Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(118,890)
- Faculty Publications (312)
- January 2020
- Teaching Note
Chile: Unrest in the Copper Nation
By: Laura Alfaro and Sarah Jeong
For decades, Chile enjoyed the stability of being the world’s largest producer of copper. Keynes would have advised that this period of growth would have been the time for the government to save, that “the boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity at the... View Details
- January 2020
- Supplement
Brexit: A Withdrawal Agreement? — Boris Johnson
By: Laura Alfaro and Sarah Jeong
The UK was due to leave the EU in March 2019 after a referendum vote in June 2016. Following additional extensions and multiple failed attempts to reach an agreement with Parliament, Theresa May stepped down as Conservative Party leader and was replaced by Boris... View Details
- 2020
- Chapter
El problema de la productividad [The Productivity Problem]
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
The weak performance of the Latin American region in terms of the growth of its GDP is largely due to its low productivity growth. In fact, the region's main problem has been its lack of efficiency in combining capital and labor to produce. In this chapter, we... View Details
Keywords: GDP Growth; Productivity Growth; Efficiency; Labor; Capital; Growth and Development; Latin America
- November 2019
- Case
Floating the Exchange Rate: In Pursuit of the Chinese Dream
By: Laura Alfaro and Sarah Jeong
In the decades following 2005, China faced significant financial challenges. Inflation spiraled upwards and China’s economy stagnated in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. The country’s leaders took an interventionist approach to weather the storm, controlling... View Details
- November 2019
- Case
Chile: Unrest in the Copper Nation
By: Laura Alfaro and Sarah Jeong
For decades, Chile was heralded as South America’s pillar of stable economic growth. Chile was the world’s largest producer of copper and enjoyed a long period of over 30 years of world demand for its resources. In 2013, the commodity boom ended and was replaced by a... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
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
- 2019
- Other Unpublished Work
Mexico's Financial Risks: Solving Pemex for a Solvent Mexico
By: Laura Alfaro, Augusto de la Torre, Guillermo Calvo, Roque Benjamin Fernandez, Pablo Guidotti, Paulo Leme, Enrique Mendoza, Guillermo Perry, Carmen Reinhart and Liliana Rojas-Suarez
- 2019
- Chapter
Spatial Agglomeration and Superstar Firms: Firm-level Patterns from Europe and U.S.
By: Laura Alfaro, Maggie X. Chen and Harald Fadinger
We characterize the agglomeration patterns of industries and plants in Europe, distinguishing Eurozone countries and the United States. Using a micro-level index, we quantify the degree of geographic concentration in industrial activities and explore how firm... View Details
- June 2019
- Article
Debt Redemption and Reserve Accumulation
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
In the past decade, foreign participation in local-currency bond markets in emerging countries increased dramatically. We revisit sovereign debt sustainability under the assumptions that countries can accumulate reserves and borrow internationally using their own... View Details
- May 2019
- Article
Corporate Debt, Firm Size and Financial Fragility in Emerging Markets
By: Laura Alfaro, Gonzalo Asis, Anusha Chari and Ugo Panizza
The post-Global Financial Crisis period shows a surge in corporate leverage in emerging markets and a number of countries with deteriorated corporate financial fragility indicators (Altman’s Z-score). Firm size plays a critical role in the relationship between... View Details
- April 2019
- Article
Internalizing Global Value Chains: A Firm-Level Analysis
By: Laura Alfaro, Pol Antràs, Davin Chor and Paola Conconi
In recent decades, advances in information and communication technology and falling trade barriers have led firms to retain within their boundaries and in their domestic economies only a subset of their production stages. A key decision facing firms worldwide is the... View Details
- 2019
- Chapter
Location Fundamentals, Agglomeration Economies, and the Geography of Multinational Firms
By: Laura Alfaro and Maggie Xiaoyang Chen
Multinationals exhibit distinct agglomeration patterns, which have transformed the global landscape of industrial production (Alfaro and Chen, 2014). Using a unique worldwide plant-level dataset that reports detailed location, ownership, and operation information for... View Details
- February 2019 (Revised January 2020)
- Teaching Note
Renegotiating NAFTA
By: Laura Alfaro and Sarah Jeong
On January 16, 2020, the Senate passed a landmark trade deal that would replace the 26-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Until the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) was signed, considerable debate had surrounded it. The new agreement... View Details
- February 2019
- Editorial
Introduction To: The Euro at Twenty
By: Laura Alfaro and Paul R. Bergin
The article introduces a special volume on the “Euro at Twenty” as the currency was first introduced January 1, 1999. The volume includes papers by renowned leaders and thinkers: Jean-Claude Trichet, former President of the European Central Bank; Claudia Buch,... View Details
- January 2019 (Revised December 2019)
- Supplement
Brexit: A Withdrawal Agreement? - Theresa May
By: Laura Alfaro and Sarah Jeong
Supplements the (A) case. View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Information, Globalization and Preferences for Economic Policy: Evidence from Randomized Surveys
By: Laura Alfaro, Davin Chor and Maggie Chen
- 2019
- Working Paper
Outsourcing Innovation: The China Shock Hits Brazil
By: Laura Alfaro, Maggie Chen, Andrea Lucchesi and Naercio A. Menezes Filho
- November 2018 (Revised October 2019)
- Case
Rebuilding Puerto Rico
By: Laura Alfaro, Laura Phillips Sawyer and Haviland Sheldahl-Thomason
On September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria swept over Puerto Rico, devastating the island’s infrastructure and agriculture. The natural disaster was layered atop years of mounting financial distress. Before the hurricane, Puerto Rico had accumulated $74 billion in debt and... View Details
- October 2018 (Revised October 2019)
- Case
Poland at a Crossroads
By: Laura Alfaro, Christian Ketels, Haviland Sheldahl-Thomason, Sarah Jeong and Marcin Piatkowski