Publications

Research Summary

Working Hard and Investing for an Early Retirement

I examine consumption, leisure, and portfolio choices made over the life-cycle using a model allowing for semi-flexible leisure and an endogenously chosen retirement date. Under a Cobb-Douglas utility specification, I present closed-form expressions for optimal... View Details

March 1974
Article

Generalized Mean-Variance Tradeoffs for Best Perturbation Corrections to Approximate Portfolio Decisions

By: Paul A. Samuelson and Robert C. Merton

Keywords: Investment; Finance

August 2022 (Revised March 2023)
Case

Boston Impact Initiative: Investing in Local Change

By: Emily R. McComb, Amy Klopfenstein and Mel Martin

In fall 2021, Aliana Piñeiro, impact director at Boston Impact Initiative (BII) discovered that an entrepreneur the organization was considering for an investment had failed to disclose pre-existing debt with another lender. Although the business scored highly on BII’s... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Social Entrepreneurship; Finance; Investment; Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Relationships; Business and Community Relations; Society; Social Issues; Wealth and Poverty; Wealth; Poverty; Risk Management; Financial Services Industry; North and Central America; United States; Massachusetts; Boston

2011
Working Paper

The Cost of Capital for Alternative Investments

By: Jakub W. Jurek and Erik Stafford

This paper studies the cost of capital for alternative investments. We document that the risk profile of the aggregate hedge fund universe can be accurately matched by a simple index put option writing strategy that offers monthly liquidity and complete transparency... View Details

Keywords: Cost of Capital; Financial Liquidity; Investment; Investment Return; Mathematical Methods; Risk and Uncertainty

2010
Dissertation

Accounting Standards and International Portfolio Holdings: Analysis of Cross-border Holdings Following Mandatory Adoption of IFRS

By: Gwen Yu

Prior literature shows that investors under-invest in foreign firms due to information asymmetry problems. I posit that differences in local accounting standards are a source of the information asymmetry among investors. Using security-level holdings of international... View Details

Keywords: Financial Reporting; International Accounting; Standards; Investment Portfolio; Foreign Direct Investment

September 2021 (Revised November 2022)
Case

MAYA Capital

By: Robert F. White, Carla Larangeira and Pedro Levindo

MAYA Capital co-founders Lara Lemann and Monica Saggioro raised $41.5 million through a series of closings for their early-stage Latin American venture capital fund. The two women had met for the first time in mid-2016 when Lemann was contemplating scaling her angel... View Details

Keywords: Early Stage; Portfolio Construction; Fund Management; Investment; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Investment Portfolio; Strategy; Business Startups; Management; Investment Funds; Latin America

07 Dec 2016
HBS Case

Why Millennials Flock to Fintech for Personal Investing

the responsibility elsewhere so they have more time for their passions, whether that’s their careers, hobbies, or travel. Despite the big differences in operations, the investment strategy Wealthfront pursues is not dissimilar from a... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Financial Services

18 Sep 2000
Research & Ideas

Big Deals: Financing Large-Scale Investments

Disney, and Iridium, and Boston's Central Artery Project (the "Big Dig") in the public sector, are examples of some recent efforts that went bankrupt or had to be restructured. The managerial challenge is to figure out how to make sure that $150 billion or so... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

Article

Do Strong Fences Make Strong Neighbors?

By: Mihir Desai and Dhammika Dharmapala

Many features of U.S. tax policy towards multinational firms-including the governing principle of capital export neutrality, the byzantine system of expense allocation, and anti-inversion legislation-reflect the intuition that building "strong fences" around the United... View Details

Keywords: International Taxation; Initial Public Offerings; Foreign Portfolio Investment; Policy; Taxation; Multinational Firms and Management; Globalized Markets and Industries; Initial Public Offering; Mergers and Acquisitions; Foreign Direct Investment; United States

SSRN

September 2018 (Revised June 2019)
Case

THE VELUX FOUNDATIONS: Selecting Impact Funds

By: Vikram Gandhi, Caitlin Reimers Brumme and Nathaniel Schwalb

After much internal debate, THE VELUX FOUNDATIONS of Denmark have decided to allocate a small percentage of their investment portfolio to impact investments. Cambridge Associates, one of the leading investment advisory firms in the world, has been engaged to assist... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investing; Mission-Related Investing; Foundations; Investment; Venture Capital; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Strategy; Investment Funds; Decision Making; Consulting Industry; Financial Services Industry; Denmark; Europe

