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- September 2023
- Case
The Rise and Fall of FTX
In November 2022, Sam Bankman-Fried's multi-billion-dollar crypto exchange, FTX, collapsed, wiping out investors and throwing the crypto industry into disarray. As FTX's founder and CEO, Bankman-Fried developed a reputation for his unerring business sense and...
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- August 2023
- Article
Do Rating Agencies Behave Defensively for Higher Risk Issuers?
By: Samuel B. Bonsall IV, Kevin Koharki, Pepa Kraft, Karl A. Muller III and Anywhere Sikochi
We examine whether rating agencies act defensively toward issuers with a higher likelihood of default. We find that agencies' qualitative soft rating adjustments are more accurate as issuers' default risk grows, as evidenced by the adjustments leading to lower Type I...
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- 2023
- Working Paper
Algorithm Failures and Consumers' Response: Evidence from Zillow
By: Isamar Troncoso, Runshan Fu, Nikhil Malik and Davide Proserpio
In November 2021, Zillow announced the closure of its iBuyer business. Popular media largely attributed this to a failure of its proprietary forecasting algorithm. We study the response of consumers to Zillow’s iBuyer business closure. We show that after the iBuyer...
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- January 2023
- Case
Proday: Calling the Right Play
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
Sarah Kunst knew the elements of a successful startup from her tenure at venture capital firms. In April 2018, however, her own app – Proday, a home fitness platform featuring exercises filmed by professional sports stars – was floundering. Kunst theorized that...
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- 2023
- Working Paper
Achieving Universal Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: Addressing Market Failures or Providing a Social Floor?
By: Katherine Baicker, Amitabh Chandra and Mark Shepard
The United States spends substantially more on health care than most developed countries, yet leaves a greater share of the population uninsured. We suggest that incremental insurance expansions focused on addressing market failures will propagate inefficiencies and...
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- December 2022
- Article
I Don't 'Recall': The Decision to Delay Innovation Launch to Avoid Costly Product Failure
By: Byungyeon Kim, Oded Koenigsberg and Elie Ofek
Innovations embody novel features or cutting-edge components aimed at delivering desired customer benefits.
Oftentimes, however, we observe the need to recall new products shortly after their introduction. Indeed, a firm
may rush an innovation to market in an attempt...
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- Winter 2022
- Article
Vaccines and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons from Failure and Success
By: Scott Duke Kominers and Alex Tabarrok
The losses from the global COVID-19 pandemic have been staggering—trillions in economic costs, on top of significant losses of life, health, and well-being. The world made significant and successful investments in vaccines to mitigate the pandemic, yet there were...
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- May 2022
- Article
Strengthening Digital Infrastructure: A Policy Agenda for Free and Open Source Software
By: Frank Nagle
While there is little debate that digital forces are playing an increasingly crucial role in the economy, there
is limited understanding of the importance of the digital infrastructure that underlies this role. Much of the
discussion around digital infrastructure has...
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- January 2022
- Case
Walmart Goes Global (A)
By: Juan Alcácer
- 2022
- Article
CIP deviations, the dollar, and frictions in international capital markets
By: Wenxin Du and Jesse Schreger
The covered interest rate parity (CIP) condition is a fundamental arbitrage relationship in international finance. In this chapter, we review its breakdown during the Global Financial Crisis and its continued failure in the subsequent decade. We review how to measure...
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- 2021
- Chapter
Business Continuity Insurance in the Next Disaster
By: Samuel Gregory Hanson, Adi Sunderam and Eric Zwick
This article draws lessons from the business support policies pursued in the COVID-19
pandemic to guide policy design for the next disaster. We contrast the performance
of the Paycheck Protection Program to the Main Street Lending Program to illustrate
how design...
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- December 2021 (Revised May 2022)
- Case
Troverie (A)
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Lindsay N. Hyde and Olivia Graham
Six months after the August 2018 launch of Troverie, a U.S.-based online retailer of luxury watches, the average cost of acquiring a customer is much higher than originally projected, and the startup is incurring a substantial loss on each sales transaction. Could...
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- September 2021
- Article
Trials and Terminations: Learning from Competitors' R&D Failures
I analyze project continuation decisions where firms may resolve uncertainty through news about competitors' research and development (R&D) failures, as well as through their own results. I examine the trade-offs and interactions between product-market competition and...
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- May–June 2021
- Article
Why Start-ups Fail
If you’re launching a business, the odds are against you: Two-thirds of start-ups never show a positive return. Unnerved by that statistic, a professor of entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School set out to discover why. Based on interviews and surveys with hundreds...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Determinants of Early-Stage Startup Performance: Survey Results
To explore determinants of new venture performance, the CEOs of 470 early-stage startups were surveyed regarding a broad range of factors related to their venture’s customer value proposition, product management, marketing, technology and operations, financial...
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- April 29, 2020
- Article
The Case for AI Insurance
By: Ram Shankar Siva Kumar and Frank Nagle
When organizations place machine learning systems at the center of their businesses, they introduce the risk of failures that could lead to a data breach, brand damage, property damage, business interruption, and in some cases, bodily harm. Even when companies are...
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- April 2020 (Revised July 2020)
- Case
Amazon in China and India
By: Krishna G. Palepu and Kairavi Dey
Amazon has been unsuccessful in its efforts to develop a business in China. Even though Amazon was an early entrant into China’s e-commerce space, its domestic rivals, especially Alibaba, created innovative business models uniquely suited for the conditions in China. ...
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- September 2019 (Revised December 2019)
- Supplement
Anthony Soohoo: Retrospection on Dot & Bo
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Allison M. Ciechanover and George Gonzalez
The case describes the final year of the once-promising furniture e-tailer, Dot & Bo, that included a challenging fundraising market, troubles with logistics and operations, and a team tragedy. The founder looks back at the experience and shares his learnings about...
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- August 2019 (Revised March 2023)
- Case
Rand Fishkin at Moz (A)
In 2016, senior management at Moz, a venture capital–backed startup providing software tools for digital marketing professionals, must decide how to address a looming cash flow crisis precipitated by failed efforts to broaden its product line. Seattle-based Moz had...
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