Publications

03 Jun 2008
First Look

First Look: June 3, 2008

costly. They are less likely to be repaid. Nor are they put to good use: election year credit booms do not measurably affect agricultural output. Finally, I measure whether the average agricultural loan was beneficial, using variation... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Portrait Project

Shibani Joshi

meant fame and wealth, but today I see the meaning as much more profound. Now breaking free involves resisting the temptation to return to the investment bank I previously worked for and instead pursuing my dreams in the entertainment... View Details

01 Mar 2023
News

Is AI OK?

to weeding bias out of banking and lending, essentially removing from the picture human beings and their inherently biased decision-making processes. He understood that his father, a Black business owner in the Deep South, was repeatedly... View Details

Keywords: Alexander Gelfand; Funds, Trusts, and Other Financial Vehicles; Finance

February 2007 (Revised October 2007)
Case

BASIX

By: Shawn A. Cole and Peter Tufano

BASIX, an Indian microfinance corporation, must decide whether to continue to sell weather insurance to its clients. A brand-new financial product, weather insurance pays if measured rainfall during the growing season falls below a pre-specified limit. Mr. Sattaiah,... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Microfinance; Insurance; Risk Management; Banking Industry; India

January 1993 (Revised November 1997)
Case

BayBank Boston

In 1992, the Federal Reserve released a study of mortgage lending patterns in Boston. It concluded that even when credit factors were taken into account, black and Hispanic applicants experienced higher rejection rates. Richard Pollard, chairman of BayBank Boston, had... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Ethics; Race; Mortgages; Banking Industry; Boston

Find at Harvard

23 Jan 2008
Op-Ed

A House Divided: Investment or Shelter?

country, they yearned for shelter, a sanctuary in a new land. That shelter could be a tenement, a farmstead, a ramshackle cottage. For families, home had a connotation of safety and stability. Banks did not lend with 30-year amortizing... View Details

Keywords: by Nicolas P. Retsinas; Banking; Banking; Banking

01 Dec 2010
News

Noted & Quoted

bank capital on loans is too small to have a big impact on growth.” — HBS professor DAVID SCHARFSTEIN and Harvard economics professor Jeremy Stein respond to banking industry... View Details

Keywords: Credit Intermediation and Related Activities; Finance

07 Sep 2021
News

Funding His Purpose

money,” Letelier says, and the grants that typically power nonprofits don’t typically offer organizations the flexibility of the financial products available to for-profit companies, which can mean everything from bootstrapping and commercial View Details

12 Aug 2002
Op-Ed

Using Big Business to Fight Poverty

Bank loans and foreign aid to the government did not then and would not in the future reduce poverty, especially among the 80 percent of the population that lived in the countryside. Millions of rural... View Details

Keywords: by George C. Lodge

Web

Buy Now, Pay Later: Research Links - Secondary Resources

W.A. Edwards, 1892). Full text available as a networked resource. Davis, Malcolm W. The Loan Shark Campaign (New York: Divison of Remedial Loans, Russell Sage Foundation, 1914). Fitzgerald, Thomas J., and Richard Theodore Ely. Mortgages... View Details

01 Sep 2010
News

Noted & Quoted

also be a statutory cap on leverage, a maximum speed limit, if you will, that regulators can’t loosen.” — HBS professor David Moss commenting on the need for financial reform legislation to place limits on the amount banks can borrow for... View Details

Keywords: Securities, Commodities, and Other Financial Investments; Finance; Hospitals; Health, Social Assistance

22 Jun 2009
Research & Ideas

“Too Big To Fail”: Reining In Large Financial Firms

such period on record. Significant financial failures returned to the marketplace in the late 1980s with the savings and loan crisis, followed by a rash of bank failures in the early 1990s that forced the... View Details

Keywords: by Roger Thompson; Banking; Banking

02 Feb 2012
Op-Ed

Once a Castle, Home is Now a Debtors’ Prison

owner must pay the lender the difference. Owners will still need to find someplace else to live. An owner can walk away from the loan and join the "strategic defaulters," who defaulted not because they could not pay but because... View Details

Keywords: by Nicolas P. Retsinas; Financial Services; Construction; Real Estate

March 2006 (Revised May 2010)
Case

Banco Hipotecario S.A.

By: Daniel Baird Bergstresser, Arthur I Segel and Alexandra de Royere

In 2003, the chairwoman and controlling shareholder of Argentina's leading residential mortgage lender are considering how to bring the bank's restructuring to a successful conclusion as the country's economy continues to suffer from the impact of the 2001-2002... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Currency; Banks and Banking; Mortgages; Crisis Management; Competition; Argentina

September 2012
Case

BASIX (Abridged)

By: Shawn Cole and Peter Tufano

BASIX, an Indian microfinance corporation, must decide whether to continue to sell weather insurance to its clients. A brand-new financial product, weather insurance pays if measured rainfall during the growing season falls below a pre-specified limit. Mr. Sattaiah,... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Microfinance; Household; Risk Management; Insurance; Banking Industry; India