Borrowing And Debt - Publications - Faculty & Research

10 Jan 2023
Research & Ideas

How to Live Happier in 2023: Diversify Your Social Circle

Norton borrows another concept from economics—diminishing returns. “If you make $30,000 and you get $10,000, that’s huge—but if you make a million dollars and get $10,000, it’s... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

21 May 2024
Research & Ideas

What the Rise of Far-Right Politics Says About the Economy in an Election Year

dissatisfaction. In Italy, it’s a matter of scarce resources. In Brazil, it is the perception of or actual corruption. How do both create openings for far-right movements? Rettl: In the Italian case, there is a perception that you can't increase the amount of public... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

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Help - Alumni

and growth. Visit Baker for Alumni to learn more. How can I get a library card? HBS alumni are eligible for lifelong access and borrowing to all Harvard Libraries, including... View Details

18 Apr 2023
Research & Ideas

What Happens When Banks Ditch Coal: The Impact Is 'More Than Anyone Thought'

Consumers who are eager to mitigate climate change can take many actions, such as reducing the number of airline flights they take or installing solar panels on their homes. But the planet is in a race against time, and individual action alone won’t help most countries... View Details

Keywords: by Barbara DeLollis; Financial Services; Mining

Research Summary

Wearing a Red Hat ¨C The Impact of Activist Industrial Policy on Software Development in China

The idea that the government should steer economic development by strategically hand-picking and managing certain industries is controversial but appeals to many developing countries that are eager to upgrade their industries. In this paper, I study China's recent... View Details

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Global Crises Data by Country - Behavioral Finance & Financial Stability

exchange rate crises, stock market crises, sovereign debt growth and default, and many other data series. To see Carmen’s related research, please visit her website here. The... View Details

Teaching Interest

Large-Scale Investment (LSI, MBA Elective Curriculum)

By: Benjamin C. Esty

Large-Scale Investment (LSI) is a case-based course about project finance that is designed for second-year MBA students. Project finance involves the creation of a legally independent project company financed with nonrecourse debt for the purpose of investing in a... View Details

Keywords: Project Finance; Corporate Finance; Corporate Governance; Valuation; Capital Budgeting

July – August 2009
Article

The Descent of Finance

What if the current recession turns out to be like the Great Depression of 1929-1933? Four years from now, the United States might find itself with a still-shrinking economy, half as many banks as in 2009, a third as many hedge funds, and retail banking resembling a... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; International Finance; Globalized Economies and Regions; Business and Government Relations; Financial Services Industry

Citation

10 Aug 2010
First Look

First Look: August 10

dollars of its $26 billion in debt obligations. This case describes Dubai's development strategy in detail and narrates how, as part of that strategy, a series of state-owned holding companies accumulated... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

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Finance - Faculty & Research

Working Paper Sovereign Default and the Decline in Interest Rates By: Max Miller , James D. Paron and Jessica Wachter Sovereign debt yields have declined dramatically over the... View Details

06 Jun 2007
Research & Ideas

Behavioral Finance—Benefiting from Irrational Investors

target—and building a new factory. If the target and the factory each cost $100, and debt can only be used to finance one of the two transactions, how should the remaining $100... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

18 May 2022
Research & Ideas

Are Banks the ‘Bad Guys’? Overdraft Fees Are Crushing Low-Income Customers

Payday lenders have long been cast as villains for charging consumers sky-high interest rates, leaving borrowers who live paycheck to paycheck struggling to repay loans. But conventional banks are just as guilty of using fees to penalize... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Financial Services

March 2005 (Revised July 2007)
Case

Capital Controls in Chile in the 1990s (A)

By: Laura Alfaro, Rafael M. Di Tella and Ingrid Vogel

In 1991, Chile adopted a framework of capital controls focused on reducing the massive flows of foreign investment coming into the country as international interest rates remained low. Capital inflows threatened the Central Bank's ability to manage the exchange rate... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Economic Growth; Financial Crisis; Capital; Governance Controls; Business and Government Relations; Chile

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Africa - Global

Regina Wittenberg-Moerman To mitigate information asymmetry about borrowers in developing economies, digital lenders use machine-learning algorithms and nontraditional data from borrowers’ mobile devices.... View Details

01 Feb 2021
Blog Post

Choosing the Right Student Loan

At HBS, we consider getting your MBA a shared investment in your future. This means that while we offer generous financial aid, we also expect all students to contribute to their education through a combination of savings and student... View Details

July 2005 (Revised September 2020)
Case

The U.S. Current Account Deficit

By: Laura Alfaro, Rafael Di Tella, Ingrid Vogel, Renee Kim, Sarah Jeong, Matthew Johnson and Jonathan Schlefer

Investors and policymakers throughout the world were confronted with the risk of painful economic consequences arising from the large U.S. current account deficit. In 2007, the U.S. current account deficit was $731 billion, equivalent to 5.3% of GDP. The implications... View Details

Keywords: World Economy; Macroeconomics; Borrowing and Debt; Currency; Foreign Direct Investment; Business and Government Relations; United States

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06 Aug 2020
Blog Post

My HBS Financial Aid Story: Why I Chose to Invest in My Future

My first thought after getting accepted to HBS was, “I can’t believe I got in! I need to call my mom!” The second was, “How am I going to pay for this?” I grew up thinking debt was unequivocally bad. Many people in my life discussed... View Details

21 Nov 2022
Research & Ideas

Buy Now, Pay Later: How Retail's Hot Feature Hurts Low-Income Shoppers

Online shopping features that let consumers pay for goods in interest-free installments exploded during the pandemic, but new research questions the riskiness of such services: Are people getting in over their heads? Buy now, pay later (BNPL) financing has snowballed... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Retail; Financial Services; Technology

01 Apr 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Opting Out of Good Governance

Keywords: by C. Fritz Foley, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Jonathan Greenstein & Eric Zwick

2018
Book

New Perspectives on the History of Political Economy

By: Robert Fredona and Sophus A. Reinert

This volume offers a snapshot of the resurgent historiography of political economy in the wake of the ongoing global financial crisis and suggests fruitful new agendas for research on the political-economic nexus as it has developed in the Western world since the end... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Government and Politics; History

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