Publications

December 2008
Case

JBS Swift & Co.

By: David E. Bell and Cathy Ross

Brazilian meat packer JBS surprised many in the U.S. beef industry when it acquired Swift & Co.—a company more than five times its size—in 2007, then moved to acquire the U.S.'s fourth and fifth largest beef producers in 2008. The new JBS Swift slashed costs and... View Details

Keywords: Animal-Based Agribusiness; Mergers and Acquisitions; Restructuring; Financial Crisis; Borrowing and Debt; Global Strategy; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; United States; Brazil

11 Jul 2006
First Look

First Look: July 11, 2006

case:http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=506055 The Barber of Buenos Aires: Argentina's Debt Renegotiation Noel Maurer and Aldo Musacchio 706-034 This case tells the story of Argentina's... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2014
Working Paper

The Rise and Fall of Demand for Securitizations

By: Sergey Chernenko, Samuel G. Hanson and Adi Sunderam

Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and private-label mortgage-backed securities (MBS) backed by nonprime loans played a central role in the recent financial crisis. Little is known, however, about the underlying forces that drove investor demand for these... View Details

Keywords: Debt Securities; Financial Markets; Financial Crisis

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Article

Survive Another Day: Using Changes in the Composition of Investments to Measure the Cost of Credit Constraints

By: Luis Garicano and Claudia Steinwender

We introduce a novel empirical strategy to measure the size of credit shocks. Theoretically, we show that credit shocks reduce the value of long-term relative to short-term investments. Empirically, we can therefore compare the reduction of long-term relative to... View Details

Keywords: Credit Constraints; Credit Crunch; Spain; Investment Behavior; Credit Squeeze; Financial Crisis; Economic Growth; Investment; Credit; Manufacturing Industry; Spain; European Union

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July – August 2009
Article

The Descent of Finance

What if the current recession turns out to be like the Great Depression of 1929-1933? Four years from now, the United States might find itself with a still-shrinking economy, half as many banks as in 2009, a third as many hedge funds, and retail banking resembling a... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; International Finance; Globalized Economies and Regions; Business and Government Relations; Financial Services Industry

June 2019 (Revised November 2019)
Case

Malaysia: An 'Asian Tiger' Reawakens

By: Richard H. K. Vietor

On May 9, 2018, in an extraordinary upset, Mahathir Mohamad again became Malaysia’s Prime Minister. Najib Razak, who had headed the government since 2009, had been swept up in the 1MDB scandal—perhaps the biggest state-corruption incident in history. Although... View Details

Keywords: Government and Politics; Crime and Corruption; Financial Crisis; Business and Government Relations; Economy; Leading Change; Malaysia

30 Mar 2010
First Look

First Look: March 30

disproportionately affected by international financial integration. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/07-012.pdf Nominal versus Indexed Debt: A Quantitative Horse Race Authors:Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk Abstract The main arguments in favor of and... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2010
Working Paper

Crashes and Collateralized Lending

By: Jakub W. Jurek and Erik Stafford

This paper develops a parsimonious static model for characterizing financing terms in collateralized lending markets. We characterize the systematic risk exposures for a variety of securities and develop a simple indifference-pricing framework to value the systematic... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Borrowing and Debt; Cost of Capital; Credit; Financing and Loans; Interest Rates; Investment; Framework; Risk and Uncertainty; Financial Services Industry

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April 2011 (Revised February 2016)
Case

Jamaica's Anemic Growth: The IMF, China and the Debt(th) Trap

By: Rafael Di Tella and Natalie Kindred

This case describes the economic development problems faced by the small Caribbean-island country of Jamaica over most of the past half-century. The Jamaican economy showed relatively strong growth in the 1960s but stagnated in the 1970s. By the end of that decade,... View Details

Keywords: Government Administration; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; International Finance; Crime and Corruption; Poverty; Private Sector; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Economy; Developing Countries and Economies; Borrowing and Debt; Jamaica

30 Aug 2016
First Look

August 30, 2016

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=51574 Fiscal Rules and Sovereign Default By: Alfaro, Laura, and Fabio Kanczuk Abstract—We provide a quantitative analysis of fiscal rules in a standard model of View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

2018
Book

New Perspectives on the History of Political Economy

By: Robert Fredona and Sophus A. Reinert

This volume offers a snapshot of the resurgent historiography of political economy in the wake of the ongoing global financial crisis and suggests fruitful new agendas for research on the political-economic nexus as it has developed in the Western world since the end... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Government and Politics; History

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Web

Global Crises Data by Country - Behavioral Finance & Financial Stability

exchange rate crises, stock market crises, sovereign debt growth and default, and many other data series. To see Carmen’s related research, please visit her website here. The BFFS Project keeps this data... View Details

December 2008 (Revised March 2009)
Case

Rosetree Mortgage Opportunity Fund

By: Victoria Ivashina and Andre F. Perold

In December 2008, in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, Rosetree Capital Management was evaluating the purchase of a pool of U.S. residential mortgages. The firm had formed an investment vehicle to acquire troubled residential mortgages... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Borrowing and Debt; Mortgages; Investment; Housing; Valuation; United States

27 Dec 2010
Research & Ideas

HBS Faculty on 2010’s Biggest Business Developments

where I sit as an economist, it's still all about the economy and the long-term impact of the problems laid bare by the Great Recession. During the financial crisis, the world came to the apparently shocking realization that debt... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

28 Feb 2012
First Look

First Look: Feb. 28

decline in sales and profits in the wake of the 2008-2009 financial market crisis and economic recession and is now overburdened with debt. To regain its competitiveness, the company has to significantly reduce its View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2010
Article

Sudden Stops: Determinants and Output Effects in the First Era of Globalization, 1880–1913

By: Michael D. Bordo, Alberto Cavallo and Christopher Meissner

We study the determinants and output effects of sudden stops in capital inflows during an era of intensified globalization from 1880 to 1913. Higher levels of exposure to foreign currency debt and large current account deficits associated with reliance on foreign... View Details

Keywords: Sudden Stops; Capital Flows; Economics; Macroeconomics; Economic Growth; Financial Crisis; Globalization; History

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June 2010 (Revised November 2013)
Case

Momentive Performance Materials, Inc.

By: Victoria Ivashina and David Scharfstein

After nearly violating its loan covenants in 2009, Momentive Performance Materials, backed by its financial sponsor Apollo Global Management, took a variety of actions to restructure its debt. The restructuring steps included an open market repurchase of publicly held... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Financial Crisis; Borrowing and Debt; Private Equity; Financing and Loans