Mihir A. Desai
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Mihir A. Desai

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Mihir A. Desai

Professor of Finance and Law

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MIZUHO FINANCIAL GROUP
PROFESSOR OF FINANCE

Mihir A. Desai

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IN THE NEWS

Books
How Finance Works: The HBR Guide to Thinking Smart About the Numbers
Jan 25, 2019
How Finance Works: The HBR Guide to Thinking Smart About the Numbers
Jan 25, 2019

If you're not a numbers person, then balance sheets and financial jargon can be intimidating and easy to ignore. But if you want to advance in your career, it's crucial that you are able to make smart financial decisions and develop the confidence to clearly communicate those decisions to others.

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Jan 25, 2019
Wisdom of Finance: Discovering Humanity in the World of Risk and Return
Sep 26, 2018
Wisdom of Finance: Discovering Humanity in the World of Risk and Return
Sep 26, 2018

The finance industry is widely thought of as being morally suspect. Even those who work in finance tend to compartmentalize between their personal lives and how they get ahead professionally. Mihir Desai argues that not only is this preconception completely false but it’s detrimental to those who work in finance as well as the industry itself.

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Sep 26, 2018
International Finance: A Casebook
Feb 3, 2006
International Finance: A Casebook
Feb 3, 2006

These case studies offer a unique perspective on making financial decisions in a globalizing world. 

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Feb 3, 2006


Articles
Why You Should Root for the Uber I.P.O. to Fail
May 9, 2019
Why You Should Root for the Uber I.P.O. to Fail
May 9, 2019

The New York Times

The fate of Uber’s stock is a verdict on the winner-take-all venture capital model that dominates Silicon Valley.

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May 9, 2019
Why Apple is the Future of Capitalism
Aug 6, 2018
Why Apple is the Future of Capitalism
Aug 6, 2018

The New York Times

With Apple Inc. now exceeding $1 trillion in market capitalization, it’s tempting to understand this moment in terms of the dominance of all-too-large companies and technology in our lives.

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Aug 6, 2018
Tax Reform, Round One: Understanding the Real Consequences of the New Tax Law
Jun 1, 2018
Tax Reform, Round One: Understanding the Real Consequences of the New Tax Law
Jun 1, 2018

Harvard Magazine

The Trump Administration’s successful efforts at tax legislation stand out as the primary achievement of its first year. But the hurried, largely furtive drafting, and rush to passage at the end of 2017, have helped obscure the new tax regime’s real impact.

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Jun 1, 2018

News
Pfizer and Allergan call off their $160 billion merger after U.S. move to block inversions
Apr 6, 2016
Pfizer and Allergan call off their $160 billion merger after U.S. move to block inversions
Apr 6, 2016

The Washington Post

The Dublin-based Botox-maker Allergan announced early Wednesday it would abandon its mega-merger with U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer after new government regulations made the tax advantage of the cross-Atlantic deal more difficult to achieve.

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Apr 6, 2016
Mar 7, 2016
The Trump-Obama Corporate Tax Reform Fail
Mar 7, 2016

The Wall Street Journal

Removing the incentive for American companies to move their headquarters abroad is a widely recognized goal. To do so, the U.S. will need to join the rest of the G-7 countries and tax business income only once, in the country where it was earned.

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Mar 7, 2016
Nov 24, 2015
To prevent corporate ‘inversions,’ the American tax code needs to be fixed
Nov 24, 2015

The Washington Post

Again, A U.S.-based multinational corporation is merging with a foreign counterpart, with the intent to pay taxes at the other country’s lower rate. By joining forces with Ireland-based Allergan, pharmaceutical-maker Pfizer may reduce its effective tax rate from 26 percent to 17 percent.

