricing

25 Sep 2019
Research & Ideas

The Economic Cost of Physician Burnout

effectively be reduced with moderate levels of investment, these findings suggest substantial economic value for policy and organizational expenditures for burnout reduction programs for physicians,” the study states. "Essentially... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health

2021
Working Paper

How Much Should We Trust Staggered Difference-In-Differences Estimates?

By: Andrew C. Baker, David F. Larcker and Charles C.Y. Wang

Difference-in-differences analysis with staggered treatment timing is frequently used to assess the impact of policy changes on corporate outcomes in academic research. However, recent advances in econometric theory show that such designs are likely to be biased in the... View Details

Keywords: Difference In Differences; Staggered Difference-in-differences Designs; Generalized Difference-in-differences; Dynamic Treatment Effects; Mathematical Methods

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