Publications

September 1987 (Revised November 1992)
Background Note

Note on Transaction and Translation Exposure

By: W. Carl Kester and Richard P. Melnick

Describes the transaction and translation exposures that companies doing business internationally face when foreign exchange rates change. Also discusses how to measure and cover both types of exposure. Covering techniques are demonstrated using examples of forward... View Details

Keywords: Currency Exchange Rate; International Finance

2014
Working Paper

The Rising Cost of Consumer Attention: Why You Should Care, and What You Can Do about It

By: Thales S. Teixeira

Attention is a necessary ingredient for effective advertising. The market for consumer attention (or "eyeballs") has become so competitive that attention can be regarded as a currency. The rising cost of this ingredient in the marketplace is causing marketers to waste... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Advertising

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August 2021
Case

Yummy: Delivering Value to Venezuela

By: Ayelet Israeli, Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago and Carla Larangeira

By June 2021, Yummy had become Venezuela’s first and largest food delivery app and last-mile logistics company. In Caracas, the nation’s capital, Yummy held a 55% market share, while operations in other cities had already started to take place, including in three of... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Health Pandemics; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Expansion

July 2009 (Revised August 2011)
Case

What Happened at Citigroup? (A)

By: Clayton S. Rose and Aldo Sesia

What went wrong at Citigroup? In 1998, the Travelers Group and Citicorp merged to create Citigroup Inc., considered the first true global "financial supermarket" and a business model to be envied, feared, and emulated. By year-end 2006 the firm had a market... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Model; Decision Choices and Conditions; Globalized Firms and Management; Leadership; Risk Management; Failure; Financial Services Industry

09 Jan 2006
Research & Ideas

Rebuilding Commercial Real Estate

Students of recent United States real estate history can't help but notice unsettling parallels between the red-hot commercial market of the late 1980s and today. Then, as now, money gushed into the market,... View Details

Keywords: by Roger Thompson; Construction; Real Estate

February 2004 (Revised March 2010)
Case

Brazil 2003: Inflation Targeting and Debt Dynamics

By: Laura Alfaro, Rafael M. Di Tella and Ingrid Vogel

In October 2002, Brazilians elected a left-wing president, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, for the first time in that country's history. As markets faltered in response, Lula sought to reaffirm his commitment to fiscal discipline, a floating exchange rate, and inflation... View Details

Keywords: Economy; Inflation and Deflation; Money; Borrowing and Debt; Policy; Emerging Markets; Brazil

Forthcoming
Article

The Imperfect Intermediation of Money-Like Assets

By: Jeremy C. Stein and Jonathan Wallen

We study supply-and-demand effects in the U.S. Treasury bill market by comparing the returns on T-bills to the administered policy rate on the Federal Reserve’s reverse repurchase (RRP) facility. In spite of the arguably more money-like properties of an investment in... View Details

Keywords: Debt Securities; Demand and Consumers; Price

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November 1999
Case

Long-Term Capital Management, L.P. (C)

By: Andre F. Perold

Long-Term Capital Management, L.P. (LTCM) was in the business of engaging in trading strategies to exploit market pricing discrepancies. Because the firm employed strategies designed to make money over long horizons--from six months to two years or more--it adopted a... View Details

Keywords: Fluctuation; Capital; Financial Liquidity; Financing and Loans; Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Corporate Governance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Management; Risk Management; Markets; Motivation and Incentives; Financial Services Industry

14 Oct 2013
Research & Ideas

Blockbuster! Why Star Power Works

agencies; and even nightclubs, among other industries. The idea: Invest big money in a few top talents or brands—think Jay-Z, LeBron James, or Marvel Comics—to create buzz for a "tent-pole" product that produces most of a... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Entertainment & Recreation

November 2022 (Revised February 2024)
Case

The Globalization of Manchester City Football Group

By: Maria P. Roche, Tiona Zuzul, Exequiel Hernandez and Amy Klopfenstein

This case describes the efforts of City Football Group (CFG) to purchase Esporte Clube Bahia (Bahia), a Brazilian professional soccer club. CFG’s strategy was to acquire under-performing clubs worldwide, invest money in high-profile players, and improve the teams’... View Details

June 1994 (Revised September 1994)
Background Note

Beating the Commodity Magnet

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and George T. Bowman

All markets follow a cycle of growth and maturity, then commoditization and decline. This note argues that while commoditization of an industry may seem inevitable, the better managed firms find a way to make money in the commodity cycle. These firms know how and when... View Details

Keywords: Goods and Commodities; Financial Markets; Competitive Strategy; Financial Services Industry

July 1996
Case

Edmund's--www.edmunds.com

Edmund's publishes an automobile price guide in books (600,000 units per year) and over the Internet (16,000 users a day and growing). The site can be visited at www.edmunds.com. In the marketplace, it makes money selling books. In the marketspace, they make their... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Digital Platforms; Marketplace Matching; Information Publishing; Information Industry; Auto Industry

February 2024 (Revised September 2024)
Case

TimeCredit

By: Emanuele Colonnelli, Raymond Kluender and Shai Benjamin Bernstein

TimeCredit is an artificial intelligence (AI) startup that is developing large language models (LLMs) to generate accounting memos. The case follows Ndonga Sagnia, a Gambian Harvard Business School MBA student with an accounting background, as she decides how much... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Financing and Loans; AI and Machine Learning; Entrepreneurial Finance; Identity; Technology Industry

27 Feb 2020
Sharpening Your Skills

How Following Best Business Practices Can Improve Health Care

Roughly one in 66 women has a better chance of leaving the hospital alive if their doctor is also a woman. Behavioral Economists Can Make You a Healthier Consumer and Smarter Marketer Psychological "interventions" companies can take to... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Health; Medical Devices & Supplies

05 Jul 2006
Working Paper Summaries

Advertising and Expectations: The Effectiveness of Pre-Release Advertising for Motion Pictures

Keywords: by Anita Elberse & Bharat N. Anand; Entertainment & Recreation; Advertising; Motion Pictures & Video

April 2006 (Revised August 2007)
Case

CircleLending, Inc. 2006

CircleLending, an innovative start-up, offered individuals the ability to set up and manage informal loans made between relatives and friends. The company must decide which market segment to focus on and then how much money to raise from investors. CircleLending is a... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Financing and Loans; Personal Finance; Innovation and Invention; Growth and Development Strategy; Markets; Social and Collaborative Networks

22 Jul 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Banks as Patient Fixed-Income Investors

Keywords: by Samuel G. Hanson, Andrei Shleifer, Jeremy C. Stein & Robert W. Vishny; Banking

November 2015 (Revised April 2018)
Case

Flipkart (A): Transitioning to a Marketplace Model

By: Das Narayandas, Sunil Gupta and Rachna Tahilyani

In 2015, Sachin and Binny Bansal, co-founders of India’s largest e-commerce company, are wondering if it is time to move from a hybrid model to a full marketplace. While Amazon runs a hybrid model, Alibaba operates a marketplace. In addition, Flipkart has been losing... View Details

Keywords: Marketplaces; Online Retail; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Business Model; Growth and Development Strategy; Emerging Markets; E-commerce; Retail Industry; India