More from these Authors

• Case | HBS Case Collection | November 2019 (Revised June 2020)

  Russia: A Drama In Three Acts

  Rawi Abdelal, Rafael Di Tella, Galit Goldstein and Sogomon Tarontsi

  The collapse of central authority in the Soviet Union in 1991 ushered in a period of revolutionary transformations for the states that emerged in its wake. The leaders of Russia, the USSR's successor, struggled to reestablish central authority while also seeking to avoid further disintegration, establish a democratic polity, and institute a market economy across the next several years. Russia would navigate further economic crisis and a swiftly evolving geopolitical order as it returned to the world stage. The case examines the different governance approaches adopted by Presidents Boris Yeltsin, Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, and concludes with a discussion of Russia’s strategic challenges and opportunities in 2020. The case focuses on problems of state authority; fiscal capacity; institutionalization of political parties; relations between the federal center and provincial governments; relations between the state and big business; economic policy; international relations; and models of economic development.

  Keywords: Business ＆ government relations; developing countries; government policy; policy change; Policy Making; Economic Systems; Economics; Globalization; Emerging Markets; Privatization; Non-Renewable Energy; Governance; Global Strategy; Corporate Governance; Policy; Business History; Lawfulness; Problems and Challenges; Business and Government Relations; Risk and Uncertainty; Strategy; Change Management; Russia; Moscow;

  Citation:

  Abdelal, Rawi, Rafael Di Tella, Galit Goldstein, and Sogomon Tarontsi. "Russia: A Drama In Three Acts." Harvard Business School Case 720-020, November 2019. (Revised June 2020.)  View Details

  CiteView DetailsEducatorsPurchase

  Related

• Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2020

  EMEs and COVID-19: Shutting Down in a World of Informal and Tiny Firms

  Laura Alfaro, Oscar Becerra and Marcela Eslava

  Emerging economies are characterized by an extremely high prevalence of informality, small-firm employment and jobs not fit for working from home. These features factor into how the COVID-19 crisis has affected the economy. We develop a framework that, based on accounting identities and actual data, quantifies potential job and income losses during the crisis and recovery for economies with different economic organization structures. Our analysis incorporates differential exposure of jobs across categories of firm-size and formality status, as well as sectors and occupations. We account for the direct supply shock caused by lockdowns, the idiosyncratic demand shock suffered by sectors that rely on high contact with their costumers, the transmission of both shocks through IO linkages, and the overall aggregate demand effect derived from these shocks. Applying our framework to data for Colombia, which exhibits an employment distribution similar to that of other emerging market countries, in particular Latin America, we find that well over 50% of jobs are at risk in the initial stages of the crisis. Because informal jobs and those not fit for telework are at higher risk, this number goes down to 33% if the US employment distribution is imposed on the Colombian data. As the crisis deepens, the risk of unemployment grows. However, informality rebounds quickly in the recovery, an employment at risk is quickly reduced to 20% of the baseline, all concentrated in formal jobs. Our findings point to the importance of action to maintain formal matches from dissolving, given their scarcity and rebuilding difficulty, while protecting the poor and the informal via income transfers.

  Keywords: COVID-19; emerging economies; informality; firm-size distribution; Health Pandemics; Developing Countries and Economies; Economy; System Shocks; Latin America;

  Citation:

  Alfaro, Laura, Oscar Becerra, and Marcela Eslava. "EMEs and COVID-19: Shutting Down in a World of Informal and Tiny Firms." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-125, June 2020.  View Details

  CiteView Details Read Now

  Related

• Case | HBS Case Collection | May 2020

  COVID-19: The Global Shutdown

  Laura Alfaro and Sarah Jeong

  In the first months of 2020, a pandemic overwhelmed the world. COVID-19, commonly known as the coronavirus, spread from China and created a severe public health emergency across countries. While an immediate fear of the disease’s impact on human life permeated society, the world battled another concern for the severe economic downturn that was brought about by attempts to suppress the virus. World trade, tourism, capital flows, remittances, and commodity prices collapsed. Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, the global GDP growth rate for 2020 was expected to be close to 2.3%. As of April 2020, multilateral organizations estimated that GDP would contract by 3%—way worse than the 0.1% contraction of 2009, and the deepest dive since the Great Depression. What policy options existed to mitigate the financial and economic distress of containment, and what factors did different countries weigh in deciding which paths to choose? Was there a terrible choice—either damage livelihoods through extended lockdowns, or sacrifice thousands or even millions of lives to the virus—or were policies reinforcing? What was the role of government, businesses, communities and individuals? After the worst of the health crisis was mitigated, what kind of shape would world economies take?

  Keywords: Trade; Microeconomics; Macroeconomics; Financial Crisis; Economy; Economic Systems; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Economic Sectors; Health Pandemics;

  Citation:

  Alfaro, Laura, and Sarah Jeong. "COVID-19: The Global Shutdown." Harvard Business School Case 320-108, May 2020.  View Details

  CiteView DetailsEducatorsPurchase

  Related