Publications

Web

Commodities, Currencies, and Balancing of the Trade Deficit - A Chronicle of the China Trade

Imperial government forbade. The English, who had vacated Canton, relied on American firms to oversee their transactions. Heard & Co. served in this capacity for one of View Details

31 Mar 2002
What Do You Think?

Is This the Decade of the Investor?

to assess the fairness of the division of returns. And before making assumptions about the future, "we still... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

26 Aug 2002
Research & Ideas

High-Stakes Decision Making: The Lessons of Mount Everest

decisions. The Everest analysis suggests that leaders must pay close attention to how they balance competing pressures in their organizations, and how their words and actions shape the perceptions and... View Details

Keywords: by Michael A. Roberto

2015
Working Paper

The Cooperative Solution of Stochastic Games

By: Elon Kohlberg and Abraham Neyman

Building on the work of Nash, Harsanyi, and Shapley, we define a cooperative solution for strategic games that takes account of both the competitive and the cooperative aspects of such games. We prove existence in the general (NTU) case and uniqueness in the TU... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Game Theory

Forthcoming
Article

Crisis Interventions in Corporate Insolvency

By: Samuel Antill and Christopher Clayton

We model the optimal resolution of insolvent firms in general equilibrium. Collateral-constrained banks lend to (i) solvent firms to finance investments and (ii) distressed firms to avoid liquidation. Liquidations create negative fire-sale externalities. Liquidations... View Details

Keywords: Insolvent Firms; Government Intervention; Liquidation; Econometric Models; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Policy

SSRN

August 2020
Article

Financial Market Risk Perceptions and the Macroeconomy

By: Carolin E. Pflueger, Emil Siriwardane and Adi Sunderam

We propose a novel measure of risk perceptions: the price of volatile stocks (PVS), defined as the book-to-market ratio of low-volatility stocks minus the book-to-market ratio of high-volatility stocks. PVS is high when perceived risk directly measured from surveys and... View Details

Keywords: Risk-centric Business Cycles; Cross-section Of Equities; Real Risk-free Rate; Real Investment; Financial Markets; Risk and Uncertainty; Perception; Investment

20 Oct 2003
Research & Ideas

Gaps in the Historical Record: Development of the Electronics Industry

the world's foremost commercializer of products of new technologies in consumer electronics including the Walkman, Triton Color TV, View Details

Keywords: by Alfred D. Chandler Jr.; Consumer Products

August 2023
Teaching Note

Kunshan, Incorporated: The Making of China’s Richest Town

By: William C. Kirby and Noah B. Truwit

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 313-103. The case is designed to give the students an understanding of the local Chinese entrepreneurial state and how foreign and Chinese firms have worked with it to create China’s richest small city. The major themes are—local state... View Details

Keywords: Higher Education; Entrepreneurship; Economic Growth; Economic Systems; Business and Government Relations; Development Economics; China

2022
Working Paper

The Stock Market Value of Human Capital Creation

By: Matthias Regier and Ethan Rouen

We develop a measure of firm-year-specific human capital investment from publicly disclosed personnel expenses (PE) and examine the stock market valuation of this investment. Measuring the future value of PE (PEFV) based on the relation between lagged... View Details

Keywords: Intangibles; Market Valuation; Human Capital; Stocks; Financial Markets; Valuation

SSRN

Research Summary

The Early Evolution of Business Groups: A Study of Diversification and Spinoffs by Vietnam's First Generation of Entrepreneurs

This study, done in collaboration with the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Central Institute for Economic Management, examines the experience of 95 successful Vietnamese entrepreneurs first surveyed in 1999. The project aims to build and analyze... View Details

January 2010
Article

Buy Local? The Geography of Successful Venture Capital Expansion

By: Henry Chen, Paul A. Gompers, Anna Kovner and Josh Lerner

We document geographic concentration by both venture capital firms and venture capital-financed companies in three metropolitan areas: San Francisco, Boston, and New York. We find that venture capital firms locate in regions with high success rates of venture... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Expansion; Success; Capital; Geographic Location; Business Units; Corporate Accountability; Business Offices; Goals and Objectives; Mission and Purpose; Investment Funds; Corporate Governance; Boston; New York (state, US); San Francisco

August 2006
Article

Investor Sentiment and the Cross Section of Stock Returns

By: Malcolm Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler

We examine how investor sentiment affects the cross-section of stock returns. Theory predicts that a broad wave of sentiment will disproportionately affect stocks whose valuations are highly subjective and are difficult to arbitrage. We test this prediction by... View Details

Keywords: Behavioral Finance; Stocks; Investment Return; Forecasting and Prediction; Motivation and Incentives; Risk and Uncertainty; Volatility

Article

Beyond the Reach of the Invisible Hand: Impediments to Economic Activity, Market Failures, and Profitability

By: Dennis Yao

In this paper it is argued that failures of the competitive market are necessary conditions for supranormal profitability. Three fundamental causes of these market failures-production economies and sunk costs, transactions costs, and imperfect information-are developed... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Markets; Failure; Profit; Cost; Information; Market Transactions; Competition; Strategy; Production

12 Sep 2007
Working Paper Summaries

The Ethnic Composition of U.S. Inventors

Keywords: by William R. Kerr

February 1995 (Revised August 1995)
Case

Microsoft in the People's Republic of China, 1993

By: Tarun Khanna

Explores some of the economic and political tradeoffs that need to be negotiated by a firm seeking to influence industry structure. The setting is the nascent personal computer software industry in the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1993. Microsoft has to localize... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Product Marketing; Market Entry and Exit; Market Transactions; Industry Structures; Partners and Partnerships; Vertical Integration; Software; Information Technology Industry; China

Educators

30 Jul 2001
What Do You Think?

What’s the Future of Corporate Governance?

pays for it? Should there be an independent firm that is appointed by the SEC?" What do you think? Original Article Observers such as Jay Lorsch, in his book Pawns and Potentates, has argued that boards... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

19 Mar 2012
HBS Case

HBS Cases: Overcoming the Stress of ‘Englishnization’

astonished," said an engineer interviewed after the announcement. "Many Rakuten employees are allergic to English." “If they don't have a language strategy, they'll regret it” In a company where just 10 percent View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard

2009
Working Paper

Watch What I Do, Not What I Say: The Unintended Consequences of the Homeland Investment Act

By: Dhammika Dharmapala, C. Fritz Foley and Kristin J. Forbes

This paper analyzes the impact on firm behavior of the Homeland Investment Act of 2004, which provided a one-time tax holiday for the repatriation of foreign earnings by U.S. multinationals. The analysis controls for endogeneity and omitted variable bias by using... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Multinational Firms and Management; Government Legislation; Taxation; Business and Shareholder Relations; Behavior; United States