Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(120,129)
- Faculty Publications (315)
- 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
- 2023
- Working Paper
Can Evidence-Based Information Shift Preferences Towards Trade Policy?
By: Laura Alfaro, Maggie X. Chen and Davin Chor
Amid public skepticism about trade, we investigate whether evidence-based information--a concise statement of a research finding--can shape preferences towards trade policy. Across survey experiments conducted over 2018-2022 on U.S. general population samples, we... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Omnia Juncta in Uno: Foreign Powers and Trademark Protection in Shanghai's Concession Era
By: Laura Alfaro, Cathy Bao, Maggie X. Chen, Junjie Hong and Claudia Steinwender
We investigate how firms and markets adapt to trademark protection, an extensively utilized but under-examined form of IP protection to address asymmetric information, by exploring a historical precedent: China’s 1923 trademark law. Exploiting unique, newly digitized... View Details
- October 2021 (Revised February 2024)
- Case
Deficits and Debt: The U.S. Current Account
By: Laura Alfaro and Richard Vietor
- 2021
- Other Unpublished Work
Fiscal Policy at a Time of Polarization: Addressing Latin America’s Tough Dilemmas
By: Laura Alfaro, Guillermo Calvo, Augusto de la Torre, José de Gregorio, Roque Fernandez, Pablo Guidotti, Paulo Leme, Enrique Mendoza, Ernesto Talvi, Liliana Rojas-Suarez and Andrés Velasco
- 2021
- Working Paper
Granular Corporate Hedging Under Dominant Currency
By: Laura Alfaro, Mauricio Calani and Liliana Varela
Foreign currency use can be a source of risk associated with currency mismatches, which firms can hedge using FX derivatives. This paper uncovers five novel facts about firms’ use of foreign currency (FX) derivatives employing a unique dataset covering the universe of... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Currency Hedging in Emerging Markets: Managing Cash Flow Exposure
By: Laura Alfaro, Mauricio Calani and Liliana Varela
Foreign currency derivative markets are among the largest in the world, yet their role in emerging markets in particular, is relatively understudied. We study firms' currency risk exposure and their hedging choices by employing a unique dataset covering the universe of... View Details
- March 2021
- Article
On the Direct and Indirect Real Effects of Credit Supply Shocks
By: Laura Alfaro, Manuel García-Santana and Enrique Moral-Benito
We explore the real effects of bank-lending shocks and how they permeate the economy through buyer-supplier linkages. We combine administrative data on all Spanish firms with a matched bank-firm-loan dataset of all corporate loans from 2003 to 2013 to estimate... View Details
- December 2020
- Teaching Note
Latam Airlines and COVID-19: Seeking Bankruptcy Protection in the United States
By: Laura Alfaro
- 2020
- Chapter
Reserve Accumulation, Sovereign Debt, and Exchange Rate Policy
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
In the past decade, foreign participation in local-currency bond markets in emerging countries increased dramatically. Additionally, emerging countries are increasingly deviating from inflation targeting regimes, managing their exchange rate and engaging in... View Details
- August 2020 (Revised December 2020)
- Case
Latam Airlines and COVID-19: Seeking Bankruptcy Protection in the United States
By: Laura Alfaro, Mauricio Larrain, Carlos Vilches and Sarah Jeong
On May 26, 2020, Latam Airlines became the largest airline in the world to be driven to bankruptcy by COVID-19. With a complex debt structure and international investor composition, the company decided to file for bankruptcy protection in the United States, which... View Details
- 2020
- Other Unpublished Work
The COVID-19 Attack on Latin America: Proposals for an Effective Response
By: Laura Alfaro, Guillermo Calvo, Augusto de la Torre, Jose de Gregorio, Roque Benjamin Fernandez, Pablo Guidotti, Paulo Leme, Enrique Mendoza, Liliana Rojas-Suarez and Andres Velasco
- July 2020
- Teaching Note
COVID-19: The Global Shutdown
By: Laura Alfaro and Sarah Jeong
In the first months of 2020, a pandemic overwhelmed the world. COVID-19, commonly known as the coronavirus, spread from China and created a severe public health emergency across countries. While an immediate fear of the disease’s impact on human life permeaacted... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
EMEs and COVID-19: Shutting Down in a World of Informal and Tiny Firms
By: Laura Alfaro, Oscar Becerra and Marcela Eslava
Emerging economies are characterized by an extremely high prevalence of informality, small-firm employment and jobs not fit for working from home. These features factor into how the COVID-19 crisis has affected the economy. We develop a framework that, based on... View Details
- Jun 2020
- Panel Discussion
COVID-19 in Africa: Reflections, Challenges and Next Steps
By: John D. Macomber, Mattias Fibiger, Hakeem Belo-Osagie, Shikhar Ghosh, Anywhere Sikochi, Laura Alfaro, Euvin Naidoo and Suraj Srinivasan
In June 2020, the Africa Research Center hosted a four-part webinar series titled COVID-19: Reflections, Challenges and Next Steps. The series brought together alumni and friends from across Africa and provided the opportunity to get to know HBS professors who are... View Details
- May 2020 (Revised July 2020)
- Case
COVID-19: The Global Shutdown
By: Laura Alfaro and Sarah Jeong
In the first months of 2020, a pandemic overwhelmed the world. COVID-19, commonly known as the coronavirus, spread from China and created a severe public health emergency across countries. While an immediate fear of the disease’s impact on human life permeated society,... View Details
- 2020
- Chapter
Foreign Direct Investment, Finance and Economic Development
By: Laura Alfaro and Jasmina Chauvin
Research has sought to understand how foreign direct investment affects host economies. This paper reviews the empirical literature, specifically addressing the question: How does FDI affect economic development of host countries and what is the role of local financial... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Social Interactions in Pandemics: Fear, Altruism, and Reciprocity
By: Laura Alfaro, Ester Faia, Nora Lamersdorf and Farzad Saidi
In SIR models, homogeneous or with a network structure, infection rates are assumed to be exogenous. However, individuals adjust their behavior. Using daily data for 89 cities worldwide, we document that mobility falls in response to fear, as approximated by Google... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Elusive Safety: The New Geography of Capital Flows and Risk
By: Laura Alfaro, Ester Faia, Ruth Judson and Tim Schmidt-Eisenlohr
A confidential dataset with industry-level disaggregation of U.S. cross-border claims and liabilities, shows U.S. securities to be increasingly intermediated by tax-haven-financial-centers (THFC) and less regulated funds. These securities are risky, in... View Details