Publications
Publications
Show Results For
-
All HBS Web
(164)
- Faculty Publications (93)
Page 1 of
93
Results
→
- May 2022
- Case
Rawbank's Illico Cash: Can 'Fast Money' Overcome Cash Dependency in the DRC?
By: Lauren Cohen and Grace Headinger
Thomas de Dreux-Brézé, the Head of Strategy and Project Management at Rawbank Congo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was perplexed as he reviewed annual adoption rates for the bank’s launch of Illico Cash 2.0. As the bank’s mobile money app, Illico Cash...
View Details
Keywords:
Fintech;
Inflation;
Deflation;
Rural;
Urban;
Emerging Market;
Mobile Technology;
Finance;
Money;
Inflation and Deflation;
Business Growth and Maturation;
Decision Choices and Conditions;
Demographics;
Developing Countries and Economies;
Corporate Entrepreneurship;
Behavioral Finance;
Currency;
Banks and Banking;
Commercial Banking;
Financial Strategy;
Rural Scope;
Urban Scope;
Innovation Strategy;
Emerging Markets;
Network Effects;
Consumer Behavior;
Mobile and Wireless Technology;
Technology Adoption;
Banking Industry;
Financial Services Industry;
Technology Industry;
Congo, Democratic Republic of the
- March 2022 (Revised May 2022)
- Case
Reclaiming the Land of Purple: Purpl’s Mission to Unlock Finance in Lebanon
By: Lauren Cohen and Grace Headinger
Karl Naim, Co-Founder and CEO of Purpl, embarked on a venture to lower remittance costs for his native Lebanon. Since October 2019, the Lebanese economy had entered a free fall as its banking sector collapsed and large swathes of its population were plunged into...
View Details
Keywords:
Business Startup;
Fintech;
Inflation;
Deflation;
Cross-border Frictions;
Remittances;
Business Startups;
Diasporas;
Financial Crisis;
Money;
Entrepreneurship;
Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues;
Poverty;
Financial Institutions;
Banking Industry;
Financial Services Industry;
Technology Industry;
Lebanon
- 2022
- Working Paper
What Can Stockouts Tell Us About Inflation? Evidence from Online Micro Data
By: Alberto Cavallo and Oleksiy Kryvtsov
We use a detailed micro dataset on product availability to construct a direct high-frequency measure of consumer product shortages during the 2020–2022 pandemic. We document a widespread multi-fold rise in shortages in nearly all sectors early in the pandemic. Over...
View Details
- May 2021
- Case
Colombia: An Economic Premium to Peace?
Colombia, once the fastest growing country in Latin America, continues to struggle with productivity. Both labor productivity and total factor productivity have been low for the past decade, despite economic growth of 4.7% annually. Many factors contribute, which...
View Details
Keywords:
Productivity;
Productivity Growth;
Conflict;
Labor Force Participation;
Labor Market;
Competitiveness;
Dutch Disease;
Security;
Peace;
Informality;
Labor Laws;
Total Factor Productivity;
Labor Productivity;
COVID-19 Pandemic;
Economics;
Development Economics;
Economic Growth;
Economy;
Macroeconomics;
Conflict Management;
Competitive Advantage;
Infrastructure;
Negotiation;
Inflation and Deflation;
Non-Renewable Energy;
National Security;
Government Administration;
Latin America;
Central America;
Colombia;
South America
- October 2020 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
Automercados Plaza's: Surviving Venezuela's Hyperinflation
By: Alberto Cavallo, Mariana Cal and Carla Larangeira
Under the rule of presidents Hugo Chávez and Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela experienced one of the worst economic and political meltdowns in modern history, culminating with a massive hyperinflation. Remarkably, during this dramatic times Automercados Plaza's had grown to...
View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Inflation with COVID Consumption Baskets
By: Alberto Cavallo
The Covid Pandemic led to changes in expenditure patterns that can introduce significant bias in the measurement of Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation. Using publicly-available data on card transactions, I update the official CPI weights and re-calculate inflation...
View Details
- February 2020 (Revised August 2021)
- Case
Australia: Commodities, Competitiveness, Climate and China
By: Richard H.K. Vietor and Laura Alfaro
For the past few decades, Australia has dealt with the benefits and costs of repeated mining booms—inflation, a housing bubble, a current account deficit, and growing dependence on China. Between 1996 and 2007, however, Australia had most of these issues under control...
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
- 2020
- Working Paper
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
- 2019
- Article
More Amazon Effects: Online Competition and Pricing Behaviors
By: Alberto Cavallo
I study how online competition, with its shrinking margins, algorithmic pricing technologies, and the transparency of the web, can change the pricing behavior of large retailers in the U.S. and affect aggregate inflation dynamics. In particular, I show that in the past...
View Details
- April 2019 (Revised April 2020)
- Case
Reaganomics: Impact and Legacy
By: Tom Nicholas, John Masko and Matthew G. Preble
During the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan and his administration instituted several far-reaching economic policies that had both near- and long-term impacts on such aspects of the U.S. economy as monetary policy, inflation, the tax structure, and the role of...
View Details
- July 2018 (Revised July 2018)
- Teaching Note
Argentina Power—Don’t Cry for Me Argentina
By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Sayiddah Fatima McCree
Teaching Note for HBS No. 218-041. This case concerns a complex potential energy infrastructure investment in Argentina by a global conglomerate shortly after Mauricio Macri (“Macri”) became President of Argentina in 2015. The central issues are (i) why was a country...
View Details
- June 2018
- Case
Japan: Deficits, Deflation and Debt
By: Richard H.K. Vietor and Haviland Sheldahl-Thomason
In April 2018, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was again in Washington to petition Donald Trump. After years of rapid, export-led growth, Japan had slumped into recession in 1991 and never really recovered. For the past 27 years, its economy has grown at 1.1% annually,...
View Details
- 2017
- Article
Inflation Bets or Deflation Hedges? The Changing Risks of Nominal Bonds
By: John Y. