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- November 2019
- Case
Floating the Exchange Rate: In Pursuit of the Chinese Dream
By: Laura Alfaro and Sarah Jeong
In the decades following 2005, China faced significant financial challenges. Inflation spiraled upwards and China’s economy stagnated in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. The country’s leaders took an interventionist approach to weather the storm, controlling... View Details
- November 2019
- Case
Edita: Making Choices in Uncertain Times
By: Caroline M. Elkins, Juan Alcácer, Alpana Thapar and Youssef Abdel Aal
After 15 years of steady growth and expansion, Edita, a leading Egyptian snack producer, faced a series of challenges in the wake of the Arab Spring. In January 2011, the Egyptian Revolution sparked political and economic turmoil that reflected the waves of protest and... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Real Exchange Rate Behavior: New Evidence from Matched Retail Goods
By: Alberto Cavallo, Brent Neiman and Roberto Rigobon
We use a dataset containing daily prices for thousands of matched retail products in nine countries to study tradable-goods real exchange rates. Prices were collected from the websites of large multi-channel retailers and then carefully matched into narrowly-defined... View Details
- September 2019
- Article
The Dollar, Bank Leverage and Deviations from Covered Interest Parity
By: Stefan Advjiev, Wenxin Du, Catherine Koch and Hyun Song Shin
We document a triangular relationship in that a stronger dollar goes hand in hand with larger deviations from covered interest parity (CIP) and contractions of cross-border bank lending in dollars. We argue that underpinning the triangle is the role of the dollar as a... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
The Effect of Payment Choices on Online Retail: Evidence from the 2016 Indian Demonetization
By: Chaithanya Bandi, Antonio Moreno, Donald Ngwe and Zhiji Xu
The Indian banknote demonetization in 2016 was one of the most significant international events of that year. Overnight, 86% of Indian currency in circulation was declared invalid unless exchanged for new bills. The sudden and unexpected demonetization constituted a... View Details
- June 2019
- Article
Debt Redemption and Reserve Accumulation
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
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
- February 2019
- Editorial
Introduction To: The Euro at Twenty
By: Laura Alfaro and Paul R. Bergin
The article introduces a special volume on the “Euro at Twenty” as the currency was first introduced January 1, 1999. The volume includes papers by renowned leaders and thinkers: Jean-Claude Trichet, former President of the European Central Bank; Claudia Buch,... View Details
- November 2018 (Revised June 2022)
- Teaching Note
AirFox (A): Embracing the Blockchain and an ICO
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Nathaniel Schwalb
Teaching Note for HBS No. 818-097. In summer 2017, Victor Santos, CEO of AirFox, considered whether to pivot his startup towards a new product built with blockchain—a quickly growing technology at the time. AirFox was an early stage startup that sold... View Details
- October 2018
- Case
P-Will at DISCO
By: Ethan Bernstein, Naoko Jinjo and Yuna Sakuma
From the outside, DISCO—a Japan-based manufacturer of precision tools for semiconductor production devices—appeared to be a rather ordinary company that had achieved rather extraordinary success: it had simultaneously achieved 70% global market share, had lifted its... View Details
- June 2018
- Article
Deviations from Covered Interest Rate Parity
By: Wenxin Du, Alexander Tepper and Adrien Verdelhan
We find that deviations from the covered interest rate parity (CIP) condition imply large, persistent, and systematic arbitrage opportunities in one of the largest asset markets in the world. Contrary to the common view, these deviations for major currencies are not... View Details
- June 2018
- Case
Feeding America (A)
By: Scott Duke Kominers and Alan Lam
This case describes how Feeding America, the third-largest nonprofit organization in the U.S., designed a marketplace for allocating donated food across its network of food banks. It considers the promises and pitfalls of using market-based allocation in the context of... View Details
- May 2018 (Revised January 2019)
- Case
AirFox (A): Embracing the Blockchain and an ICO
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Edward B. Berk and Nate Schwalb
