Publications

July 2020 (Revised July 2023)
Case

Live Nation and Pharrell Williams

By: Anita Elberse and Kate Christensen

“We’re in business together, and whether we lose a few million dollars or make a few million dollars, let’s do this. If you think you can pull it off, I’m behind you.” Michael Rapino, chief executive officer of Live Nation, the world’s leading live entertainment... View Details

Keywords: Music; Entertainment; Superstars; Talent; Labor Economics; General Management; Music Entertainment; Media; Talent and Talent Management; Joint Ventures; Marketing; Strategy; Music Industry

May 2012 (Revised July 2012)
Case

Credit Unions: The Future of the Cooperative Financial Institution

By: Robert C. Pozen and Grace Hou

Credit unions are a specialized type of depository institution with a cooperative, non-profit structure and a federal tax exemption. They originated as small, cooperative institutions with an emphasis on uncollateralized consumer lending to the unbanked... View Details

Keywords: Banking; Credit Unions; Banks and Banking

June 2019
Case

Athena Bancorp

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Sarah Abbott

Athena Bancorp was founded in 2016 by Beth Daniels, a banking professional with 15 years of experience in the industry. Daniels took advantage of what she perceived as a gap in the market caused by recent industry consolidation, a decreasing industry focus on branch... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Culture; Human Resources; Strategy; Service Delivery; Banking Industry

28 Sep 2016
News

Can Washington control high-tech lending?

July 2023 (Revised October 2024)
Case

Revenue Recognition at Stride Funding: Making Sense of Revenues for a Fintech Startup

By: Paul M. Healy and Jung Koo Kang

The case explores the challenges of revenue recognition and financial reporting for Stride Funding (Stride), a fintech startup that has disrupted the student loan market. Stride leveraged proprietary machine learning and financial models to underwrite alternative... View Details

Keywords: Revenue Recognition; Financial Reporting; Entrepreneurial Finance; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Governance Compliance; Accrual Accounting; Financial Services Industry; United States

January 2009 (Revised February 2010)
Case

Necessity and Invention: Monetary Policy Innovation and the Subprime Crisis

By: Aldo Musacchio and Dante Roscini

This case describes the efforts of Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, to improve liquidity in money markets during the subprime crisis. The case explains the four main new tools for monetary policy (or quantitative easing) the Federal Reserve has used... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Money; Financial Liquidity; Central Banking; Policy; Business and Government Relations

November 2021 (Revised January 2022)
Supplement

Scott Tucker (B): The Feds Catch Up

By: Aiyesha Dey and Amram Migdal

The case tells the story of the rise and fall of Scott Tucker, an entrepreneur, businessman, passionate race car driver, competitor, and owner of a professional racing team. From 1997 to 2012, Tucker built a nationwide network of payday lending businesses, becoming a... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Crime and Corruption; Ethics; Fairness; Financing and Loans; Personal Finance; Governance; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Governance; Governance Compliance; Governance Controls; Financial Services Industry; United States

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

2010
Book

A Call for Judgment: Sensible Finance for a Dynamic Economy

By: Amar Bhide

Our prosperity requires the enterprise of innumerable individuals and businesses who exercise their imagination and judgment—and bear responsibility for outcomes. And it is through dialogue and relationships that widespread enterprise is fostered, not merely prices in... View Details

Keywords: Recession; Banking; Banks; Finance; Economics; Macroeconomics; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry

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October 2017 (Revised April 2019)
Case

Eastern Bank: Innovating Through Eastern Labs

By: Karen Mills, Dennis Campbell and Aaron Mukerjee

Eastern Bank is a 200-year-old New England mutual bank with a community focus. Eastern specializes in small business lending, having made strategic investments to become the top SBA lender in New England in the midst of the Great Recession, when other banks were... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Technological Innovation; Entrepreneurship; Management

17 Jun 2008
First Look

First Look: June 17, 2008

are impacted most by regulation are those measuring working status, social networks, business skills, and attitudes toward risk. Download the paper from SSRN ($5): http://papers.nber.org/papers/w14012 Bank Structure and the Terms of View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Article

Employee Selection as a Control System

By: Dennis Campbell

Theories from the economics, management control, and organizational behavior literatures predict that when it is difficult to align incentives by contracting on output, aligning preferences via employee selection may provide a useful alternative. This study... View Details

Keywords: Management Systems; Governance Controls; Employees; Selection and Staffing; Motivation and Incentives; Decision Making; Business Model

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Article

Liability Structure in Small-Scale Finance

By: Fenella Carpena, Shawn Cole, Jeremy Shapiro and Bilal Zia

Microfinance, the provision of small individual and business loans, has experienced dramatic growth, reaching over 150 million borrowers worldwide. Much of the success of microfinance has been attributed to attempts to overcome the challenges of information asymmetries... View Details

Keywords: Microfinance; Emerging Markets; Financial Markets; Legal Liability; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry; India

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2010
Working Paper

Employee Selection as a Control System

By: Dennis Campbell

Theories from the economics, management control, and organizational behavior literatures predict that when it is difficult to align incentives by contracting on output, aligning preferences via employee selection may provide a useful alternative. This study... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Decision Making; Governance Controls; Employees; Selection and Staffing; Management Systems; Financial Services Industry

2024
Working Paper

Bank Capital and the Growth of Private Credit

By: Sergey Chernenko, Robert Ialenti and David Scharfstein

We show that business development companies (BDCs)—closed-end funds that provide a significant share of nonbank loans to middle market firms—are very well capitalized according to bank capital frameworks. They have median risk-based capital ratios of about 36%... View Details

Keywords: Financing and Loans; Capital; Credit; Financial Institutions

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2010
Working Paper

Regulating for Legitimacy: Consumer Credit Access in France and America

By: J. Gunnar Trumbull

Theories of legitimate regulation have emphasized the role of governments either in fixing market failures to promote greater efficiency or in restricting the efficient functioning of markets in order to pursue public welfare goals. In either case, features of markets... View Details

Keywords: Borrowing and Debt; Credit; Financial Markets; Personal Finance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business History; Business and Government Relations; Welfare; France; United States