Investor Shortcuts - Publications - Faculty & Research

December 2016
Article

Industry Window Dressing

By: Huaizhi Chen, Lauren Cohen and Dong Lou

We explore a new mechanism by which investors take correlated shortcuts and present evidence that managers undertake actions—in the form of sales management—to take advantage of these shortcuts. Specifically, we exploit a regulatory provision wherein a firm’s primary... View Details

Keywords: Investor Shortcuts; Industry Classification; Opportunistic Managerial Behavior; Discontinuity; Management Practices and Processes; Investment; Sales

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06 Jun 2007
Research & Ideas

Behavioral Finance—Benefiting from Irrational Investors

of individual investors and 30 percent of institutional investors appear to be more inertial than logical. They take the default option, passively accepting the shares offered as consideration in stock... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

May 2018 (Revised June 2018)
Case

Ashar Group: Brokers and Co-opetition in the Life Settlement Industry

By: Alexander Braun, Lauren H. Cohen, Christopher J. Malloy and Jiahua Xu

Connecting life insurance policyholders with potential investors (called Life Settlement Providers), Ashar Group plays a pivotal role in the industry. Its current position is, however, increasingly being challenged by consumer-direct models, led by major providers... View Details

Keywords: Insurance; Investment; Markets; Competitive Strategy; Cooperation; Financial Services Industry

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31 Aug 2009
Research & Ideas

Why Competition May Not Improve Credit Rating Agencies

In the run-up to the global financial crisis, credit rating agencies gave high marks to such risky financial vehicles as collateralized debt obligations, which few people understood. It has been argued that these ratings misled investors... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Financial Services

23 Feb 2016
First Look

February 23, 2016

February 2016 Review of Financial Studies Industry Window Dressing By: Chen, Huaizhi, Lauren Cohen, and Dong Lou Abstract— We explore a new mechanism by which investors take correlated shortcuts and present... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

16 Jul 2021
Op-Ed

For Entrepreneurs, the Benefits of Slowing Down

moment of candor, he confided to me, "I hope the new investors will let me slow down. We need to make sure we are building for scale and to do that, I need to be more deliberate in our growth." Like the tortoise in the famous Aesop's... View Details

Keywords: by Jeffrey Bussgang

29 May 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, May 29, 2018

growth, while different across regions, are non-linear and asymmetric. Download working paper: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53596 Global Portfolio Diversification for Long-Horizon Investors By: Viceira, Luis M., and... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

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