Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(1,969)
- Faculty Publications (609)
- September 2022 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
York Capital CLOs and WorldStrides International
By: Victoria Ivashina and William Vrattos
The case follows the debt restructuring of WorldStrides International, a travel program provider in the education market, after the onset of COVID-19. The pandemic severely impacted the travel industry, creating challenges for many companies like WorldStrides, which... View Details
- August 2022 (Revised November 2024)
- Case
Boston Impact Initiative: Investing in Local Change
By: Emily R. McComb, Amy Klopfenstein and Mel Martin
In fall 2021, Aliana Piñeiro, impact director at Boston Impact Initiative (BII) discovered that an entrepreneur the organization was considering for an investment had failed to disclose pre-existing debt with another lender. Although the business scored highly on BII’s... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Social Entrepreneurship; Finance; Investment; Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Relationships; Business and Community Relations; Society; Social Issues; Wealth and Poverty; Wealth; Poverty; Risk Management; Financial Services Industry; North and Central America; United States; Massachusetts; Boston
- August 2022 (Revised December 2022)
- Case
Iluméxico: For Every Family to Have Power
By: Brian Trelstad, Isa Oliveres and Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago
In 2022, Manuel Wiechers, the CEO of Iluméxico, a for-profit social enterprise that provided off-grid solar energy services in rural Mexico, was finalizing his presentation for the company’s upcoming board meeting. In the 12 years since Wiechers had co-founded... View Details
- July 2022
- Article
Countercyclical Prudential Buffers and Bank Risk-taking
By: Manuel Illueca, Lars Norden, Joseph Pacelli and Gregory F. Udell
We investigate the effects of countercyclical prudential buffers on bank risk-taking. We exploit the introduction of dynamic loan loss provisioning in Spain, mandating that banks use historical average loss rates in their estimation of loan loss provisions. We find... View Details
- 2022
- Article
Regulatory Treatment of Changes in Fair Value and the Composition of Banks' Investment Portfolios
By: Michael Iselin, Jung Koo Kang and Joshua Madsen
In their implementation of Basel III, U.S. bank regulators are again including changes in the fair value of available-for-sale (AFS) debt securities in Tier 1 capital, but only for the largest U.S. banks. This paper investigates a potential impact of expanding this... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
A Conceptualization of Sub-Living Wages: Liabilities, Leverage, and Risk
By: Drew Keller, Katie Panella and George Serafeim
Currently the accounting system records employee wages as an expense in the income statement. However, paying below living wages can expose an organization to reputational and operational risks. In this paper, we offer an alternative conceptualization of the issue of... View Details
- June 2022 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
South Africa – a 'Just Energy Transition'
By: Richard Vietor
South Africa, like most other countries, is in the process of reducing its carbon emissions to comply with COP26 and, hopefully, reach net zero emissions by 2050. However, because South Africa relies almost wholly on coal (93%) for electricity, and on coal for... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Distributional Consequences of Monetary Policy Across Races: Evidence from the U.S. Credit Register
By: Laura Alfaro, Ester Faia and Camelia Minoiu
We examine the consequences of monetary policy on racial disparities, focusing on the role of bank lending to firms through collateral and selection channels. Leveraging comprehensive loan-level data from the U.S. credit register (Y-14Q) of the Federal Reserve, we show... View Details
- Article
Undisclosed Debt Sustainability
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
Over the past decade, non-Paris Club creditors, notably China, have become an important source of financing for low- and middle-income countries. In contrast with typical sovereign debt, these lending arrangements are not public, and other creditors have no information... View Details
- April 2022
- Supplement
PG&E and the First Climate Change Bankruptcy
By: Stuart C. Gilson
- March 2022
- Article
Contractual Restrictions and Debt Traps
By: Ernest Liu and Benjamin N. Roth
Microcredit and other forms of small-scale finance have failed to catalyze entrepreneurship in developing countries. In these credit markets, borrowers and lenders often bargain over not only the interest rate but also implicit restrictions on types of investment. We... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
High-Yield Debt Covenants and Their Real Effects
By: Falk Bräuning, Victoria Ivashina and Ali Ozdagli
High-yield debt including leveraged loans is characterized by incurrence financial covenants, or “cov-lite” provisions. A traditional loan agreement includes maintenance covenants, which require continuous compliance with the covenant threshold, and their violation... View Details
- February 2022 (Revised May 2022)
- Case
Jaypee Infratech and the Indian Bankruptcy Code
By: Kristin Mugford, William Vrattos and Radhika Kak
In 2016, India passed a new bankruptcy law (IBC) to counter a brewing bank crisis and increased corporate distress. Homebuilder Jaypee Infratech, one of India largest distressed companies (the “dirty dozen”) began restructuring under the IBC in 2017. Two years later,... View Details
Keywords: Restructuring; Decisions; Judgments; Voting; Developing Countries and Economies; Financial Crisis; Public Sector; Asset Pricing; Borrowing and Debt; Corporate Finance; Credit; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Debt Securities; Bonds; Investment Return; Price; Government Legislation; Laws and Statutes; Bids and Bidding; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Risk and Uncertainty; Valuation; Real Estate Industry; India; Delhi
- 2022
- Working Paper
The Transformation of Self Employment
By: Innessa Colaiacovo, Margaret Dalton, Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr
Over the past half-century, while self-employment has consistently accounted for around one in ten of the United States workforce, its composition has changed. Since 1970, industries with high startup capital requirements have declined from 53% of self-employment to... View Details
- February 2022
- Article
Borrowing to Save? The Impact of Automatic Enrollment on Debt
By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian and William L. Skimmyhorn
Does automatic enrollment into a retirement plan increase financial distress due to increased borrowing outside the plan? We study a natural experiment created when the U.S. Army began automatically enrolling newly hired civilian employees into the Thrift Savings Plan.... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Racial Disparities in the Paycheck Protection Program
By: Sergey Chernenko and David S. Scharfstein
Using a large sample of Florida restaurants, we document significant racial disparities in borrowing through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and investigate the causes of these disparities. Black-owned restaurants are 25% less likely to receive PPP loans.... View Details
- January 2022
- Technical Note
Introduction to Capital Structure Analytics
By: Samuel Antill and Ted Berk
This technical note provides an overview of key analytical approaches that are useful in assessing the appropriateness of a firm’s capital structure and funding plan. This note introduces basic quantitative tools and metrics that are commonly used as inputs to this... View Details
- November 2021 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
The Global Great Depression, 1929-1939
By: Alberto Cavallo, Sophus A. Reinert and Federica Gabrieli
The Great Depression was, by far, the worst economic contraction of the twentieth century, and some of the most important ideas about both fiscal and monetary policy in the second half of the century were developed in response to it. The economic collapse, which... View Details
- November 2021 (Revised January 2022)
- Case
Scott Tucker (A): Race to the Top
By: Aiyesha Dey and Amram Migdal
The case tells the story of the rise and fall of Scott Tucker, an entrepreneur, businessman, passionate race car driver, competitor, and owner of a professional racing team. From 1997 to 2012, Tucker built a nationwide network of payday lending businesses, becoming a... View Details
- November 2021 (Revised January 2022)
- Supplement
Scott Tucker (B): The Feds Catch Up
By: Aiyesha Dey and Amram Migdal
The case tells the story of the rise and fall of Scott Tucker, an entrepreneur, businessman, passionate race car driver, competitor, and owner of a professional racing team. From 1997 to 2012, Tucker built a nationwide network of payday lending businesses, becoming a... View Details