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- January 2021
- Case
The FIRE Savings Calculator
By: Michael Parzen and Paul J. Hamilton
This case follows Carol Muñoz, a member of the Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) lifestyle movement. At the age of 45, Carol is considering retiring and living off the $1 million she has accumulated. Using Monte Carlo simulation, Carol forecasts the...
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- January 2021
- Article
Sales Hiring Is Hard to Do (Don't Make It Harder)
In the aggregate, hiring in sales is more expensive than many companies’ cap-ex decisions. But it rarely gets the same attention and companies fail to deal with challenges inherent in sales hiring. Unlike many other business functions, there is no easily identified...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Accounting for Product Impact in the Consumer Finance Industry
By: George Serafeim and Katie Trinh
We apply the product impact measurement framework of the Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative (IWAI) in two competitor credit card providers within the consumer finance industry. We design a monetization methodology that allows us to calculate monetary impact estimates...
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Keywords:
Product Innovation;
Impact;
Impact Investing;
Impact Measurement;
Esg;
Esg (environmental, Social, Governance) Performance;
Esg Ratings;
Social Corporate Responsibility;
Corporate Social Responsibility;
Social Impact;
Consumer Finance;
Financial Services;
Financial Inclusion;
Product;
Product Design;
Product Positioning;
Society;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Personal Finance;
Credit Cards;
Financial Services Industry
- 2020
- Working Paper
'Repayment-by-Purchase' Helps Consumers to Reduce Credit Card Debt
By: Grant E. Donnelly, Cait Lamberton, Stephen Bush, Zoe Chance and Michael I. Norton
Many consumers struggle to repay their credit card debt, in part because paying small portions of large bills often feels fruitless. We introduce a novel credit card payment option—repayment-by-purchase—and examine its influence on both the amount consumers’ repay and...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Income Volatility Increases Financial Impatience
By: Colin West, A.V. Whillans and Sanford DeVoe
Using a multi-method approach, we investigate whether income volatility is associated with financial impatience—the preference to receive a small sum of money immediately over a larger sum of money later. We find that experiencing more income volatility—including a...
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Keywords:
Income Volatility;
Compensation;
Impatience;
Time Preferences;
Income;
Personal Finance;
Behavior;
Demographics;
Policy
- August 2020
- Case
Gerald Chertavian
By: Leslie Perlow and Matthew Preble
Gerald Chertavian (HBS 1992) finds himself at a personal crossroads. It is 1999--the height of the dot com-bubble--and Chertavian and his business partners have just sold their Internet-based business for $83 million. His share of the sale’s proceeds means that he has...
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- April 2020 (Revised November 2020)
- Case
Ping An: Pioneering the New Model of ‘Technology-driven Finance’
By: Feng Zhu, Anthony K. Woo and Nancy Hua Dai
In mid-December 2018, Peter Ma, Chairman and CEO of Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. was considering whether the company should grow a fifth ecosystem of Smart City Services. Established in 1988, Ping An was one of the top 10 global financial...
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- November 2019 (Revised December 2019)
- Case
Marcus by Goldman Sachs
By: Rory McDonald, Samir Junnarkar and David Lane
Five years on from the 2008 financial crisis, Goldman Sachs remained wounded. Revenues at the global investment bank had stagnated below pre-crisis levels, and the firm had yet to rebound from a substantial decline in securities-trading revenues. Marcus by Goldman...
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- June 2019
- Article
Debt Traps? Market Vendors and Moneylender Debt in India and the Philippines
By: Dean Karlan, Sendhil Mullainathan and Benjamin Roth
A debt trap occurs when someone takes on a high-interest rate loan and is barely able to pay back the interest, and thus perpetually finds themselves in debt (often by refinancing). Studying such practices is important for understanding financial decision-making of...
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Keywords:
Borrowing and Debt;
Household;
Personal Finance;
Decision Making;
Behavior;
India;
Philippines
- 2019
- Working Paper
Second Chance: Life Without Student Debt
By: Marco Di Maggio, Ankit Kalda and Vincent Yao
Rising student debt is considered one of the creeping threats of our time. This paper examines the effect of student debt relief on individual credit and labor market outcomes. We exploit the plausibly random debt discharge due to the inability of National Collegiate,...
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- February 2019
- Article
The Market for Financial Adviser Misconduct
By: Mark Egan, Gregor Matvos and Amit Seru
We construct a novel database containing the universe of financial advisers in the United States from 2005 to 2015, representing approximately 10% of employment of the finance and insurance sector. We provide the first large-scale study that documents the economy-wide...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Arbitration with Uninformed Consumers
By: Mark Egan, Gregor Matvos and Amit Seru
This paper studies the impact of the arbitrator selection process on consumer outcomes by examining roughly 9,000 consumer arbitration cases in the securities industry. Securities disputes present a good laboratory: arbitration is mandatory for all disputes,...
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- October 2018
- Case
African Bank Investments Limited (A)
By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz
Less than a year after joining the board of African Bank Investments Limited (ABIL), the newest director finds himself in difficult discussions with other directors about removing the struggling company’s CEO. The case is set in South Africa in mid-2014 as shares in...
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- October 2018
- Supplement
African Bank Investments Limited (B)
By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz
Less than a year after joining the board of African Bank Investments Limited (ABIL), the newest director finds himself in difficult discussions with other directors about removing the struggling company’s CEO. The case is set in South Africa in mid-2014 as shares in...
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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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- July 2018 (Revised August 2018)
- Case
Project Helios: Harvesting the Sun
By: Mark Egan and E. Scott Mayfield
Aware of the impact that modern society was having on the environment, Ashley Telkes had always tried to be cognizant of her own impact on the environment and to take reasonable steps to mitigate her own effects. Having already implemented a number of passive measures...
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- July 2018 (Revised January 2021)
- Case
RunKeeper
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
The case examines the focus of an early stage company and how venture capital can distort a founder’s view. It encompasses issues such as financing, understanding the founders’ definition of success/failure, defining and pivoting a business model, and determining the...
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- 2018
- Working Paper
Good Credit and the Good Life: Credit Scores Predict Subjective Well-Being
By: Joe J. Gladstone and Ashley V. Whillans
Can money buy happiness? To examine this question, research in economics, psychology, and sociology has focused almost exclusively on examining the associations between income, spending or wealth and subjective well-being. Moving beyond this research, we provide the...
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Keywords:
Well-being;
Credit Scores;
Consumer Finance;
Emotions;
Credit;
Personal Finance;
Welfare;
Happiness
- June 2018 (Revised February 2019)
- Teaching Note
Home Nursing of North Carolina
By: Richard S. Ruback, Royce Yudkoff and Ahron Rosenfeld
In 2011, immediately after graduating HBS, Ari Medoff began a self-funded search for a small firm to buy and run as its CEO. After just three month of searching, he identified Home Nursing of North Carolina (HNNC), a home care agency based in Greensboro, NC, as a...
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- January 2018 (Revised February 2018)
- Case
Michael Belkin: Personal Financing Planning as an Entrepreneur
By: V.G. Narayanan and Shawn O'Brien