Publications
Publications
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(774)
- Faculty Publications (272)
- Research Summary
Debt Maturity: Is Long-Term Debt Optimal? (with Fabio Kanczuk)
By: Laura Alfaro
We model and calibrate the arguments in favor and against short-term and long-term debt. These arguments broadly include: maturity-term premium, tax smoothing, rolling over risk and the cost from defaulting. We use a dynamic equilibrium model with tax distortion,... View Details
- Research Summary
Debt Redemption and Reserve Accumulation
By: Laura Alfaro
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
- Research Summary
Deregulation, Misallocation, and Size: Evidence from India
By: Laura Alfaro
This paper examines the impact of the deregulation of compulsory industrial licensing in India on firm size dynamics and reallocation of resources within industries. Following deregulation, resource misallocation declines, and the left-hand tail of the firm size... View Details
- Research Summary
Do Prices Determine Vertical Integration?*
By: Laura Alfaro
What is the relationship between product prices and vertical integration? While the literature has focused on how integration affects prices, this paper provides evidence that prices can affect integration. Many theories in organizational economics and industrial... View Details
- Research Summary
Enduring Success
Harvard Business School graduates have achieved many different kinds of success as leaders of businesses, as entrepreneurs and in their public and private lives. After authoring or co-authoring 150 cases, serving on many corporate and non- profit boards, Howard... View Details
- Research Summary
FDI and Economic Growth: The Role of the Local Financial Markets (joint with Areendam Chanda, Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan, Selin Sayek)
By: Laura Alfaro
In this paper, we examine the various links among foreign direct investment (FDI), financial markets, and economic growth. We explore whether countries with better financial systems can exploit FDI more efficiently. Empirical analysis, using cross-country data between... View Details
- Research Summary
Global Supply Chains: The Looming “Great Reallocation”
By: Laura Alfaro
Global supply chains have come under unprecedented stress as a result of US-China trade tensions, the Covid-19 pandemic, and geopolitical shocks. We document shifts in the pattern of US participation in global value chains over the last four decades, in terms of... View Details
- Research Summary
Growth and the Quality of Foreign Direct Investment: Is All FDI Equal? (joint with Andrew Charlton)
By: Laura Alfaro
In this paper we distinguish different qualities of FDI to re-examine the relationship between FDI and growth. Establishing the quality of FDI, however, is a difficult concept. Quality, that is the effect of a unit of FDI on economic growth, is a combination and... View Details
- Research Summary
How Does Foreign Direct Investment Promote Economic Growth? Exploring the Effects of Financial Markets on Linkages (with Areendam Chanda, Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan and Selin Sayek)
By: Laura Alfaro
The empirical literature finds mixed evidence on the
existence of positive productivity externalities in the host country
generated by foreign multinational companies. We propose a novel
mechanism, which emphasizes the role of local financial markets in
enabling... View Details
- Research Summary
India Transformed? Insights from the Firm Level 1988-2005 (with Anusha Chari)
By: Laura Alfaro
Using firm-level data this paper analyzes, the transformation of India’s economic structure following the implementation of economic reforms. The focus of the study is on publicly-listed and unlisted firms from across a wide spectrum of manufacturing and services... View Details
- Research Summary
Inflation, Openness, and Exchange-Rate Regimes. The Quest for Short-Term Commitment
By: Laura Alfaro
This paper further tests Romers (1993) extension of Kydland and Prescotts (1977) predictions on dynamic-inconsistency problems with regard to open economies. In a panel data set, I find that openness does not seem to play a role in the short run in restricting... View Details
- Research Summary
Internalizing Global Value Chains: A Firm-Level Analysis
By: Laura Alfaro
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
- Research Summary
International Financial Integration and Entrepreneurship (joint with Andrew Charlton)
By: Laura Alfaro
We explore the relation between international financial integration and the level of entrepreneurial activity in a country. Researchers have stressed the role of new firm activity and economic dynamism on growth. Yet, the empirical effects of international capital... View Details
- Research Summary
Intra-Industry Foreign Direct Investment (joint with Andrew Charlton)
By: Laura Alfaro
We identify a new type of vertical foreign direct investment (FDI) made up of multinational subsidiaries producing intermediate inputs, which are of similar skill intensity to the final goods produced by their parents, and which are overwhelmingly located in high skill... View Details
- 2025
- Chapter
Leapfrog Leaders: Accelerating Systems Leadership Skills
By: Laura Cabrera, Derek Cabrera and Hise O. Gibson
We need leaders who can execute at the Strategic, Operational, and Tactical (SOT) levels. But, research shows it takes time for skills to develop at all three levels—too much time. Why does it take too much time? First, because expertise is borne of experience. An... View Details
Keywords: DSRP; VCML; Strategy; Operations; Leadership Development; Decision Making; Organizational Structure
- Research Summary
Multinationals and Linkages: an Empirical Investigation (joint with Andres Rodriguez-Clare)
By: Laura Alfaro
Several recent papers have used plant-level data and panel econometric techniques to carefully explore the existence FDI externalities. One conclusion that emerges from this literature is that it is difficult to find evidence of positive externalities from... View Details
- Research Summary
Nominal versus Indexed Debt: A Quantitative Horse Race (joint with Fabio Kanczuk)
By: Laura Alfaro
There are different arguments in favor and against nominal and indexed debt which broadly include the incentive to default through inflation versus hedging against unforeseen shocks. We model these arguments and calibrate the model to assess the quantitative importance... View Details
- Research Summary
On the Political Economy of Stabilization Programs
By: Laura Alfaro
This paper provides a political economy explanation for temporary exchange-rate-based stabilization programs by focusing on the distributional effects of real exchange-rate appreciation. I propose an economy in which agents are endowed with either tradable or... View Details
- Research Summary
Optimal Reserve Management and Sovereign Debt (with Fabio Kanczuk)
By: Laura Alfaro
Most models currently used to determine optimal foreign reserve holdings take the level of international debt as given. Some of the implications of this analysis, however, may not be generalized once one considers the joint decision to hold debt and reserves by a... View Details
- Research Summary
Selection and Market Reallocation: Productivity Gains from Multinational Production
By: Laura Alfaro
Assessing the productivity gains from multinational production has been a vital topic of economic research and policy debate. Positive aggregate productivity gains are often attributed to within-firm productivity improvement; however, an alternative, less emphasized... View Details