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- March 2025
- Case
Calyx Global: Rating Carbon Credits
By: Michael W. Toffel and Adam Chen
This case describes how rating agencies and other organizations are seeking to improve the quality of carbon credits sold in the voluntary carbon market to organizations seeking to use them to supplement their internal decarbonization efforts to meet their net zero... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Blockchain Adoption and Audit Quality
By: Mei Luo, Daniel Rabetti and Shuangchen Yu
This study examines the impact of blockchain adoption in the corporate setting. Specifically, we provide comprehensive empirical support to recent theory (Cao, Cong, and Young, 2024) proposing that blockchain adoption positively affects endogenous audit quality and... View Details
- 2025
- Article
Humor as a Window into Generative AI Bias
By: Roger Samure, Julian De Freitas and Stefano Puntoni
A preregistered audit of 600 images by generative AI across 150 different prompts explores the link between humor and discrimination in consumer-facing AI solutions. When ChatGPT updates images to make them “funnier”, the prevalence of stereotyped groups changes. While... View Details
- May 2024
- Article
Financial Innovation in the 21st Century: Evidence from U.S. Patents
By: Josh Lerner, Amit Seru, Nick Short and Yuan Sun
We develop a unique dataset of 24 thousand U.S. finance patents granted over the last two decades to explore the evolution and production of financial innovation. We use machine learning to identify the financial patents and extensively audit the results to ensure... View Details
- March 2024
- Supplement
Madrigal: Conducting a Customer-Base Audit
By: Eva Ascarza, Peter Fader, Bruce G.S. Hardie and Michael Ross
This case presents a scenario where Madrigal, a U.S. retailer with a rich 20-year history and a solid loyalty program, faces a turning point with the arrival of a new CEO. This leadership change reveals a critical gap in understanding the customer base, prompting an... View Details
- March 2024
- Supplement
Madrigal: Conducting a Customer-Base Audit
By: Eva Ascarza, Bruce Hardie, Peter S. Fader and Michael Ross
This case presents a scenario where Madrigal, a U.S. retailer with a rich 20-year history and a solid loyalty program, faces a turning point with the arrival of a new CEO. This leadership change reveals a critical gap in understanding the customer base, prompting an... View Details
- March 2024
- Supplement
Madrigal: Conducting a Customer-Base Audit
By: Eva Ascarza, Bruce Hardie, Peter S. Fader and Michael Ross
This case presents a scenario where Madrigal, a U.S. retailer with a rich 20-year history and a solid loyalty program, faces a turning point with the arrival of a new CEO. This leadership change reveals a critical gap in understanding the customer base, prompting an... View Details
- March 2024
- Teaching Note
Madrigal: Conducting a Customer-Base Audit
By: Eva Ascarza, Peter S. Fader, Bruce Hardie and Michael Ross
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 524-046. This case presents a scenario where Madrigal, a U.S. retailer with a rich 20-year history and a solid loyalty program, faces a turning point with the arrival of a new CEO. This leadership change reveals a critical gap in... View Details
- March 2024
- Case
Madrigal: Conducting a Customer-Base Audit
By: Eva Ascarza, Bruce Hardie, Michael Ross and Peter S. Fader
This case presents a scenario where Madrigal, a U.S. retailer with a rich 20-year history and a solid loyalty program, faces a turning point with the arrival of a new CEO. This leadership change reveals a critical gap in understanding the customer base, prompting an... View Details
- March 2024
- Article
Establishing the Foundation for Carbon Trading Markets
By: Robert S. Kaplan, Karthik Ramanna and Marc Roston
Poor measurement practices and inadequate controls have led to extensive trading of carbon offset instruments that do not materially reduce the supply of atmospheric GHG. We introduce five carbon offset accounting principles, built from fundamental financial-accounting... View Details
- February 26, 2024
- Article
Making Workplaces Safer Through Machine Learning
By: Matthew S. Johnson, David I. Levine and Michael W. Toffel
Machine learning algorithms can dramatically improve regulatory effectiveness. This short article describes the authors' scholarly work that shows how the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) could have reduced nearly twice as many occupational... View Details
- January 2024
- Supplement
Accounting Red Flags or Red Herrings at Catalent? (B)