In summer 2017, Victor Santos, CEO of AirFox, considered whether to pivot his startup towards a new product built with blockchain—a quickly growing technology at the time. AirFox was an early stage startup that sold Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to small telecom... View Details
- May 2018 (Revised January 2019)
- Teaching Note
Lind Equipment
By: Richard S. Ruback, Royce Yudkoff and Ahron Rosenfeld
Teaching Note for HBS No. 212-012. Lind Equipment, a Canadian manufacturer and distributor of industrial electrical safety equipment, was purchased in December 2007 by Brian Astl (HBS 2006) and Sean Van Doorselaer. Lind’s performance was negatively impacted by the... View Details
- February 2018
- Case
Infrastructure in Nigeria: Unlocking Pension Fund Investments
By: John Macomber and Pippa Tubman Armerding
The so-called “infrastructure finance gap” was a problem in Nigeria as in many parts of the world. Infrastructure projects like power plants and dams were very large capital investments that could generate long-term consistent cash flows, but their financing and... View Details
- February 2018 (Revised August 2018)
- Case
Blue Haven Initiative: The PEGAfrica Investment
By: Vikram S. Gandhi, Caitlin Reimers Brumme and Amram Migdal
This case examines Blue Haven Initiative (BHI), an impact investing fund and family office, and one of its investments, PEGAfrica (PEG). BHI founder Liesel Pritzker Simmons’ motivations for using her family wealth to start a family office focused on impact investing,... View Details
Keywords: Impact Investing; Family Office; Development; International Development; International Development Investing; Development Fund; Sustainability; Solar Energy; Solar; Pay As You Go; PAYG; MFI; Social Venture; Business Ventures; Acquisition; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Economics; Development Economics; Energy; Energy Conservation; Energy Sources; Renewable Energy; Social Entrepreneurship; Finance; Assets; Asset Pricing; Capital; Capital Budgeting; Capital Structure; Venture Capital; Cash; Cash Flow; Currency; Currency Exchange Rate; Equity; Private Equity; Financial Instruments; Debt Securities; Stock Shares; Financing and Loans; Microfinance; International Finance; Investment; Investment Return; Investment Activism; Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Price; Geography; Geographic Location; Emerging Markets; Ownership; Ownership Stake; Private Ownership; Social Enterprise; Value; Valuation; Value Creation; Energy Industry; Financial Services Industry; Green Technology Industry; Africa; United States
- 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
- Article
Fans Watch Taylor Swift. Economists Watch the Fans
The star will sell tickets first to fans who "boost" her work online. It's an auction, but the currency is not money. View Details
Keywords: Auctions
- June 12, 2017
- Article
Corporate Balance Sheets in Emerging Markets: A Comparison of the Global Crisis and the Asian Financial Crisis
By: Laura Alfaro, Gonzalo Asis, Anusha Chari and Ugo Panizza
Leverage levels in emerging market firms rose dramatically in the aftermath of the Global Crisis. This column examines whether concerns of a repeat of the Asian financial crisis, which was largely attributed to corporate financial roots, are justified. While firm... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Lessons Unlearned? Corporate Debt in Emerging Markets
By: Laura Alfaro, Gonzalo Asis, Anusha Chari and Ugo Panizza
This paper documents a set of new stylized facts about leverage and financial fragility for emerging market firms following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Corporate debt vulnerability indicators during the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) attributed to corporate... View Details
- April 2017 (Revised February 2020)
- Case
Restructuring Ukraine
By: Kristin Mugford, Seema Amble and Tian Feng
In June 2015, Ukraine found itself struggling with a volatile and devalued currency, dramatically diminished foreign reserves, and a projected financing shortfall of $40 billion. Ukraine’s new government sought to return the nation to stability following political... View Details
Keywords: Exchange Rates; Politics; Macroeconomics; Financial Crisis; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Restructuring; Economy; Currency Exchange Rate; Banks and Banking; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Bonds; Sovereign Finance; Capital Markets; Credit; Debt Securities; Financial Liquidity; Financial Markets; Government and Politics; Ukraine