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- 2021
- Working Paper
Which Corporate ESG News Does the Market React To?
By: George Serafeim and Aaron Yoon
Using a dataset that classifies firm-level ESG news as positive and negative, we examine how stock prices react to different types of ESG news. We analyze 111,020 firm-day observations for 3,126 companies and find that prices react only to issues identified as...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
How Much Should We Trust Staggered Difference-In-Differences Estimates?
By: Andrew C. Baker, David F. Larcker and Charles C.Y. Wang
Difference-in-differences analysis with staggered treatment timing is frequently used to assess the impact of policy changes on corporate outcomes in academic research. However, recent advances in econometric theory show that such designs are likely to be biased in the...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Designing, Not Checking, for Policy Robustness: An Example with Optimal Taxation
By: Benjami Lockwood, Afras Y. Sial and Matthew C. Weinzierl
Economists typically check the robustness of their results by comparing them across plausible ranges of parameter values and model structures. A preferable approach to robustness—for the purposes of policymaking and evaluation—is to design policy that takes these...
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- 2020
- Article
Research on Corporate Sustainability: Review and Directions for Future Research
By: Jody Grewal and George Serafeim
We review the literature on corporate sustainability and provide directions for future research. Our review focuses on three actions: measuring, managing and communicating corporate sustainability performance. Measurement is the least developed of the three and...
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Keywords:
Sustainability;
Sustainability Reporting;
Sustainability Management;
Nonfinancial Disclosure;
Nonfinancial Information;
Nonfinancial Performance;
Materiality;
Esg;
Esg (environmental, Social, Governance) Performance;
Esg Disclosure;
Esg Disclosure Metrics;
Esg Ratings;
Esg Reporting;
Inequality;
Corporate Social Responsibility;
Accounting;
Finance;
Management;
Strategy;
Environmental Sustainability;
Climate Change;
Diversity;
Equality and Inequality;
Corporate Disclosure;
Measurement and Metrics;
Corporate Governance;
Corporate Accountability;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact
- 2020
- Working Paper
Conflicting Interests and the Effect of Fiduciary Duty—Evidence from Variable Annuities
By: Mark Egan, Shan Ge and Johnny Tang
We examine the drivers of variable annuity sales and the impact of a proposed regulatory change. Variable annuities are popular retirement products with over $2 trillion in assets in the United States. Insurers typically pay brokers a commission for selling variable...
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- June 2020 (Revised October 2020)
- Case
Muddy Waters vs. eHealth: The Debate of a 'Lifetime'
By: Jonas Heese and Cristo Liautaud
In May 2020, an analyst was assessing eHealth’s performance. eHealth was an online / tele-sales broker of health insurance products. The stock had recently hit all-time highs, closing at a peak of $146 on March 4, 2020. But now, May 4, 2020, eHealth traded at $103. The...
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- June 2020 (Revised February 2021)
- Case
Accounting for Leases at American Airlines (A)
By: Jonas Heese, Gerardo Pérez Cavazos and Julia Kelley
In March 2020, as coronavirus reduced demand for air travel, an analyst was forecasting American Airlines’ (American’s) first quarter financial results. To develop a forecast, she needed to familiarize herself with Accounting Standards Update (ASU) 2016-02, “Leases...
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Keywords:
Accounting;
Financial Reporting;
Financial Statements;
Finance;
Governance;
Corporate Accountability;
Corporate Governance;
Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms;
Governing and Advisory Boards;
Leasing;
Accounting Industry;
Air Transportation Industry;
North and Central America;
United States
- March 2020
- Article
Which Early Withdrawal Penalty Attracts the Most Deposits to a Commitment Savings Account?
By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, Christopher Harris, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian and Jung Sakong
Previous research has shown that some people voluntarily use commitment contracts that restrict their own choice sets. We study how people divide money between two accounts: a liquid account that permits unrestricted withdrawals and a commitment account that is...
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- October 2019
- Article
Limited Investment Capital and Credit Spreads
Using proprietary credit default swap (CDS) data, I investigate how capital shocks at protection sellers impact pricing in the CDS market. Seller capital shocks—measured as CDS portfolio margin payments—account for 12% of the time-series variation in weekly spread...
