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Publications
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- 2024
- Working Paper
Climate Solutions, Transition Risk, and Stock Returns
By: Shirley Lu, Edward J. Riedl, Simon Xu and George Serafeim
Using large language models to measure firms' climate solution products and services, we find that high-climate solution firms exhibit lower stock returns and higher market valuation multiples. Their stock prices respond positively to events signaling increased demand... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Catalysts for Climate Solutions: Corporate Responses to Venture Capital Financing of Climate-tech Startups
By: Shirley Lu, George Serafeim and Simon Xu
We study whether incumbent firms increase their product focus on climate solutions in response to venture capital (VC) financing of climate-tech startups. Using large language models to measure a firm's focus on climate solutions, we find that incumbents in similar... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Primary Capital Market Transactions and Index Funds
By: Marco Sammon and Chris Murray
We document the effects of mechanical buying by CRSP-index-tracking funds on post-IPO returns and IPO deal structure. Leveraging a difference-in-differences-style design built on a 2017 CRSP rule change, we find that expected index fund demand leads fast track IPOs to... View Details
- July 2024 (Revised July 2024)
- Case
Dynamic Pricing at Wendy’s: Where’s the Beef?
By: Elie Ofek, Alicia Dadlani and Martha Hostetter
In early 2024, Wendy’s new CEO announced on an earnings call that the company would install digital menus in its US locations so it could begin testing dynamic pricing—changing prices up or down in response to shifts in supply and demand – as well as allow engaging in... View Details
- June 2024
- Article
Inflation with COVID Consumption Baskets
By: Alberto Cavallo
The Covid-19 pandemic led to changes in expenditure patterns that introduced significant bias in the measurement of Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation. Using publicly-available data on card transactions, I updated the official CPI weights and re-calculated inflation... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Does the Case for Private Equity Still Hold?
By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Philipp Chvanov
Private Equity (“PE”) received a 10-fold increase in capital flows since the Great Financial Crisis (“GFC”) Investors sought higher nominal returns relative to those they could obtain in the public capital markets. This paper questions the fundamental assumptions... View Details
- February 2024
- Article
Pricing Power in Advertising Markets: Theory and Evidence
By: Matthew Gentzkow, Jesse M. Shapiro, Frank Yang and Ali Yurukoglu
Existing theories of media competition imply that advertisers will pay a lower price in equilibrium to reach consumers who multi-home across competing outlets. We generalize, extend, and test this prediction. We find that television outlets whose viewers watch more... View Details
- January 2024 (Revised May 2024)
- Case
Pioneer Natural Resources: Enhancing the Capital Return Strategy with Variable Dividends
In February 2021, Scott Sheffield, the CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources (an independent oil and gas company based in Texas), was considering the possibility of enhancing the firm’s capital return strategy by introducing a variable dividend tied to cash flows in... View Details
- January 2024
- Article
Dog Eat Dog: Balancing Network Effects and Differentiation in a Digital Platform Merger
By: Chiara Farronato, Jessica Fong and Andrey Fradkin
Digital platforms are increasingly the subject of regulatory scrutiny. In comparison to multiple competitors, a single platform may increase consumer welfare if network effects are large or may decrease welfare due to higher prices or reduction in platform variety. We... View Details
- December 12, 2023
- Article
Prices for Common Services at Quaternary vs Nonquaternary Hospitals
By: Brandon W. Yan, Maximilian J. Pany and Leemore S. Dafny
Using commercial health insurance claims data from 2017-2019, we assessed whether quaternary hospitals charged higher prices for common, unspecialized services also offered by nonquaternary hospitals. We found quaternary-hospital price premiums of 8.2 percent, on... View Details
- December 2023
- Article
What Can Stockouts Tell Us About Inflation? Evidence from Online Micro Data
By: Alberto Cavallo and Oleksiy Kryvtsov
We use a detailed micro dataset on product availability and stockouts to construct a direct high-frequency measure of consumer product shortages during the 2020-2022 pandemic. We document a widespread multi-fold rise in stockouts in nearly all sectors early in the... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Do Active Funds Do Better in What They Trade?
