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Can Robin Williams’ Son Help Other Families Heal Addiction and Depression?

Re: Lauren H. Cohen

Zak Pym Williams, son of comedian and actor Robin Williams, had seen how mental health challenges, such as addiction and depression, had affected past generations of his family. Williams was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a young adult and he wanted to break the cycle for his children. Although his children were still quite young, he began considering proactive strategies that could help his family’s mental health, and he wanted to share that knowledge with other families. But how can Williams help people actually take advantage of those mental health strategies and services? Professor Lauren Cohen discusses his case, “Weapons of Self Destruction: Zak Pym Williams and the Cultivation of Mental Wellness.”

Supervisor of Sandwiches? More Companies Inflate Titles to Avoid Extra Pay

by Scott Van Voorhis

What does an assistant manager of bingo actually manage? Increasingly, companies are falsely classifying hourly workers as managers to avoid paying an estimated $4 billion a year in overtime, says research by Lauren Cohen.

Readers Ask: What's the Next 'Big Thing' in Finance?

by Kristen Senz

Lauren Cohen tackles questions about bitcoin, podcasts, and weightlifting on Working Knowledge’s “Office Hours” series. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

To Fight Climate Change, Should Green Investors Reconsider Big Oil?

by Kristen Senz

Sustainability funds eschew some of the biggest backers of green technology: oil companies. Research by Lauren Cohen offers reasons to re-evaluate the role of traditional energy companies in addressing climate change. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

The ESG-Innovation Disconnect: Evidence from Green Patenting

by Lauren Cohen, Umit G. Gurun, and Quoc H. Nguyen

Energy-producing firms are more likely to produce “blockbuster” green patents than other firms. Yet energy firms are excluded from many environmental, social, and governance (ESG) funds, and are the targets of divestiture campaigns whose stated aims often include green energy innovation.

What Does December's Drug-Approval Dash Mean for COVID-19 Vaccines?

by Danielle Kost

Even in the best of times, pharmaceutical regulators tend to rush through drug applications in December. Now add in a ruthless pandemic. Research and insights from Lauren Cohen. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Research News and Tips: Innovating Across Time Zones

by Sean Silverthorne

Recent research insights on collaborating across time zones, the economic cost of immigrant bans, selling a pivot story to investors, and more.

Lazy Prices

by Lauren Cohen, Christopher J. Malloy, and Quoc Nguyen

The most comprehensive information windows that firms provide to the markets—in the form of their mandated annual and quarterly filings—have changed dramatically over time, becoming significantly longer and more complex. When firms break from their routine phrasing and content, this action contains rich information for future firm stock returns and outcomes.

IQ from IP: Simplifying Search in Portfolio Choice

by Huaizhi Chen, Lauren Cohen, Umit Gurun, Dong Lou, and Christopher J. Malloy

Mutual fund managers solve their complex “search problem” for superior investable returns by tracking—and trading—on very particular sets of firms and insiders. These sets are chosen strategically and remain very persistent over time, as does the outperformance these insiders’ trades afford to the given fund managers.

Buying the Verdict

by Lauren H. Cohen and Umit G. Gurun

This paper documents systematic evidence that firms engage in specialized, locally targeted advertising when taken to a court trial in a given location. Policymakers should consider what impact such targeted advertising is having—and whether it is a desired impact—on juries and the judicial process more generally.

Why South Korea's Samsung Built the Only Outdoor Skating Rink in Texas

by Michael Blanding

New research by Lauren Cohen and Umit Gurun finds that when some companies are sued, they put their advertising dollars to work in unusual ways to influence local juries. Meet 'TiVo,' the championship steer. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

First Look at New Research and Ideas, August 29

Sean Silverthorne

How social class shapes high-performing women ... The problem with knowledge repositories ... Starting a high-frequency-trading hedge fund.

