Publications

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

Keywords: Corporate Debt; Firm Size; Financial Fragility; Emerging Market; Organizations; Borrowing and Debt; Financial Condition; Emerging Markets; System Shocks

Fall 2014
Article

How to Win in an Omnichannel World

By: David R. Bell, Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno

The omnichannel environment presents new challenges and opportunities for both information and product fulfillment. While all retailers need to effectively and efficiently manage fulfillment and information provision, there are important nuances to how this happens,... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain Management; Customer Relationship Management; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; United States

August 2013
Article

Corporate Ownership Structure and the Choice Between Bank Debt and Public Debt

By: Chen Lin, Yue Ma, Paul Malatesta and Yuhai Xuan

This paper examines the relation between a borrowing firm's ownership structure and its choice of debt source using a novel, hand-collected data set on corporate ownership, control, and debt structures for 9,831 firms in 20 countries from 2001 to 2010. We find that the... View Details

Keywords: Governance; Ownership; Borrowing and Debt; Corporate Finance

January 2004 (Revised March 2004)
Case

Redesigning Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanisms

By: Mihir A. Desai, Christina Pham, Julia Stevens and Kathleen Luchs

How should the debt of sovereign countries be restructured when countries approach default? Anne O. Krueger of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is proposing a new approach to sovereign defaults: the Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism (SDRM). The SDRM would... View Details

Keywords: Sovereign Finance; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Globalized Economies and Regions; International Finance; Laws and Statutes; Latin America; Asia; Mexico

Educators

17 Nov 2016
Working Paper Summaries

Sovereign Risk, Currency Risk, and Corporate Balance Sheets

Keywords: by Wenxin Du and Jesse Schreger

September 2025
Article

Sticky Capital Controls

By: Miguel Acosta-Henao, Laura Alfaro and Andrés Fernández

There is much ongoing debate on the merits of capital controls as effective policy instruments. The differing perspectives are due in part to a lack of empirical studies that look at the intensive margin of controls, which in turn has prevented a quantitative... View Details

Keywords: Capital Controls; Macroprudential Policies; Stickiness; Intensive; (S, S) Costs; Capital; Management; Macroeconomics; Governance Controls; Mathematical Methods

02 Feb 2004
Research & Ideas

Mapping Your Corporate Strategy

creating a strategy map? At a company, who ideally should be the steward of the strategy map? And, how often can or should the map evolve at a single organization? A: We have seen strategy maps work extremely View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

Research Summary

Corporate Debt, Firm Size and Financial Fragility in Emerging Markets

By: Laura Alfaro

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

15 May 2007
Working Paper Summaries

How is Foreign Aid Spent? Evidence from a Compelling Natural Experiment

Keywords: by Eric Werker, Faisal Z. Ahmed & Charles Cohen

Article

A Case for Contextual Intelligence

By: Tarun Khanna

In this perspective, I make a case for entrepreneurs and academics alike to focus on what I have referred to elsewhere as Contextual Intelligence, the ability to understand the limits of our knowledge, and to adapt that knowledge to a context different from the one in... View Details

Keywords: Contextual Intelligence; Institutional Voids; Entrepreneurship In Emerging Markets; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Situation or Environment; Developing Countries and Economies; Entrepreneurship

Register to Read

September 2017
Case

NBCUniversal Telemundo: Transforming Latino Television

By: Henry W. McGee, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Christine Snively

In August 2017, Cesar Conde, chairman of NBCUniversal International Group and NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, considered how the Miami-based Spanish-language TV network Telemundo could succeed in a rapidly shifting media landscape. Over the past few years,... View Details

Keywords: Television Industry; Television Advertising; Broadcasting; Telecommunications; Internet; Television Entertainment; Internet and the Web; Advertising; Digital Platforms; Digital Marketing; Telecommunications Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Miami

Educators

November 2013 (Revised January 2015)
Case

Obamacare

By: Matthew Weinzierl and Katrina Flanagan

One vote in June, 2012, decided the fate of President Barack Obama's crowning first-term achievement: universal health insurance. Chief Justice John Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court cast the deciding vote to uphold the keystone of the reform: the mandate to purchase... View Details

Keywords: Universal Health Insurance; Adverse Selection; Leviathan; Courts and Trials; Judgments; Insurance; Health Care and Treatment; Government and Politics; Insurance Industry; Public Administration Industry; Health Industry; United States

Educators

05 Oct 2009
News

The World Bank must fix its business model

02 Jul 2024
Blog Post

Climate Story #19: Nicole Neeman Brady (MBA 2008): The Critical Role of Business in Tackling Water Challenges

creating offices with the specific task of promoting water innovation. “Singapore has roughly the same GDP as just Los Angeles alone. Yet, since 2002, the country has spent over $670 million in over six... View Details

Winter 2024
Article

Is Pay Transparency Good?

By: Zoë B. Cullen

Countries around the world are enacting pay transparency policies to combat pay discrimination. Since 2000, 71 percent of OECD countries have done so. Most are enacting transparency horizontally, revealing pay between coworkers doing similar work within a firm. While... View Details

Keywords: Policy; Wages; Knowledge Sharing; Job Design and Levels; Negotiation; Performance Productivity; Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives

June 2009
Journal Article

Taxes, Institutions and Foreign Diversification Opportunities

By: Mihir Desai and Dhammika Dharmapala

Investors can access foreign diversification opportunities through either foreign portfolio investment (FPI) or foreign direct investment (FDI). The worldwide tax regime employed by the U.S. potentially distorts this choice by penalizing FDI, relative to FPI, in... View Details

Keywords: International Finance; Foreign Direct Investment; Investment Portfolio; Multinational Firms and Management; Taxation; Diversification; United States

SSRN

16 Sep 2015
News

Faculty Q&A: The Working World

February 2018
Article

Financial Repression in the European Sovereign Debt Crisis

By: Bo Becker and Victoria Ivashina

By the end of 2013, the share of government debt held by the domestic banking sectors of Eurozone countries was more than twice its 2007 level. We show that this type of increasing reliance on the domestic banking sector for absorbing government bonds generates a... View Details

Keywords: Credit Cycles; Sovereign Debt; Financial Repression; Sovereign Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Credit; Europe

SSRN