By: Marco Sammon and John J. Shim
We develop two new, simple measures to quantify active fund decisions at the individual position level. The intuition is to separate passive rebalancing induced by flows and position changes from active rebalancing decisions. We find that additive active rebalancing --... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Why Do Index Funds Have Market Power? Quantifying Frictions in the Index Fund Market
By: Zach Y. Brown, Mark Egan, Jihye Jeon, Chuqing Jin and Alex A. Wu
Index funds are one of the most common ways investors access financial markets and are perceived to be a transparent and low-cost alternative to active investment management. Despite these purported virtues of index fund investing and the introduction of new products... View Details
- October 2023
- Article
Product Variety, the Cost of Living, and Welfare Across Countries
By: Alberto Cavallo, Robert C. Feenstra and Robert Inklaar
We use the structure of the Melitz (2003) model to compute the cost of living and welfare across 47 countries, and compare these to conventional measures of prices and real consumption from the International Comparisons Project (ICP). The cost of living is inferred... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Trusting Talent: Cross-Country Differences in Hiring
By: Letian Zhang and Shinan Wang
This article argues that a society’s social trust influences employers’ hiring strategies. In selecting workers, employers could either focus on applicants’ potential and select on foundational skills (e.g., social skills, math skills) or focus on their readiness and... View Details
- September 2023 (Revised October 2023)
- Case
Mohamed Salah
By: Anita Elberse and Taher El Moataz Bellah
In June 2022, Mohamed Salah, one of the world’s best soccer players, and his lawyer and advisor Ramy Abbas Issa were in ongoing discussions with top English Premier League club Liverpool FC about a new playing contract for Salah. Arguably the Arab world’s biggest... View Details
- September 2023
- Case
The Meteoric Rise of Skims
Since its founding in 2019 by Kim Kardashian and Jens Grede, Skims, a solutions-oriented brand creating the next generation of underwear, loungewear, and shapewear with an eye toward body-type and skin-tone inclusivity, has experienced a meteoric rise. Kardashian, who... View Details
Keywords: Brand; Branding; Direct-to-consumer; DTC; Influencers; Influencer Marketing; Fashion; Growth; Direct Marketing; Influence; Reputation; Social Inference; Consumer Goods; Consumer Products; Female Entrepreneur; Female Protagonist; Entrepreneurship And Strategy; Brand ＆ Product Management; Competitive Advantage; Online Followers; Retail; Retail Formats; Retailing; Online Retail; Celebrities; Celebrity; Celebrity Endorsement; Go To Market Strategy; Apparel; Startup Marketing; Startups; Social Influencers; Brands and Branding; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Distribution Channels; Digital Marketing; Advertising; Power and Influence; Social Media; Fashion Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States
- August 2023 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
Arla Foods: Data-Driven Decarbonization (A)
By: Michael Parzen, Michael W. Toffel, Susan Pinckney and Amram Migdal
The case describes Arla’s history, in particular its climate change mitigation efforts, and how it implemented a price incentive system to motivate individual farms to implement scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions mitigation measures and receive a higher milk price. The... View Details
Keywords: Dairy Industry; Business Earnings; Agribusiness; Animal-Based Agribusiness; Acquisition; Mergers and Acquisitions; Decision Making; Decisions; Voting; Environmental Management; Climate Change; Environmental Regulation; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology; Pollution; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Financial Strategy; Price; Profit; Revenue; Food; Geopolitical Units; Global Strategy; Ownership Type; Cooperative Ownership; Performance Efficiency; Performance Evaluation; Problems and Challenges; Natural Environment; Science-Based Business; Business Strategy; Commercialization; Cooperation; Corporate Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Europe; United Kingdom; European Union; Germany; Denmark; Sweden; Luxembourg; Belgium
- August 2023 (Revised January 2024)
- Supplement
Arla Foods: Data-Driven Decarbonization (B)
By: Michael Parzen, Michael W. Toffel, Susan Pinckney and Amram Migdal
The case describes Arla’s history, in particular its climate change mitigation efforts, and how it implemented a price incentive system to motivate individual farms to implement scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions mitigation measures and receive a higher milk price. The... View Details
Keywords: Dairy Industry; Earnings Management; Environmental Accounting; Animal-Based Agribusiness; Mergers and Acquisitions; Decisions; Voting; Climate Change; Environmental Regulation; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology; Pollution; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Financial Strategy; Price; Profit; Revenue; Food; Geopolitical Units; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Global Strategy; Cooperative Ownership; Performance Efficiency; Performance Evaluation; Problems and Challenges; Natural Environment; Science-Based Business; Business Strategy; Commercial Banking; Cooperation; Corporate Strategy; Motivation and Incentives; Food and Beverage Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Europe; United Kingdom; European Union; Denmark; Sweden; Luxembourg; Belgium
- 2023
- Working Paper
Algorithm Failures and Consumers' Response: Evidence from Zillow
By: Isamar Troncoso, Runshan Fu, Nikhil Malik and Davide Proserpio
In November 2021, Zillow announced the closure of its iBuyer business. Popular media largely attributed this to a failure of its proprietary forecasting algorithm. We study the response of consumers to Zillow’s iBuyer business closure. We show that after the iBuyer... View Details