Publications

Educators

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2007
Working Paper

The Price of Capital: Evidence from Trade Data

By: Laura Alfaro and Faisal Ahmed

We use highly disaggregated data on trade in capital goods to study differences in the price of capital across countries. This strategy is motivated by the fact that most countries import the bulk of machinery equipment from a small number of industrialized countries.... View Details

Keywords: Price; Goods and Commodities; Trade

September 26, 2018
Article

Ownership and Power Structure: Together at Last

By: Laura Alfaro, Nicholas Bloom, Paola Conconi, Harald Fadinger, Patrick Legros, Andrew Newman, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

Economists have largely ignored the deep interdependency between integration and delegation. This column describes a new theory of integration and delegation choices aimed at shedding light on how these distinct elements of organizational design interact. Contrary to... View Details

Keywords: Power; Organisational Design; Economics; Ownership; Organizational Design

2010
Casebook

Global Capital and National Institutions: Crisis and Choice in the International Financial Architecture

All managers face a business environment in which international and macroeconomic phenomena matter. International capital flows can significantly affect countries' development efforts and provide clear investment opportunities for businesses. During the 1990s and early... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Capital; International Finance; Globalized Economies and Regions; Policy; Government and Politics; Business and Government Relations

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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

Keywords: Social Preferences; Pandemics; Mobility; Health Externalities; Mitigation Policies; Health Pandemics; Cooperation; Behavior; Policy

2006
Chapter

The New Realities of International Business Ethics

By: Laura Nash

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Spring 2015
Article

Sovereign Debt Restructuring: Evaluating the Impact of the Argentina Ruling

Recent rulings in the ongoing litigation over the pari passu clause in Argentinian sovereign debt instruments have generated considerable controversy. Some official-sector participants and academic articles have suggested that the rulings will disrupt or impede... View Details

19 Jul 2011
First Look

First Look: July 19

claims about the benefits of broader operational scope. The performance benefits of focus are typically attributed to reduced complexity, lower uncertainty, and the development of specialized expertise, while the benefits of greater breadth are linked to the economies... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Research Summary

Capital Controls, Risk and Liberalization Cycles (joint with Fabio Kanczuk)

We construct an Overlapping-Generations model where agents vote on whether to open or close the economy to international capital flows. Political decisions are shaped by the risk over capital and labor returns. In an open economy, the capitalists (old) completely hedge... View Details

March 2001 (Revised February 2004)
Case

Power to the States: "Fiscal Wars" for FDI in Brazil

By: Laura Alfaro, Yasheng Huang and Marios S. Kalochoritis

On January 6, 1999, Itamar Franco, the governor of the state of Minas Gerais, the second-largest state in Brazil, declared a 90-day moratorium on its debt payment to the federal government. The announcement triggered a run on the Brazilian currency, the Real, and... View Details

Keywords: International Relations; Investment; Financial Crisis; Borrowing and Debt; Brazil

Educators

Purchase

24 Jun 2008
First Look

First Look: June 24, 2008

Working Papers Firm-Size Distribution and Cross-Country Income Differences Authors: Laura Alfaro, Andrew Charlton, and Fabio Kanczuk Abstract We investigate, using firm-level data for 79 developed and developing countries, whether... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

06 Mar 2012
First Look

First Look: March 6

productive. The authors have studied when 161 countries adopted 104 technologies over the past 200 years, and they conclude that profound economic advantages-as measured by per capita income-accrue to early adopters of technology. Read... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

20 Jul 2010
First Look

First Look: July 20

contained in the mandatory transitional documents required by International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) 1 (2005). We find significant negative abnormal returns for firms reporting negative earnings reconciliation. Although the... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2008
Working Paper

International Financial Integration and Entrepreneurial Firm Activity

By: Laura Alfaro and Andrew Charlton

We explore the relation between international financial integration and the level of entrepreneurial activity in a country. We use a unique firm-level data set in a broad sample of developed and developing countries, which enables us to present both cross-country and... View Details

Keywords: International Financial Integration; Capital Mobility; Firm Entry; Capital Controls; Finance; Integration; Global Range; Capital; Entrepreneurship; Foreign Direct Investment; Developing Countries and Economies

2020
Working Paper

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

Keywords: Real Exchange Rate; Firm Level Data; Innovation; Productivity; Exporting; Importing; Credit Constraints; Currency Exchange Rate; Innovation and Invention; Performance Productivity

SSRN

Research Summary

Deregulation, Misallocation, and Size: Evidence from India

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

October 2012
Case

Brazil 2003: Inflation Targeting and Debt Dynamics (Abridged)

By: Laura Alfaro and Rafael Di Tella

In October 2002, Brazilians elected a left-wing president, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, for the first time in that country's history. As markets faltered in response, Lula sought to reaffirm his commitment to fiscal discipline, a floating exchange rate, and inflation... View Details

Keywords: Brazil; Inflation; Emerging Markets; Inflation and Deflation; Brazil

Educators

January 2009
Article

FDI, Productivity, and Financial Development

By: Laura Alfaro, Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan and Selin Sayek

This paper examines the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on growth by focusing on the complementarities between FDI inflows and financial markets. In our earlier work, we found that FDI is beneficial for growth only if the host country has well-developed... View Details

Keywords: Human Capital; Income; Performance Productivity; Financial Markets; Foreign Direct Investment; Financial Institutions; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues

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August 2004
Article

Capital Controls, Risk and Liberalization Cycles

By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk

The paper presents an overlapping-generations model where agents vote on whether to open or close the economy to international capital flows. Political decisions are shaped by the risk over capital and labor returns. In an open economy, the capitalists (old) completely... View Details

Keywords: Business Cycles; Development Economics; Voting; Risk and Uncertainty; Cash Flow; Saving; Investment; Economy; Wages

2021
Working Paper

Studying the U.S.-Based Portfolio Companies of U.S. Impact Investors

By: M. Diane Burton, Gurveen Chadha, Shawn A. Cole, Abhishek Dev, Christina Jarymowycz, Leslie Jeng, Laura Kelley, Josh Lerner, Jaime R. Diaz Palacios, Yue (Cynthia) Xu and T. Robert Zochowski

Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the reliance on market-based solutions to social and environmental problems around the world (Barman 2016; Horvath and Powell 2020). The growth of impact investing is a vivid example of this trend and, although there have... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investing; Impact Portfolio Companies; Investment; Social Issues; Environmental Sustainability; Investment Portfolio; Business Ventures; Analytics and Data Science; Performance; United States