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- 2019
- White Paper
Impact-Weighted Financial Accounts: The Missing Piece for an Impact Economy
By: George Serafeim, T. Robert Zochowski and Jennifer Downing
Reimagining capitalism is an imperative. We need to create a more inclusive and sustainable form of capitalism that works for every person and the planet. Massive environmental damage, growing income and wealth disparity, stress, and depression within developed...
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- March 2019
- Case
The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (Abridged)
By: Julie Battilana and Michael Norris
In 2014, as the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) has just brought former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on as chairman of the board, Jean Rogers, founder and CEO, struggles with how best to ensure the nonprofit’s financial sustainability while...
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- Article
Decreases In Readmissions Credited to Medicare's Program to Reduce Hospital Readmissions Have Been Overstated
By: Christopher Ody, Lucy Msall, Leemore S. Dafny, David Grabowski and David Cutler
Medicare’s Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) has been credited with lowering risk-adjusted readmission rates for targeted conditions at general acute care hospitals. However, these reductions appear to be illusory or overstated. This is because a...
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- December 2018
- Teaching Note
Revenue Recognition at HBP
By: Siko Sikochi and Paul Healy
In early 2014, Corporate Learning, one of three business units at Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), was in the process of revamping its flagship product, Harvard Manage-Mentor (HMM) from version 11.0 (HMM11) to version 12.0 (HMM12). The revamped software would be...
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- October 2018
- Supplement
JetBlue: Relevant Sustainability Leadership (B)
By: George Serafeim and David Freiberg
The case outlines JetBlue's decision to disclose according to the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) standards and the ESG metrics they began reporting. Data on resulting changes in institutional ownership are also provided.
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- 2018
- Chapter
Behavioral Household Finance
By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian
This chapter provides an overview of household finance. The first part summarizes key facts regarding household financial behavior, emphasizing empirical regularities that are inconsistent with the standard classical economic model and discussing extensions of the...
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- August 2018 (Revised July 2020)
- Case
Revenue Recognition at HBP
By: Paul Healy and Siko Sikochi
In early 2014, Paul Bills, CFO of Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), sat down with David Wan, the company’s CEO, to discuss budget preparations for the coming year. Bills noted that the performance of Corporate Learning, one of HBP’s three business units, would be...
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- July 2018
- Article
Reimagining Health Data Exchange: An Application Programming Interface-Enabled Roadmap for India
By: Satchit Balsari, Alexander Fortenko MD, MPH, Joaquin A. Blaya PhD, Adrian Gropper MD, Malavika Jayaram LLM, Rahul Matthan LLM, Ram Sahasranam, Mark Shankar MD, Suptendra N. Sarbadhikari PhD, Barbara Bierer, Kenneth D. Mandl MD, Sanjay Mehendale MD, MPH and Tarun Khanna
In February 2018, the Government of India announced a massive public health insurance scheme extending coverage to 500 million citizens, in effect making it the world’s largest insurance program. To meet this target, the government will rely on technology to...
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- March 2018
- Module Note
Module Note for Instructors: Responsibilities to Society
By: Nien-hê Hsieh
This note outlines a framework to help managers discern and deliver on their responsibilities to society that has been taught in the “Responsibilities to Society” module in Leadership and Corporate Accountability (LCA), a semester-long, first-year required course for...
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- March 2018
- Article
Polluted Morality: Air Pollution Predicts Criminal Activity and Unethical Behavior
By: Jackson G. Lu, Julia J. Lee, F. Gino and Adam D. Galinsky
Air pollution is a serious problem that influences billions of people globally. Although the health and environmental costs of air pollution are well known, the present research investigates its ethical costs. We propose that air pollution can increase criminal and...
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- January–February 2018
- Article
Some Customers Would Rather Leave Without Saying Goodbye
By: Eva Ascarza, Oded Netzer and Bruce G.S. Hardie
We investigate the increasingly common business setting in which companies face the possibility of both observed and unobserved customer attrition (i.e., “overt” and “silent” churn) in the same pool of customers. This is the case for many online-based services where...
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