Publications

Teaching Interest

Large-Scale Investment (LSI, MBA Elective Curriculum)

By: Benjamin C. Esty

Large-Scale Investment (LSI) is a case-based course about project finance that is designed for second-year MBA students. Project finance involves the creation of a legally independent project company financed with nonrecourse debt for the purpose of investing in a... View Details

Keywords: Project Finance; Corporate Finance; Corporate Governance; Valuation; Capital Budgeting

March 1982
Article

The Effect of Discretionary Price Control Decisions on Equity Values

By: R. S. Ruback

Keywords: Price; Decision Making; Value; Finance

19 Sep 2014
News

New study: Smarter finance grads do make more

24 Sep 2024
Blog Post

Climate Finance in Africa: Health, Self-Interest, Avoided Future Cost

and national security issues worsened in part by migration out of newly unlivable situations. How can investors, businesses, and global society face these issues? Governments and development finance institutions (DFIs) clearly don’t have... View Details

Article

High School Curriculum and Financial Outcomes: The Impact of Mandated Personal Finance and Mathematics Courses

By: Shawn Cole, Anna Paulson and Gauri Kartini Shastry

Financial literacy and cognitive capabilities are convincingly linked to the quality of financial decision-making. Yet, there is little evidence that education intended to improve financial decision-making is successful. Using plausibly exogenous variation in exposure... View Details

Keywords: Financial Literacy; Cognitive Capability; Secondary Education; Personal Finance; Decision Making

2002
Other Unpublished Work

Impact of Costing Systems on Pricing Decisions in a Duopoly

By: V.G. Narayanan and Jytte Grambo Larsen

Keywords: Duopoly and Oligopoly; Decision Making; Cost Accounting; Price

01 Apr 2001
News

Big Deals: Project Finance Helps Mitigate Risk in Large-Scale Investments

Forget millions; think billions. That’s what HBS associate professor Benjamin C. Esty does in Large-Scale Investment, a new MBA elective course he has developed that examines how companies structure, value, and finance large,... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; Motorola; Finance; Finance; Finance; Finance; Finance; Finance; Finance; Finance; Finance; Finance

Article

Managing the Unknowable: The Effectiveness of Early-stage Investor Gut Feel in Entrepreneurial Investment Decisions

By: Laura Huang and Jone L. Pearce

Using an inductive theory-development study, a field experiment, and a longitudinal field test, we examine early-stage entrepreneurial investment decision making under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Building on existing literature on decision making and risk in... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Risk and Uncertainty; Decision Making; Emotions; Performance Effectiveness

June 2020
Article

Frenemies in Platform Markets: Heterogeneous Profit Foci as Drivers of Compatibility Decisions

By: Ron Adner, Jianqing Chen and Feng Zhu

We study compatibility decisions of two competing platform owners that generate profits through both hardware sales and royalties from content sales. We consider a game-theoretic model in which two platforms offer different standalone utilities to users. We find that... View Details

Keywords: Compatibility; Platform Competition; Profit Foci; Digital Platforms; Competition; Profit; Decision Making

25 Jan 2024
Blog Post

Climate Stories Episode #15: Hilton Augustine III on Financing Climate Ventures

stakeholders to make both micro- and macro-level decisions today that will have net positive environmental and economic effects now and into the future” At the May 2023 “Accelerating Climate Solutions” conference at HBS, Hilton found... View Details

Article

The Effect of Providing Peer Information on Retirement Savings Decisions

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian and Katherine L. Milkman

Using a field experiment in a 401(k) plan, we measure the effect of disseminating information about peer behavior on savings. Low-saving employees received simplified plan enrollment or contribution increase forms. A randomized subset of forms stated the fraction of... View Details

Keywords: Saving; Decision Choices and Conditions; Retirement