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Publications
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- 2025
- Working Paper
Trade and Industrial Policy in Supply Chains: Directed Technological Change in Rare Earths
By: Laura Alfaro, Harald Fadinger, Jay Schymik and Gede Virananda
Trade and industrial policies, while primarily intended to support domestic industries, may unintentionally stimulate technological progress abroad. We document this mechanism in the case of rare earth elements (REEs)—critical inputs for manufacturing at the knowledge... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Trade Within Multinational Boundaries
By: Laura Alfaro, Paola Conconi, Fariha Kamal and Zachary Kroff
We leverage newly linked data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis to study transactions within U.S. multinational enterprises (MNEs). We show that using administrative data on intrafirm trade allows us to correct for measurement error... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Bank Financing of Global Supply Chains
By: Laura Alfaro, Mariya Brussevich, Camelia Minoiu and Andrea Presbitero
Finding new international suppliers is costly, so most importers source inputs from a single country. We examine the role of banks in mitigating trade search costs during the 2018–2019 U.S.-China trade tensions. We match data on shipments to U.S. ports with the U.S.... View Details
- October 2024
- Teaching Note
El Salvador: Launching Bitcoin as Legal Tender
By: Laura Alfaro
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 322-055. In June 2021, Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president, surprised the world with the announcement that the country would adopt bitcoin as legal tender, becoming the first nation to do so. Bitcoin was mostly used for trading and had... View Details
- 2024
- Other Unpublished Work
A Proposal for the IMF: A New Instrument of International Liquidity Provision for Emerging Markets and Developing Economies
By: Laura Alfaro, Guillermo Calvo, José de Gregorio, Augusto de la Torre, Pablo Guidotti, Enrique Mendoza, Ernesto Talvi, Liliana Rojas-Suarez and Andrés Velasco
This paper addresses a critical flaw in the international financial system: the failure to address the inherent asymmetry between countries that issue reserve currencies and those that do not, leaving the latter vulnerable during systemic liquidity crises. We propose... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
LASH Risk and Interest Rates
By: Laura Alfaro, Saleem Bahaj, Robert Czech, Jonathan Hazell and Ioana Neamtu
We introduce a framework to understand and quantify a form of liquidity risk that we dub Liquidity After Solvency Hedging or “LASH” risk. Financial institutions take LASH risk when they hedge against losses, using strategies that lead to liquidity needs when the value... View Details
- May 2024
- Teaching Note
Deficits and Debt: The U.S. Current Account
By: Laura Alfaro and Richard Vietor
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 322-044. View Details
- March 2024 (Revised February 2025)
- Case
Doing Business in São Paulo, Brazil
The case gives readers an overview of key factors of doing business in Brazil, including Brazil’s economic transformation since its colonial years until 2023, when leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was sworn in for his third term, after the most polarized... View Details
- February 2024
- Article
Come Together: Firm Boundaries and Delegation
By: Laura Alfaro, Nick Bloom, Paola Conconi, Harald Fadinger, Patrick Legros, Andrew F. Newman, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
We develop an incomplete-contracts model to jointly study firm boundaries and the allocation of decision rights within them. Integration has an option value: it gives firm owners authority to delegate or centralize decision rights, depending on who can best solve... View Details
- September 28, 2023
- Article
A Perspective on the Great Reallocation of Global Supply Chains
By: Laura Alfaro and Davin Chor
Previous optimism that cross-border supply chains would improve efficiency for firms and open up growth opportunities for countries has been tempered by concerns that global value chains now expose firms and countries to the risk of disruptions. This column analyses... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Global Supply Chains: The Looming 'Great Reallocation'
By: Laura Alfaro and Davin Chor
Global supply chains have come under unprecedented stress as a result of U.S.-China trade tensions, the COVID-19 pandemic, and geopolitical shocks. We document shifts in the pattern of U.S. participation in global value chains over the last four decades, in terms of... View Details
- 2023
- Other Unpublished Work
Urgent: The IMF Must Reform
By: Laura Alfaro, Guillermo Calvo, José de Gregorio, Augusto de la Torre, Roque Fernandez, Pablo Guidotti, Enrique Mendoza, Ernesto Talvi, Liliana Rojas-Suarez and Andrés Velasco
- April 2023
- Article
The Real Exchange Rate, Innovation and Productivity
By: Laura Alfaro, Alejandro Cuñat, Harald Fadinger and Yanping Liu
We evaluate manufacturing firms' responses to changes in the real exchange rate (RER) using detailed firm-level data for a large set of countries for the period 2001-2010. We uncover the following stylized facts about regional variation of manufacturing firms'... View Details
- February 2023 (Revised February 2025)
- Case
Doing Business in Boston, Massachusetts
By: Laura Alfaro, Leonard A. Schlesinger and Zeke Gillman
This case examines the challenges and opportunities of doing business in Boston, Massachusetts while giving a broad history of the city and surrounding area. View Details
- September 2022
- Article
Health Externalities and Policy: The Role of Social Preferences
By: Laura Alfaro, Ester Faia, Nora Lamersdorf and Farzad Saidi
Social preferences facilitate the internalization of health externalities, for example by reducing mobility during a pandemic. We test this hypothesis using mobility data from 258 cities worldwide alongside experimentally validated measures of social preferences.... View Details
- July 2022
- Background Note
FIELD Immersion 2022: Lawrence, Massachusetts
By: Laura Alfaro and Tom Quinn
- 2022
- Working Paper
Distributional Consequences of Monetary Policy Across Races: Evidence from the U.S. Credit Register
By: Laura Alfaro, Ester Faia and Camelia Minoiu
We examine the consequences of monetary policy on racial disparities, focusing on the role of bank lending to firms through collateral and selection channels. Leveraging comprehensive loan-level data from the U.S. credit register (Y-14Q) of the Federal Reserve, we show... View Details
- Article
Undisclosed Debt Sustainability
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
Over the past decade, non-Paris Club creditors, notably China, have become an important source of financing for low- and middle-income countries. In contrast with typical sovereign debt, these lending arrangements are not public, and other creditors have no information... View Details
- March 2022 (Revised February 2024)
- Case
El Salvador: Launching Bitcoin as Legal Tender
By: Laura Alfaro, Carla Larangeira and Ruth Costas
In June 2021, Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president, surprised the world with the announcement that the country would adopt bitcoin as legal tender, becoming the first nation to do so. Bitcoin was mostly used for trading and had one of the most volatile track records... View Details