Peter Tufano            Sylvan C. Coleman Professor of Financial Management            Senior Associate Dean and Director of Faculty Development

Harvard Business School Baker Library 359 Soldiers Field Road Boston, Massachusetts 02163 Phone   (617) 495-6855 Email  ptufano@hbs.edu

Background Information

• Official HBS biography
• Short bio
• CV

Mutual Funds

• Mutual Fund Fees Around the World, with Ajay Khorana (Georgia Tech) and Henri Servaes (London Business School). Rev. May 2007.  This paper looks at the fees charged in a number of developing countries in 2002.  This work has received substantial attention in Canada, which we find to have the highest fees, even after controlling for various fund and family characteristics.  The Canadian fund trade association, the Investment Funds Institute of Canada (IFIC), has objected to our findings.   Our response to their critique can be found here.
• Live Prices and Stale Quantities: T+1 Accounting and Mutual Fund Mispricing, with Michael Quinn (Analysis Group) and Ryan Taliaferro (HBS).  Rev. March 2007
• Explaining the Size of the Mutual Fund Industry Around the World, with Ajay Khorana (Georgia Tech) and Henri Servaes (London Business School). Journal of Financial Economics 78,1 (Oct 2005).  This is the pre-press version from SSRN.
• The Costs and Benefits of Brokers in the Mutual Fund Industry, with Dan Bergstresser (HBS) and John Chalmers (U. Oregon), Working Paper.  Updated Jan. 2006
• Board Structure, Mergers and Shareholder Wealth: A Study of the Mutual Fund Industry, with Ajay Khorana (Georgia Tech) and Lei Wedge (Georgia Tech). Rev. May 2006 .  Now forthcoming in the Journal of Financial Economics. 

• Just Keep My Money, Part I.  Rev. April 2007.  The findings of a pre-pilot program to offer U.S. Savings Bonds to tax recipients to stimulate savings.  The full pilot was conducted in January-April 2007, and these full results will be available later in 2007.
• H&R Block's Refund Anticipation Loan: A Paradox of Profitability?, with David Rose and Daniel Schneider (HBS), Rev. Nov 2005.  Prepared for HBS Conference on Global Poverty: Business Solutions and Approaches.  A condensed version entitled "H&R Block’s Refund Anticipation Loans: Perilous Profits at the Bottom of the Pyramid?" is forthcoming in Business Solutions for Reaching the Poor, ed. Kash Rangen and John Quelch (Josey Bass 2006)    
•  Leveraging Tax Refunds to Encourage Savings, with with Sondra Beverly (University of Kansas) and Daniel Schneider (HBS).  Retirement Security Project policy brief 2005-8 (August 2005).
  • This brief is part of the larger Retirement Security Project, sponsored jointly by the Pew Charitable Trusts in partnership with Georgetown's Public Policy Institute and the Brookings Institution.
• Splitting Tax Refunds and Building Savings: An Empirical Test with Sondra Beverly (University of Kansas) and Daniel Schneider (HBS). NBER Tax Policy and the Economy 20 (2006) 111-161.
  • Executive Summary
  • This research is cited in a January 31, 2005 letter from Members of Congress to the IRS, requesting that the IRS move forward on a split refunds proposal.
  • Commissioner Everson's reply to Members of Congress.
  • On May 31, 2006, the IRS announced that it will roll out split refunds in January 2007.
  • IRS form 8888, introduced January 2007, which implements the split refund concept for all Americans.
• New Savings from Old Innovations: Asset Building for the Less Affluent with Daniel Schneider (HBS). Forthcoming in Russell Sage edited volume, ed., Julia S. Rubin.
• Reinventing Savings Bonds with Daniel Schneider (HBS)  Published in Tax Notes, October 31, 2005.
  • Executive Summary
  • An extended version was published as a New America Issue Brief (April 2006) entitled "Reinventing Savings Bonds: Policy Changes to Increase Public Savings."
• San Francisco Working Families Credit:  This report details the first year of the City of San Francisco's Working Families Credit, which provided low income families with augmented EITC funds.  The report provides an empirical analysis of the characteristics of program participants.

• Selected Links to Sites dealing with Consumer Financial Services, Asset Building, and the Poor
  • D2D Fund, Inc. (Doorways to Dreams) is a nonprofit whose mission is to use financial innovation to help low income families build assets and successfully engage the financial service sector.  Tufano formed D2D Fund and serves as its chairman.  The Tower Group issued a report entitled "D2D Fund: Bringing Dreams to Reality in the Low-Income Marketplace" on D2D Fund's work in May 2006.    
  • The NASD Investor Education Foundation seeks to fund projects to enhance financial education. 
  • The Corporation for Economic Development (CFED), a national group dedicated to Asset Building.
  • New America's Asset Building initiative has a comprehensive listing of asset building policies, resources and programs.
  • The Center for Social Development, Washington University, School of Social Work, a research center that had pioneered the development of Individual Development Accounts.
  • The Aspen Institute Initiative on Financial Security.
  • The Center for Financial Services Innovation (Shorebank Advisory Services).
  • The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has established a Center for Financial Research, which supports research in a variety of areas.  Tufano serves as a program coordinator for consumer finance related research and is on the FDIC's Advisory Committee on Financial Empowerment.

• Global Survey of Corporate Finance:  In 2005, Tufano and Henri Servaes (London Business School) conducted a survey of CFOs around the world concerning the corporate finance function, including details on the firm's capital structure, liability management, liquidity management, dividend/repurchase, and risk management programs.  This survey was sponsored by DeutscheBank. 
• Correction to "A Real World Way to Manage Real Options" with Tom Copeland, Harvard Business Review, March 2004.  There is a graphic on page 95, which is the binomial tree for the project.  The leftmost node reads "77>321-400."   The number "321" should read "371."  For those of you working through the math, sorry for this typo.
• Financial Innovation," in The Handbook of the Economics of Finance, ed. George Constantinides, Milton Harris and Rene Stulz (2004).
• "When are real options exercised? An empirical study of mine closings,"   with Alberto Moel.  Published in Review of Financial Studies 15 (2002), 35-64
  "Cephalon, Inc.: Taking risk management theory seriously," with George Chacko and Geoff Verter. Published in the Journal of Financial Economics 60 (May/June 2001), 449-486.  Abridged version  in the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance.
  Technical appendix available.
• The Corporate Financial Engineering Course at HBS focuses on how corporations can use financial engineering to advance their goals and strategies.  The course studies the use of financial engineering to structure financing vehicles, to implement risk management strategies and to carry out strategic transactions.  Tufano developed this course and teaches it in the MBA program at HBS..  Some of these materials are included in the book, Cases in Financial Engineering.
• The Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) is a professional organization of more than 50,000 risk professionals worldwide.  Tufano serves as a Trustee of GARP, sits on its Executive Committee, and is the Chair of the Editorial Board of the GARP Risk Review.

• Finance2:  Beginning in 2000, HBS launched a new year-long required finance course for all of its MBA students.  This new course was an area-wide effort coordinated by Rick Ruback and Peter Tufano, and it has created a large number of new case materials. Many of the new case materials are available in Case Problems in Finance (McGraw Hill, 2004)
• FEN-Educator:  FEN-Educator is one of the on-line abstracting journals published by the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) .  The journal's mission is to provide provide information to educators in Finance, and to help bridge the gaps between research, practice and teaching.  The Co-Editors are Robert Bruner (Darden), Kent Womack (Cornell) and Peter Tufano.

• HBS Finance Area
• Harvard Business School
• Harvard University