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Nov 24, 2015
fEATURED
Why this professor says you should root for Uber’s IPO to fail
May 23, 2019
Why this professor says you should root for Uber’s IPO to fail
May 23, 2019
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May 23, 2019
Why You Should Root for the Uber I.P.O. to Fail
May 9, 2019
Why You Should Root for the Uber I.P.O. to Fail
May 9, 2019

The New York Times

The fate of Uber’s stock is a verdict on the winner-take-all venture capital model that dominates Silicon Valley.

Read More →
May 9, 2019
Why Apple is the Future of Capitalism
Aug 6, 2018
Why Apple is the Future of Capitalism
Aug 6, 2018

The New York Times

With Apple Inc. now exceeding $1 trillion in market capitalization, it’s tempting to understand this moment in terms of the dominance of all-too-large companies and technology in our lives.

Read More →
Aug 6, 2018
Can Economists and Humanists Ever Be Friends?
Jul 23, 2018
Can Economists and Humanists Ever Be Friends?
Jul 23, 2018

The New Yorker

One discipline reduces behavior to elegantly simple rules; the other wallows in our full, complex particularity. What can they learn from each other? The idea that there is a gap between the world of economics and the wider world is also a theme in “The Wisdom of Finance: Discovering Humanity in the World of Risk and Return” by the Harvard Business School professor Mihir Desai.

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Jul 23, 2018
Tax Reform, Round One: Understanding the Real Consequences of the New Tax Law
Jun 1, 2018
Tax Reform, Round One: Understanding the Real Consequences of the New Tax Law
Jun 1, 2018

Harvard Magazine

The Trump Administration’s successful efforts at tax legislation stand out as the primary achievement of its first year. But the hurried, largely furtive drafting, and rush to passage at the end of 2017, have helped obscure the new tax regime’s real impact.

Read More →
Jun 1, 2018
Good Investors Make Money. Great Investors Create Value.
Jun 1, 2017
Good Investors Make Money. Great Investors Create Value.
Jun 1, 2017

People have a bad impression of finance, and that's mostly worrying because its often justified, says Harvard Business School professor Mihir Desai. The sector is in dire need of rehabilitation, and there are several ways it can be done. The first is to realize that turning money into more money is a shortsighted investment. 

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Jun 1, 2017
Jun 1, 2017
Why Wall Street Went Astray: Eight Ways to Humanize Finance
Jun 1, 2017

Why did Wall Street go astray? For most of the last several centuries, bankers and financiers were the pillars of society, the bastions of morality, the people in society that everyone respected. Of course, there was the odd rotten apple in the barrel, but by and large, bankers were trusted and looked up to. Yet over the last few decades, Wall Street has become almost a synonym of evil. What went wrong? What can be done to restore the financial sector to the level of respect that it once enjoyed?

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Jun 1, 2017
May 12, 2015
Interview, Tax Foundation: Making Sense of Profit Shifting
May 12, 2015

In this interview with the Tax Foundation, Professor Desai analyzes the nature, drivers, and economic effects of profit shifting, with a specific emphasis on the real economic distortions that profit shifting may cause. Moreover, professor Desai highlights aspects related to firm uniqueness with respect to profit shifting and offers a set of possible solutions to address profit shifting. 

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May 12, 2015
Apr 14, 2015
How crowdsourcing could help simplify America’s tax code
Apr 14, 2015

Fortune Magazine

By soliciting ideas from large groups, the U.S. can come up with the right policies to reform the nation’s tax code — similar to the way complex computer systems are managed around the world.

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Apr 14, 2015
Jun 1, 2014
Financial Policy at Apple, 2013
Jun 1, 2014

By the end of 2013, Apple had $137 billion dollars in cash and marketable securities. This case explores how companies can generate such large amounts of cash and how and if they should distribute it to shareholders, especially in the face of shareholder pressure. In the process, students are asked to undertake fundamental financial analyses, including ratio analysis, a financial forecast, and a cash distribution analysis.

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Jun 1, 2014
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Mihir A. Desai

Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance, Harvard Business School, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

© 2019 by Mihir Desai