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- May 2025
- Case
'Net Zero in Action': Impact Investing at the McKnight Foundation
By: Lauren Cohen, Christina R. Wing and Sophia Pan
Elizabeth McGeveran, Vice President of Investments at the McKnight Foundation, reflected on how to effectively advance the organization’s net-zero strategy. The foundation had committed 10% of its endowment to building a portfolio of impact investments and was among... View Details
Keywords: Investment Fund; Philanthropy; Charitable Donations; Sustainability; Foundation; Impact Investing; ESG; Family Business; Forecasting and Prediction; Private Sector; Renewable Energy; Social Entrepreneurship; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology; Financial Strategy; Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Institutional Investing; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Private Ownership; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Social Issues; Sustainable Cities; Financial Services Industry; Minnesota; United States
- February 2024
- Teaching Note
Divesting Harvard's Endowment
By: Daniel Green and Luis M. Viceira
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 221-009. View Details
- January 2024
- Article
Helping Children Catch Up: Early Life Shocks and the PROGRESA Experiment
By: Achyuta Adhvaryu, Theresa Molina, Anant Nyshadham and Jorge Tamayo
Can investing in children who faced adverse events in early childhood help them catch up? We answer this question using two orthogonal sources of variation – resource availability at birth (local rainfall) and cash incentives for school enrollment – to identify the... View Details
- July 2023
- Article
So, Who Likes You? Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment
By: Ravi Bapna, Edward McFowland III, Probal Mojumder, Jui Ramaprasad and Akhmed Umyarov
With one-third of marriages in the United States beginning online, online dating platforms have become important curators of the modern social fabric. Prior work on online dating has elicited two critical frictions in the heterosexual dating market. Women, governed by... View Details
- March 2023
- Supplement
Halftime for Heidelberg
By: Debora L. Spar
The case follows President Rob Huntington as he seeks to find a viable way forward for Heidelberg University.
Located in Tiffin, Ohio, Heidelberg is a small, private, four-year university. As with many similar institutions of higher education, it currently faces... View Details
Located in Tiffin, Ohio, Heidelberg is a small, private, four-year university. As with many similar institutions of higher education, it currently faces... View Details
- October 2022
- Case
Star Magnolia Capital: Becoming Experts at Finding Experts
By: Lauren Cohen, Hao Gao, River Ewing and Grace Headinger
Shinya Deguchi, Founder and Managing Partner of Star Magnolia Capital, a Shanghai-based multi-family office (MFO), considered how to convince a new prospective family that the MFO’s endowment model approach would best suit their needs. In recent decades, there has been... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Racial Diversity in Private Capital Fundraising
By: Johan Cassel, Josh Lerner and Emmanuel Yimfor
Black- and Hispanic-owned funds control a very modest share of assets in the private capital
industry. We find that the sensitivity of follow-on fundraising to fund performance
is greater for minority-owned groups, particularly for underperforming groups. We... View Details
- June 2022
- Teaching Note
Modern Endowment Management: Paula Volent and the Bowdoin Endowment
By: Luis M. Viceira
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 211-101. View Details
- January 2022
- Article
Who Creates New Firms When Local Opportunities Arise?
