Publications

Research Summary

Islamic Financing Practices

By: Samuel L. Hayes

Samuel L. Hayes III is examining (with faculty of Harvard University's Law School and Center for Middle Eastern Studies) Islamic banking and investment practices. Because the Koran prohibits the payment of fixed interest and guarantees on funds invested either with... View Details

July 2009 (Revised January 2012)
Case

Risk Management at Wellfleet Bank: All That Glitters Is Not Gold

By: Anette Mikes

This case motivates a debate on the role of staff functions, such as risk management: what does it mean for them to be independent, and at the same time, to partner the business lines? The case describes the risk assessment process in the corporate banking arm of... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Judgments; Credit; Banks and Banking; Governance Controls; Risk Management; Mathematical Methods

October 2012
Article

Securitization without Adverse Selection: The Case of CLOs

By: Effi Benmelech, Jennifer Dlugosz and Victoria Ivashina

In this paper, we investigate whether securitization was associated with risky lending in the corporate loan market by examining the performance of individual loans held by CLOs. We employ two different datasets that identify loan holdings for a large set of CLOs and... View Details

Keywords: Personal Finance; Performance; Markets; Banks and Banking; Debt Securities; Investment Portfolio; Financing and Loans

24 Sep 2024
Research & Ideas

Why Small Businesses Deserve More Credit

study with Deniz Aydin, an assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis’s Olin Business School. Test case in Turkey To test how small firms manage and use their debt, Aydin and Kim turned to extensive lending data from a... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Banking; Banking

2020
Working Paper

The Effects of Information on Credit Market Competition: Evidence from Credit Cards

By: C. Fritz Foley, Agustin Hurtado, Andres Liberman and Alberto Sepulveda

We show empirically that public credit information increases competition in credit markets. We access data that cover all credit card borrowers in Chile and include details about relationship borrowers have with each lender. We exploit a natural experiment whereby a... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Credit; Financial Intermediaries; Credit; Information; Competition; Credit Cards; Financial Institutions

SSRN

2014
Working Paper

Poverty and Crime: Evidence from Rainfall and Trade Shocks in India

By: Lakshmi Iyer and Petia Topalova

Does poverty lead to crime? We shed light on this question using two independent and exogenous shocks to household income in rural India: the dramatic reduction in import tariffs in the early 1990s and rainfall variations. We find that trade shocks, previously shown to... View Details

Keywords: Rainfall; Weather; Crime; Trade Liberalization; India; Crime and Corruption; Poverty; India

SSRN

December 2002 (Revised January 2004)
Case

Basel II: Assessing the Default and Loss Characteristics of Project Finance Loans (A)

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Aldo Sesia

In June 1999, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision announced plans to revise the capital standards for banks. The Basel Committee believed that project loans were significantly riskier than corporate loans and, therefore, warranted higher capital charges under... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Project Finance; Financing and Loans; Projects; Standards; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry

March 2006 (Revised December 2013)
Case

Hexcel Turnaround — 2001 (A)

By: Paul W. Marshall, James Quinn and Reed Martin

Hexcel's new CEO is faced with deciding how to "take out" $60 million in cash costs in fiscal 2002, as two of the company's end markets—electronics and commercial aerospace—are expected to decline precipitously. Options include closing plants, exiting a business, or... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Negotiation; Management Teams; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategy; Change Management; Crisis Management; Borrowing and Debt; Aerospace Industry; Electronics Industry; United States

25 Oct 2020
Research & Ideas

The Dark Side of Fintech Borrowing

fintech lenders harvest deeper insight into those borrowers that banks typically reject after running a standard credit check. Fintech lenders claim to consult additional metrics like utility bills or rent payments to identify... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Banking; Banking

October 2013 (Revised November 2013)
Case

Blackstone and the Sale of Citigroup's Loan Portfolio

By: Victoria Ivashina and David Scharfstein

The credit boom that preceded the 2007-2009 financial crisis led to several lending practices that exposed banks to large risks. In particular, when the financial crisis unraveled, there were several billion dollars' worth of leveraged buyout (LBO) loans that were... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Private Equity; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Credit Derivatives and Swaps; Financial Markets; Investment; Banking Industry; Banking Industry

Article

Are Self-service Customers Satisfied or Stuck?

By: Ryan W. Buell, Dennis Campbell and Frances X. Frei

This paper investigates the impact of self-service technology (SST) usage on customer satisfaction and retention. Specifically, we disentangle the distinct effects of satisfaction and switching costs as drivers of retention among self-service customers. Our empirical... View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Information Technology; Customer Satisfaction; Competition; Cost; Banks and Banking; Behavior; Market Transactions; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques

Find at Harvard

14 Aug 2014
Working Paper Summaries

The State of Small Business Lending: Credit Access During the Recovery and How Technology May Change the Game

Keywords: by Karen Mills & Brayden McCarthy; Banking; Banking

2022
Chapter

Lessons Learned from Support to Business during COVID-19

By: Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, Benjamin Iverson and Adi Sunderam

The authors survey the new federal subsidies and loans provided to businesses in the first year of the pandemic—including the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program, and aid targeted at specific industries such as airlines... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Small Business; Government Legislation; Policy

Research Summary

Credit Supply Shocks, Network Effects, and the Real Economy

By: Laura Alfaro

We consider the real effects of bank lending shocks and how they permeate the economy through buyer-supplier linkages. We combine administrative data on all firms in Spain with a matched bank-firm-loan dataset with information on the universe of corporate loans for... View Details

13 Feb 2007
First Look

First Look: February 13, 2007

Working PapersAdding Bricks to Clicks: The Effects of Store Openings on Sales through Direct Channels Authors:Jill Avery, Mary Caravella, John Deighton, and Thomas Steenburgh Abstract We assess the effect of opening physical retail... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2021
Chapter

Business Continuity Insurance in the Next Disaster

By: Samuel Gregory Hanson, Adi Sunderam and Eric Zwick

This article draws lessons from the business support policies pursued in the COVID-19 pandemic to guide policy design for the next disaster. We contrast the performance of the Paycheck Protection Program to the Main Street Lending Program to illustrate how design... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Policy; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Financing and Loans; United States

April 2011
Article

Ownership Structure and the Cost of Corporate Borrowing

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

This article identifies an important channel through which excess control rights affect firm value. Using a new, hand-collected data set on corporate ownership and control of 3,468 firms in 22 countries during the 1996-2008 period, we find that the cost of debt... View Details

Keywords: Borrowing and Debt; Cash Flow; Cost; Financing and Loans; Governance Controls; Ownership Stake; Business and Shareholder Relations

Find at Harvard

June 2023
Article

Why Is Dollar Debt Cheaper? Evidence from Peru

By: Bryan Gutiérrez, Victoria Ivashina and Juliana Salomao

In emerging markets, a significant share of corporate loans are denominated in dollars. Using novel data that enables us to see currency and the cost of credit, in addition to several other transaction-level characteristics, we re-examine the reasons behind dollar... View Details

Keywords: Emerging Market Corporate Debt; Currency Mismatch; Liability Dollarization; Carry Trade; Currency; Emerging Markets; Borrowing and Debt; Interest Rates; Peru

SSRN

2010
Working Paper

Regulating for Legitimacy: Consumer Credit Access in France and America

By: J. Gunnar Trumbull

Theories of legitimate regulation have emphasized the role of governments either in fixing market failures to promote greater efficiency or in restricting the efficient functioning of markets in order to pursue public welfare goals. In either case, features of markets... View Details

Keywords: Borrowing and Debt; Credit; Financial Markets; Personal Finance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business History; Business and Government Relations; Welfare; France; United States