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    • COVID-19 Business Impact Center
      COVID-19 Business Impact Center
      Cold Call
      A podcast featuring faculty discussing cases they've written and the lessons they impart.
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      • 23 Feb 2021
      • Cold Call Podcast

      Examining Race and Mass Incarceration in the United States

      The late 20th century saw dramatic growth in incarceration rates in the United States. Of the more than 2.3 million people in US prisons, jails, and detention centers in 2020, 60 percent were Black or Latinx. Harvard Business School assistant professor Reshmaan Hussam probes the assumptions underlying the current prison system, with its huge racial disparities, and considers what could be done to address the crisis of the American criminal justice system in her case, “Race and Mass Incarceration in the United States.”  Open for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

      Read the Transcript

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      CapitalRemove Capital →

      New research on financial assets from Harvard Business School faculty on issues including capital budgeting, venture capital, and working capital.
      Page 1 of 53 Results →
      • 30 Nov 2020
      • Research & Ideas

      COVID Not Slowing VC Investment

      by Danielle Kost

      Despite the economic uncertainty, most venture capitalists expect their investments to outperform major equity indexes and are still funding new endeavors, says Paul Gompers. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 30 Nov 2020
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Short-Termism, Shareholder Payouts, and Investment in the EU

      by Jesse M. Fried and Charles C.Y. Wang

      Shareholder-driven “short-termism,” as evidenced by increasing payouts to shareholders, is said to impede long-term investment in EU public firms. But a deep dive into the data reveals a different story.

      • 17 Nov 2020
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Venture Capitalists and COVID-19

      by Paul A. Gompers, Will Gornall, Steven N. Kaplan, and Ilya A. Strebulaev

      This survey of more than 1,000 venture capitalists finds that the VC industry and its portfolio companies have reduced their activity less than in previous recessions and have been more resilient than many other sectors of the global economy.

      • 03 Nov 2020
      • Working Paper Summaries

      The Stock Market Value of Human Capital Creation

      by Matthias Regier and Ethan Rouen

      Measuring human capital creation is complex but increasingly important to managers for understanding the relationship between employee expenditures and firm performance. This paper develops a strategy to examine aspects of the intangible human capital investment embedded in a firm’s personnel expense. Closed for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 27 Oct 2020
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Does Venture Capital Attract Human Capital? Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment

      by Shai Bernstein, Kunal Mehta, and Richard Townsend

      Using a randomized field experiment conducted on a large online search platform, this study illustrates how investments by top venture capital investors attract potential employees and improve the pool of candidates available for the startup.

      • 13 Oct 2020
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Fencing Off Silicon Valley: Cross-Border Venture Capital and Technology Spillovers

      by Ufuk Akcigit, Sina T. Ates, Josh Lerner, Richard Townsend, and Yulia Zhestkova

      This study of foreign corporate investment transactions from 32 countries between 1976 and 2015 finds these investments pose a trade-off: While they support young firms in pursuing innovations they could not otherwise afford, they also generate knowledge for the foreign investors.

      • 27 Jul 2020
      • Working Paper Summaries

      The Evolution of CEO Compensation in Venture Capital-Backed Startups

      by Michael Ewens, Ramana Nanda, and Christopher Stanton

      Resolving uncertainty related to market demand—so called “product-market” fit—marks a key inflection point in the compensation contract for CEOs of venture-capital backed firms.

      • 12 Jul 2020
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Sticky Capital Controls

      by Miguel Acosta-Henao, Laura Alfaro, and Andrés Fernández

      One of the legacies of the 2007–2008 global financial crisis has been a reassessment of the potential for restriction of capital flows policies. This paper documents a set of stylized facts on capital controls along their intensive and extensive margins for emerging markets and document them to be “sticky.” We then rationalize them through a model that includes fixed cost of implementing such policies, which lower the welfare gains of implementation.

      • 07 Jun 2020
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Financial Distancing: How Venture Capital Follows the Economy Down and Curtails Innovation

      by Sabrina T. Howell, Josh Lerner, Ramana Nanda, and Richard Townsend

      Common wisdom holds that VC investment and VC-backed startups are relatively insulated from downturns. This study shows that the relative quantity and quality of innovation declines more for VC-backed firms than for other types of firms during downturns.

      • 04 Feb 2020
      • Cold Call Podcast

      Why Backstage Capital Invests in ‘Underestimated’ Entrepreneurs

      Laura Huang discusses VC Arlan Hamilton’s strategy of backing entrepreneurs who have been ignored because of stereotypes, biases, and preconceptions. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 07 Jan 2020
      • Cold Call Podcast

      Can Capitalism Be Fixed by Making Companies More Just?

      JUST Capital seeks to make public companies more "just" by measuring and ranking their overall impact on society, based on priorities most important to average Americans. Ethan Rouen and Charles Wang explore whether JUST Capital's performance evaluation methodology can improve corporate behavior. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 10 Aug 2019
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Varieties of Outward Chinese Capital: Domestic Politics Status and Globalization of Chinese Firms

      by Meg Rithmire

      Most popular and scholarly writing about China’s global push overemphasizes the power of the state. This paper explains how three types of domestic Chinese capital—state capital, private capital, and crony capital—differ in political vulnerability and pursue globalization in different ways. All prefer capital openness, but they do so for different reasons.

      • 10 Apr 2019
      • HBS Case

      How Entrepreneurs Can Turn Lead Into Gold

      by Michael Blanding

      Innovative about creating new products, entrepreneurs often lose imagination when it comes to funding their dreams. Andy Wu reveals alternatives beyond friends and family. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 19 Nov 2018
      • Working Paper Summaries

      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.

      • 04 Oct 2018
      • Research & Ideas

      Diversity Boosts Profits in Venture Capital Firms

      by Michael Blanding

      VC firms that score high in diversity among their partners also tend to be more profitable, according to Paul Gompers. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 02 Apr 2018
      • Research & Ideas

      Is 'Gut Feel' a Good Reason to Invest in a Startup?

      by Michael Blanding

      Most investments in startups should never be made, at least when using by-the-numbers reasoning. But funded they are. Laura Huang believes investors use gut instinct to manage that risk. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 29 Mar 2018
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Government Incentives and Financial Intermediaries: The Case of Chinese Sell-Side Analysts

      by Sheng Cao, Xianjie He, Charles C.Y. Wang, and Huifang Yin

      This study is the first to examine analysts’ incentives vis-à-vis the government in a context where government has the ability and motives to influence capital market institutions. The paper highlights the role of government incentives in analysts’ behavior and output.

      • 12 Mar 2018
      • Op-Ed

      Op-Ed: Why BlackRock CEO Larry Fink Is Not a Socialist

      by Bill George

      BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s open letter to CEOs has reignited the “shareholders versus stakeholders” debate. Bill George says it's actually not much of a debate: mission-driven, values-centered companies perform better. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 29 Jan 2018
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Do Banks Have an Edge?

      by Juliane Begenau and Erik Stafford

      Reliance on high leverage is one distinctive component of the bank business model. This study suggests that the aggregate United States banking sector was relatively inefficient between 1960 and 2015. The falling costs of new production technologies in capital markets may further advantage capital markets over banks.

      • 04 Aug 2017
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Private Equity and Financial Fragility During the Crisis

      by Shai Bernstein, Josh Lerner, and Filippo Mezzanotti

      Examining the activity of almost 500 private equity-backed companies during the 2008 financial crisis, this study finds that during a time in which capital formation dropped dramatically, PE-backed companies invested more aggressively than peer companies did. Results do not support the hypothesis that private equity contributed to the fragility of the economy during the recent financial crisis.

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