Publications

March 2023 (Revised March 2025)
Module Note

LCA Module Overview: Society

By: Nien-hê Hsieh

Leadership and Corporate and Accountability (LCA) is a required course in the first-year MBA curriculum at Harvard Business School to help managers determine and deliver on their economic, legal, and ethical responsibilities. This note summarizes the cases and outlines... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact

May 2000
Case

CMGI: Organizational and Market Innovation

By: Josh Lerner

CMGI is considering acquiring yesmail, an e-mail marketing firm. In assessing the potential acquisition, it must assess the fit with its own organization, which consists of a unique blend of venture capital investments and publicly traded subsidiaries. View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Mergers and Acquisitions; Organizational Structure; Venture Capital; Business Subsidiaries

October 2005 (Revised January 2009)
Background Note

Corporate Valuation and Market Multiples

By: Timothy A. Luehrman

Provides a basic introduction to the use of market multiples for business valuation. Explains the method's reliance on the Law of One Price, sets forth the basic steps for using the method, and reviews some practical issues arising in its application. View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Price; Market Transactions; Mathematical Methods; Valuation

04 Apr 2011
HBS Case

Reinventing the National Geographic Society

Teaching a case study on the National Geographic Society for the first time, HBS professor David A. Garvin walks out to the middle of the horseshoe-shaped classroom and asks his students, "How many of... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Publishing

2022
Working Paper

Stock Market Stimulus

By: Robin Greenwood, Toomas Laarits and Jeffrey Wurgler

We study the stock market effects of the arrival of the three rounds of “stimulus checks” to U.S. taxpayers and the single round of direct payments to Hong Kong citizens. The first two rounds of U.S. checks appear to have increased retail buying and share prices of... View Details

Keywords: Stock Market; COVID-19 Pandemic; Fiscal Stimulus; Stimulus Payments; Impact; Stocks; System Shocks; Price; Spending; United States; Hong Kong; China

Read Now

February 1997
Background Note

Savings and Loans and the Mortgage Markets

By: Robert C. Merton and Alberto Moel

Provides a brief overview of the history of the savings and loans, the savings and loans crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, and the creation of the mortgage markets in the United States. Also explains briefly the most common types of mortgage-backed securities available. View Details

Keywords: History; Debt Securities; Markets; Mortgages; United States

May 2002 (Revised October 2005)
Case

Marketing Antidepressants: Prozac and Paxil

By: Youngme E. Moon and Kerry Herman

Describes the marketing of Prozac and Paxil, two of the best-selling mental health drugs in history. Set in 2001, several months before the expiration of Prozac's patent, Eli Lilly (Prozac's manufacturer) and GlaxoSmithKline (Paxil's manufacturer) must decide how to... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Product Positioning; Competition; Ethics; Value; Health Care and Treatment; Brands and Branding; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States

Article

Regulatory, Legal, and Market Aspects of Smart Wearables for Cardiac Monitoring

By: Jan Benedikt Brönneke, Jennifer Müller, Konstantinos Mouratis, Julia Hagen and Ariel Dora Stern

In the area of cardiac monitoring, the use of digitally driven technologies is on the rise. While the development of medical products is advancing rapidly, allowing for new use-cases in cardiac monitoring and other areas, regulatory and legal requirements that govern... View Details

Keywords: Wearables; Regulatory Changes; Medical Technology; Medical Devices; Market Access; Market Entry and Exit; Information Technology; Health Care and Treatment; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; United States; Germany; Belgium

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December 2004 (Revised August 2006)
Case

Brcko and the Arizona Market

By: Bruce R. Scott and Edward Murphy

Explores the role of the U.S. military in facilitating the establishment of a spectacularly successful free trade area in one of the most devastated areas of Bosnia. NATO's imposition of law and order, plus protection from local political protection rackets, led to... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Trade; Economic Growth; Industry Growth; Government Legislation; Emerging Markets; Bosnia and Hercegovina; United States

