Evidence from the Firm: A New Approach to Understanding Corruption

Shawn A. Cole; Anh  Tran

Chapter | International Handbook on the Economics of Corruption, Volume 2 | 2012

Evidence from the Firm: A New Approach to Understanding Corruption

Abstract

Due to its clandestine nature, most of what we understand about corruption comes from survey evidence and self-reported perceptions of corruption: this limits both the range of questions that can be asked and the precision of answers that can be provided. This chapter proposes a new lens to understand corruption, using internal records collected from firms that pay bribes. We examine widespread corruption in three industries in an Asian developing country: procurement, pharmaceutical sales, and construction. Using data of real bribes, we provide new estimates of corruption and study its relationship with organizational ownership.

Keywords: Measurement and Metrics; Crime and Corruption; Organizations; Ownership; Asia;

Format: Print

Citation:

Cole, Shawn A., and Anh Tran. "Evidence from the Firm: A New Approach to Understanding Corruption." Chap. 14 in International Handbook on the Economics of Corruption, Volume 2, edited by Susan Rose-Ackerman and Tina Soreide, 408–427. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012.

Wellington Global Impact is one of the first public equities impact investing strategies in the market. The case explores how the strategy was developed at Wellington, including an analysis of the culture that supported its development. It also explores the difficulty in marketing the strategy as a first-mover and the effort to demonstrate that investments can have both positive financial and social returns. Protagonists Eric Rice and Patrick Kent must find ways to show that it is possible to drive impact through a public markets vehicle and show the rigorous financial and ESG analysis that went into building the strategy. Students will gain exposure to concepts around firm strategy, portfolio construction, risk management, marketing, and impact investing.

In 2015 Root Capital, a pioneer in the impact investing space, began to explore how to more systematically integrate impact and financial management. After much deliberation, Root Capital landed on ex-ante rating system for any potential investment which produced a proprietary expected impact. With this tool in place, Root Capital had an integrated picture of impact and financial performance for a loan, and across its portfolio. The next question Root capital faced was how to use this tool to optimize impact and financial performance going forward. This case was designed to be taught alongside Root Capital’s Efficient Impact Frontier Simulation exercise.

Case | HBS Case Collection | February 2018

OpenInvest

Shawn Cole, Boris Vallée and Nicole Tempest Keller

Founded by a team of hedge fund and NGO alumni, OpenInvest launched its platform in 2015 to enable retail investors to tailor their portfolios to their personal values in an automated way, for instance by screening out weapons manufacturers stocks or overweighting LGBTQ friendly companies, while still closely tracking the overall stock market performance. In 2017, bolstered by $3.25 million in seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz, OpenInvest was preparing to launch an app targeted at millennial customers that would include a novel proxy voting feature that allowed clients to vote on shareholder resolutions with a simple swipe. With this technological addition, OpenInvest was well on its way towards realizing its mission of democratizing socially responsible investing, bringing transparency to the financial services market, and enabling retail investors to invest their capital in a way that aligned with their values. However, getting to scale and profitability in the crowded robo-advisors space was a critical challenge. The case closes with the founders contemplating expanding or migrating their model from B2C to B2B in order to achieve scale and profitability faster. The case is an opportunity to discuss the theoretical underpinning of creating impact in public markets, to explore how portfolio performance might be affected by Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) screens, and to understand drivers of demand for impacting investing more broadly. The case also explores the challenges the founders face when aiming to design a new product to meet an emerging need and which distribution channel to choose for doing so.

Keywords: fintech; impact investing; Investment Portfolio; Customization and Personalization; Technological Innovation; Social Issues; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Model; Financial Services Industry;

Citation:

Cole, Shawn, Boris Vallée, and Nicole Tempest Keller. "OpenInvest." Harvard Business School Case 218-064, February 2018. View Details

Cite View Details Educators Purchase

Faculty & Research

Evidence from the Firm: A New Approach to Understanding Corruption

Abstract

Citation:

About the Author

More from the Author