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- January 2025
- Case
Untapped Global: Financing Africa's Missing Middle
By: Raymond Kluender and Emanuele Colonnelli
In November 2024, Jim Chu, founder and CEO of Untapped Global, faced mounting internal tensions over the company’s strategic direction. Untapped had developed a data-driven revenue-based financing (RBF) model to address the “missing middle” problem—the $5.2 trillion... View Details
Keywords: Social Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Working Capital; Private Equity; Financial Strategy; Microfinance; International Finance; Currency Exchange Rate; Profit Sharing; Revenue; Developing Countries and Economies; Economic Growth; Emerging Markets; Mission and Purpose; Small Business; Entrepreneurial Finance; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Africa; Nigeria; South Africa; Kenya; Uganda; California; San Francisco
- 2024
- Working Paper
How Do Global Portfolio Investors Hedge Currency Risk?
By: Robin Greenwood and Alex Cheema-Fox
We use monthly portfolio data from one of the world’s largest custodian banks, with over $40 trillion assets under custody, to study how global portfolio investors hedge foreign exchange risk in their equity and fixed income portfolios over the past 25 years. The data... View Details
- October 2024
- Teaching Note
El Salvador: Launching Bitcoin as Legal Tender
By: Laura Alfaro
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 322-055. In June 2021, Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president, surprised the world with the announcement that the country would adopt bitcoin as legal tender, becoming the first nation to do so. Bitcoin was mostly used for trading and had... View Details
- November 2023
- Article
A Quantity-Driven Theory of Term Premia and Exchange Rates
We develop a model in which specialized bond investors must absorb shocks to the supply and demand for long-term bonds in two currencies. Since long-term bonds and foreign exchange are both exposed to unexpected movements in short-term interest rates, a shift in the... View Details
- 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
- April 2023
- Article
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
- 2022
- Article
Climate Change Vulnerability and Currency Returns
By: Alex Cheema-Fox, George Serafeim and Hui (Stacie) Wang
Using measures of physical risk from climate change, we develop a methodology to allocate currency pairs according to a country’s vulnerability and construct portfolios with decreasing vulnerability to physical risk. We show that non-G10 currencies are more vulnerable... View Details
- March 2022 (Revised February 2024)
- Case
El Salvador: Launching Bitcoin as Legal Tender
By: Laura Alfaro, Carla Larangeira and Ruth Costas
In June 2021, Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president, surprised the world with the announcement that the country would adopt bitcoin as legal tender, becoming the first nation to do so. Bitcoin was mostly used for trading and had one of the most volatile track records... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Markups to Financial Intermediation in Foreign Exchange Markets
By: Jonathan Wallen
On average from 2013 to 2020, foreign asset managers in net sold forward 1.1 trillion U.S. dollars. This forward sale of dollars hedges the currency mismatch of foreign investment in U.S. dollar assets. By accommodating this demand, U.S. and European banks earn an... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
The International Price of Remote Work
By: Agostina Brinatti, Alberto Cavallo, Javier Cravino and Andres Drenik
We study how the price of remote work is determined in a globalized labor market using data from a large web-based job platform, where workers from around the world compete for remote jobs. Despite the global nature of the platform, we find that remote wages are higher... View Details
- May 2021 (Revised September 2021)
- Case
Accounting for Bitcoin at Tesla
By: Charles C.Y. Wang and Siyu Zhang
On February 8, 2021, Tesla revealed, through its 10-K filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), that it had purchased $1.5 billion of Bitcoin, totaling 7.5% of the company’s cash, and that it planned to accept payments in the cryptocurrency soon. These... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Currency Hedging in Emerging Markets: Managing Cash Flow Exposure
By: Laura Alfaro, Mauricio Calani and Liliana Varela
Foreign currency derivative markets are among the largest in the world, yet their role in emerging markets in particular, is relatively understudied. We study firms' currency risk exposure and their hedging choices by employing a unique dataset covering the universe of... View Details
- Article
Tariff Passthrough at the Border and at the Store: Evidence from U.S. Trade Policy
By: Alberto Cavallo, Gita Gopinath, Brent Neiman and Jenny Tang
We use micro data collected at the border and the store to characterize the price impact of recent US trade policy on importers, exporters, and consumers. At the border, import tariff passthrough is much higher than exchange rate passthrough. Chinese exporters did not... View Details
Keywords: Trade Policy; Tariffs; Exchange Rate Passthrough; Economics; Trade; Policy; Currency Exchange Rate; Price; United States
- 2020
- Chapter
Reserve Accumulation, Sovereign Debt, and Exchange Rate Policy
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
In the past decade, foreign participation in local-currency bond markets in emerging countries increased dramatically. Additionally, emerging countries are increasingly deviating from inflation targeting regimes, managing their exchange rate and engaging in... View Details
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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 (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