August 2011
Supplement

An Interview with John Fahey, President and CEO of National Geographic Society

By: David Garvin

In January 2010, John Fahey, president, CEO, and chairman of the board of trustees' executive committee of the Washington, D.C.-based National Geographic Society (NGS), must decide how best to organize the 121-year old mission-driven organization for a world of... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Leadership Style; Business or Company Management; Brands and Branding; Problems and Challenges; Sales; Natural Environment; Business Strategy; Web Sites

February 5, 2009
Comment

In Praise of Marketing

By: John A. Quelch

Many dismiss marketing as manipulative, deceptive, and intrusive. Marketing, they argue, focuses too much of our attention on material consumption. More recently, Benjamin Barber, in his 2007 book Consumed, claims that marketing is "sucking up the air from every other... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Consumer Loyalty; Local Vs. Global Branding; Multi-national Brands; Misleading and Fraudulent Advertising; Customer Value and Value Chain; Customer Satisfaction; Globalized Economies and Regions; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Multinational Firms and Management; Globalized Markets and Industries; Brands and Branding; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Product Positioning

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October 2004 (Revised February 2007)
Background Note

Foreign Exchange Markets and Transactions

By: Mihir A. Desai, Christina Pham, Kathleen Luchs and Yanjun Wang

Provides information on the foreign exchange market and exchange rate movements. Describes the different types of foreign exchange transactions, including spot transactions, forwards, swaps, futures, and options. Includes worked examples to help students understand the... View Details

Keywords: Currency Exchange Rate

2016
Chapter

Navigating Natural Monopolies: Market Strategy and Nonmarket Challenges in Radio and Television Audience Measurement Markets

By: Hillary Greene and Dennis Yao

This paper explores how firms within the audience measurement industry, specifically its radio and television markets, have navigated myriad market and nonmarket challenges. The market strategies and the nonmarket forces that constrain those strategies are largely... View Details

Keywords: Measurement and Metrics; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Monopoly; Television Entertainment; Public Opinion; Geographic Scope; Media and Broadcasting Industry; United States

2012
Article

Journalists and the Stock Market

By: Christopher Parsons, C. Dougal, J. Engelberg and D. Garcia

We use exogenous scheduling of Wall Street Journal columnists to identify a causal relation between financial reporting and stock market performance. To measure the media's unconditional effect, we add columnist fixed effects to a daily regression of excess Dow Jones... View Details

Keywords: Media; Financial Reporting; Financial Markets

18 Aug 2017
Working Paper Summaries

Emerging Markets and the Future of Business History

Keywords: by Gareth Austin, Carlos Dávila, and Geoffrey Jones

Research Summary

Emerging and Frontier Markets

By: Arthur I Segel

I continue to spend a great deal of time examining real estate in all aspects from development to securitization in new and growing markets. View Details

Article

Targeting Weather Insurance Markets

By: Anita Mukherjee, Shawn Cole and Jeremy Tobacman

The suitability of insurance products often depends greatly on individual circumstances. This paper examines the challenges of heterogeneity in a relatively new product, weather‐indexed insurance. This index insurance product has been launched in over a dozen... View Details

Keywords: Index Insurance; Labor Markets; Self-insurance; Self-protection; Weather; Insurance; Markets; Household; Risk Management

Research Summary

Financial Markets and Corporate Governance

By: Dwight B. Crane

Corporate scandals beginning in the late 1990s focused renewed attention on corporate governance, but significant cracks in the governance system also contributed to recent problems. Deregulation and growth of financial markets, as well as changes in the competitive... View Details

2022
Article

The Effects of Public and Private Equity Markets on Firm Behavior

By: Shai Bernstein

In this article, I review the theoretical and empirical literature on the effects of public and private equity markets on firm behavior, emphasizing the consequences that emerge from disclosure requirements, ownership concentration, and degree of firm standardization.... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Finance And Governance; Financing Policy; Commercialization; Capital Markets; Private Equity; Public Equity; Venture Capital; Innovation and Invention; Cost of Capital