June 2017
Teaching Note

Project Sun Devil and Project Paris

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Alexander W. Schultz

Tony Lee is preparing to present a project to the investment committee of Howard Street Capital. He will be recommending an investment in Project Sun Devil, a high-quality 225-unit student housing rental property near Tempe, Arizona. Tony Lee will compete for capital... View Details

Keywords: General Management; Financial Analysis; Return On Assets; Accounting; Performance Measurement; Financial Ratios; Return On Equity; Financial Statements; Profitability Analysis; Portfolio Investment; Portfolio Management; Real Estate; Property; Investment Portfolio; Investment Return; Analysis; Real Estate Industry; United States

May 1974
Article

Fallacy of the Log-Normal Approximation to Optimal Portfolio Decision Making over Many Periods

By: Robert C. Merton and Paul A. Samuelson

Keywords: Investment; Decision Making

Teaching Interest

Overview

By: Dante Roscini

Over the past decade, I have taught the course Business, Government and the International Economy, part of the required curriculum in the MBA program and the course Managing International Trade and Investment, part of the elective curriculum for second-year MBAs. View Details

Keywords: Trade; Investment; Foreign Direct Investment; Portfolio Investment; Risk Assessment; Political Economy; Globalized Firms And Management

Article

Investing in What You Know: The Case of Individual Investors and Local Stocks

By: Mark Seasholes and Ning Zhu

This paper tests the performance of individuals' equity investments. We study over 40,000 accounts and 950,000 trades from a large discount broker. Individuals invest heavily in local stocks and put 14% more into these stocks than a market-neutral portfolio... View Details

Keywords: Stocks; Local Range; Investment; Equity

June 2012
Technical Note

Foreign vs. Local Funds: A Note on the Dynamics of the Private Equity Industry in China

By: Li Jin and Benjamin Y. Lee

Keywords: Fundraising; Investment Management; Foreign Funds; Portfolio Management; Local Funds; Private Equity; Valuation; Investment Portfolio; China

2015
Working Paper

Replicating Private Equity with Value Investing, Homemade Leverage, and Hold-to-Maturity Accounting

By: Erik Stafford

Private equity funds tend to select relatively small firms with low EBITDA multiples. Publicly traded equities with these characteristics have high risk-adjusted returns after controlling for common factors typically associated with value stocks. Hold-to-maturity... View Details

Keywords: Value Investing; Endowments; Investment Management; Asset Pricing; Private Equity; Investment; Management; United States

SSRN

February 2013 (Revised June 2017)
Case

Project Sun Devil and Project Paris

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz

Tony Lee is preparing to present a project to the investment committee of Howard Street Capital. He will be recommending an investment in Project Sun Devil, a high-quality 225-unit student housing rental property near Tempe, Arizona. Tony Lee will compete for capital... View Details

Keywords: General Management; Financial Analysis; Return On Assets; Accounting; Performance Measurement; Financial Ratios; Return On Equity; Financial Statements; Profitability Analysis; Portfolio Investment; Portfolio Management; Real Estate; Property; Investment Portfolio; Investment Return; Real Estate Industry; United States

2023
Working Paper

What Do Impact Investors Do Differently?

By: Shawn Cole, Leslie Jeng, Josh Lerner, Natalia Rigol and Benjamin N. Roth

In recent years, impact investors – private investors who seek to generate simultaneously financial and social returns – have attracted intense interest and controversy. We analyze a novel, comprehensive data set of impact and traditional investors to assess how the... View Details

Keywords: ESG; Socially Responsible Investing; Investment Decisions; Public Goods; Impact Investment; Investment; Private Equity; Venture Capital

SSRN

September 2011
Article

What Drives Sell-Side Analyst Compensation at High-Status Investment Banks?

By: Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and David A. Maber

We use proprietary data from a major investment bank to investigate factors associated with analysts' annual compensation. We find compensation to be positively related to "All-Star" recognition, investment-banking contributions, the size of analysts' portfolios, and... View Details

Keywords: Investment Banking; Research; Compensation and Benefits; Investment Portfolio; Forecasting and Prediction; Resource Allocation; Status and Position; Business Earnings; Quality; Revenue; Stocks; Voting