By: Joseph Pacelli, ZeSean Ali and Tom Quinn
GlassHouse Research identified accounting red flags at Catalent. Fiat Lux Partners countered most of GlassHouse’s claims. Who was right? This update explores the aftermath of the short seller duel. View Details
Keywords: Accounting Audits; Acquisition; Budgets and Budgeting; Business Earnings; Earnings Management; Cost Accounting; Fair Value Accounting; Financial Reporting; Revenue Recognition; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Fairness; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Government Legislation; Conflict of Interests; Announcements; Blogs; Debates; Lawsuits and Litigation; Stocks; Performance Productivity; Pharmaceutical Industry; Accounting Industry; United States
- October 2023 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
Accounting Red Flags or Red Herrings at Catalent? (A)
By: Joseph Pacelli, ZeSean Ali and Tom Quinn
Fund manager Janet Curie asked for a recommendation about the pharmaceutical company Catalent. The company seemed like a solid investment. However, a pair of research reports issued over the previous two months complicated this narrative. GlassHouse Research, a short... View Details
Keywords: Accounting Audits; Budgets and Budgeting; Earnings Management; Cost Accounting; Fair Value Accounting; Revenue Recognition; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Fairness; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Government Legislation; Conflict of Interests; Announcements; Blogs; Debates; Investment; Trust; Business and Shareholder Relations; Pharmaceutical Industry; Accounting Industry; United States
- Article
Update on E-liability Accounting
By: Robert Kaplan, Karthik Ramanna and Piyush Jha
Since publication of the original E-liability carbon accounting paper (HBR, Nov 2021), we created the E-liability Institute to help companies, governments, and nonprofits implement the method. The Institute’s mission is to test and validate the method, and develop... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Much Ado About Nothing? Overreaction to Random Regulatory Audits
By: Samuel Antill and Joseph Kalmenovitz
Regulators often audit firms to detect non-compliance. Exploiting a natural experiment in the lobbying industry, we show that firms overreact to audits and this response distorts prices and reduces welfare. Each year, federal regulators audit a random sample of... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Managing Remote Work Quality: Evidence from Auditing Management Systems Standards
By: Ashley Palmarozzo, Michael W. Toffel and Melissa Ouellet
Remote work has become more common, providing operational flexibility and productivity benefits, but questions remain about whether and how it affects work quality. We investigate the quality effects of remote work in a context in which remote work separates workers... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Second- versus Third-party Audit Quality: Evidence from Global Supply Chain Monitoring
By: Maria R. Ibanez, Ashley Palmarozzo, Jodi L. Short and Michael W. Toffel
Capitalizing on the superior credibility and flexibility and potential lower cost of external assessments, many global buyers are relying less on their own employee (“second-party”) auditors and more on third-party auditors to monitor and prevent environmental and... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Auditing Predictive Models for Intersectional Biases
By: Kate S. Boxer, Edward McFowland III and Daniel B. Neill
Predictive models that satisfy group fairness criteria in aggregate for members of a protected class, but do not guarantee subgroup fairness, could produce biased predictions for individuals at the intersection of two or more protected classes. To address this risk, we... View Details
- 2023
- Article
Provable Detection of Propagating Sampling Bias in Prediction Models
By: Pavan Ravishankar, Qingyu Mo, Edward McFowland III and Daniel B. Neill
With an increased focus on incorporating fairness in machine learning models, it becomes imperative not only to assess and mitigate bias at each stage of the machine learning pipeline but also to understand the downstream impacts of bias across stages. Here we consider... View Details
- May–June 2023
- Article
A New Approach to Building Your Personal Brand: How to Communicate Your Value
By: Jill Avery and Rachel Greenwald
For better or worse, in today’s world everyone is a brand. Whether you’re applying for a job, asking for a promotion, or writing a dating profile, your success will depend on getting others to recognize your value. So you need to get comfortable marketing... View Details