By: Shai Benjamin Bernstein, Emanuele Colonnelli, Davide Malacrino and Timothy McQuade
We examine the characteristics of the individuals who become entrepreneurs when local opportunities arise. We identify local demand shocks by linking fluctuations in global commodity prices to municipality level agricultural endowments in Brazil. We find that the firm... View Details
- August 2021
- Teaching Note
Yale University Investments Office: November 2020
By: Josh Lerner
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 821-074. View Details
- June 2021
- Case
Modern Endowment Management: Paula Volent and the Bowdoin Endowment
By: Luis M. Viceira, Emily R. McComb and Dean Xu
This case examines modern endowment investment management through the lens of a leadership transition between Chief Investment Officers (CIOs). In March 2021, Paula Volent is about to step down as the CIO of the endowment of Bowdoin College after twenty-one years, and... View Details
- March 16, 2021
- Article
From Driverless Dilemmas to More Practical Commonsense Tests for Automated Vehicles
By: Julian De Freitas, Andrea Censi, Bryant Walker Smith, Luigi Di Lillo, Sam E. Anthony and Emilio Frazzoli
For the first time in history, automated vehicles (AVs) are being deployed in populated environments. This unprecedented transformation of our everyday lives demands a significant undertaking: endowing
complex autonomous systems with ethically acceptable behavior. We... View Details
- March 2021
- Case
Yale Investments Office: November 2020
By: Josh Lerner, Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
David Swensen and the Investments Office staff must decide whether to continue to allocate the bulk of the university's endowment to illiquid investments—hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, real estate, natural resources—given the impact of the COVID-19... View Details
Keywords: University Endowment; Asset Allocation; Real Estate; Equities; Fixed Income; COVID-19; Asset Management; Private Equity; Venture Capital; Natural Resources; Resource Allocation; Investment; Investment Portfolio; Health Pandemics; Financial Crisis; Financial Services Industry; Real Estate Industry; Energy Industry; Connecticut
- October 2020 (Revised February 2024)
- Case
Divesting Harvard's Endowment
By: Daniel Green, Luis M. Viceira and Holly Fetter
By early 2020 Harvard University was facing growing pressure from students, faculty, and alumni to divest its $40 billion endowment of financial stakes in fossil fuel producers. Its previous policy of avoiding the issue was quickly becoming outdated—$21 trillion of... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Heterogeneity of Gain-Loss Attitudes and Expectations-Based Reference Points
By: Pol Campos-Mercade, Lorenz Goette, Thomas Graeber, Alex Kellogg and Charles Sprenger
Existing tests of reference-dependent preferences assume universal loss aversion. This paper examines heterogeneity in gain-loss attitudes, and explores its implications for identifying models of the reference point. In two experimental settings we measure gain-loss... View Details
- February 2020 (Revised January 2022)
- Case
Mission Related Investments at the Ford Foundation (A)
By: Shawn Cole, Michael Norris and T. Robert Zochowski
In 2017, Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, one of the largest philanthropic foundations in the world, was preparing to meet with his board of directors to discuss beginning a mission related investments (MRI) program. Walker hoped to devote $1 billion of... View Details
Keywords: Mission-Related Investing; Philanthropy; Foundation; Endowments; Socially Responsible Investing; Investment; Institutional Investing; Investment Activism; Governance; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Social Enterprise; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; United States; New York (city, NY)
- February 2020 (Revised September 2021)
- Supplement
Mission Related Investments at the Ford Foundation (B)
By: Shawn Cole, Michael Norris and T. Robert Zochowski
Supplements the (A) case. View Details
Keywords: Mission-Related Investing; Philanthropy; Foundation; Endowments; Socially Responsible Investing; Investment; Institutional Investing; Investment Activism; Governance; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Social Enterprise; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; United States
- February 2020
- Case
Halftime for Heidelberg
By: Debora L. Spar
The case follows President Rob Huntington as he seeks to find a viable way forward for Heidelberg University.
Located in Tiffin, Ohio, Heidelberg is a small, private, four-year university. As with many similar institutions of higher education, it currently faces a... View Details
- January 2020 (Revised April 2020)
- Case
Fossil Fuel Divestment
By: Michael W. Toffel and Sarah Gulick
The president of Harvard University is facing growing pressure from students, alumni, and other climate change activists that are urging the university to divest its multi-billion dollar endowment from fossil fuel companies. The case summarizes the arguments for and... View Details
- 2020
- Article
Remaking the Imperial Presidency: The Mayaguez Incident of 1975 and the Contradictions of Credibility
By: Mattias Fibiger
This article argues that the Mayaguez incident of 1975 was a missed opportunity to establish a more democratic American foreign policy. President Gerald Ford managed the crisis with an eye toward domestic and international credibility. But his conception of credibility... View Details