Crowdsourcing, Patent Trolls, and Other Research Insights Highlighted at Harvard Business School Symposium

by Dina Gerdeman & Carmen Nobel

The 2016 Faculty Research Symposium looked at current and potential collaborations between HBS and Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

The Surprising Connection between 1930s Weather and Today's Labor Unions

by Carmen Nobel

Why are workforces heavily unionized in some states but not in others? Lauren H. Cohen, Christopher J. Malloy, and Quoc Nguyen find the answer in the droughts of the 1930s. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Use Personal Experience to Pick Winning Stocks

by Michael Blanding

In their course Stock Pitching, Lauren Cohen and Christopher Malloy teach students everything from how to pick stocks using their own insights to pitching them to investment colleagues. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Patent Trolls

by Lauren Cohen, Umit G. Gurun & Scott Duke Kominers

Clearly defined property rights are essential for well-functioning markets. In the case of intellectual property (IP), however, property rights are complex to define; unlike ownership of physical assets, the space of ideas is difficult to clearly delineate. A solution employed by the United States and many other countries is the patent-a property right allowing an idea's owner sole commercialization rights for a period of time. A new organizational form, the non-practicing entity (NPE), has recently emerged as a major driver of IP litigation. NPEs amass patents not for the sake of producing commercial products, but in order to prosecute infringement on their patent portfolios. In this paper the authors provide the first large-sample evidence on the litigation behavior of NPEs. They show precisely which corporations NPEs target, when NPEs litigate, and how NPE litigation impacts the innovative activity of targeted firms. NPEs behave, on average, as patent trolls. This means that NPEs target firms that are flush with cash or that have just had positive cash shocks. NPEs even target conglomerate firms that earn their cash from segments having nothing to do with their allegedly infringing patents. The stakes of how to organize intellectual property disputes are massive. If the United States becomes a less desirable place to innovate because NPEs are left unchecked, innovation and human capital, and the returns to that innovation and human capital, will likely flee overseas. But innovators will also leave if they feel they are not are protected from large, well-funded interests that might infringe on innovative capital without recourse. Key concepts include: The rise of non-practicing entities (NPEs) has sparked a debate regarding their value and their impact on innovation. This study provides evidence that NPEs do not protect innovators from large interests in the intellectual property space. On average, NPEs behave as patent trolls that chase cash and negatively impact future innovation. Policy should be to more carefully limit the power of NPEs or, in the framework of the authors' model, increase the cost of bringing suit against commercializers of innovative ideas. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Dragging Patent Trolls Into the Light

by Michael Blanding

New research by Lauren Cohen and colleagues shows that patent trolls are not just the stuff of fairy tales. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Companies Choreograph Earnings Calls to Hide Bad News

by Julia Hanna

Data from thousands of Wall Street earnings conference calls suggests that many companies hide bad performance news by calling only on positive analysts, according to new research by Lauren Cohen and Christopher Malloy. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Playing Favorites: How Firms Prevent the Revelation of Bad News

by Lauren Cohen, Dong Lou & Christopher Malloy

Given the current regulatory environment in the United States (and increasingly globally) of level playing-field information laws, firms can only communicate information in public exchanges. However, even in these highly regulated venues, there are subtle choices that firms make that reveal differential amounts of information to the market. In this paper the authors explore a subtle but economically important way in which firms shape their information environments, namely through their specific organization and choreographing of earnings conference calls. The analysis rests on a simple premise: firms understand they have an information advantage and the ability to be strategic in its release. The key finding is that firms that manipulate their conference calls by calling on those analysts with the most optimistic views on the firm appear to be hiding bad news, which ultimately leaks out in the future. Specifically, the authors show that "casting" firms experience higher contemporaneous returns on the (manipulated) call in question, but negative returns in the future. These negative future returns are concentrated around future calls where they stop this casting behavior, and hence allow negative information to be revealed to the market. Key concepts include: The paper shows new evidence on a channel through which firms influence information disclosure even in level-playing-field information environments. The pattern of firms appearing to choreograph information exchanges directly prior to the revelation of negative news is systematic across the universe of firms. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

What Wall Street Doesn’t Understand About International Trade

by Carmen Nobel

Firms that correlate their international trading activity with the local ethnic community significantly outperform those that don't, according to new research by Lauren H. Cohen, Christopher J. Malloy, and Umit G. Gurun. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.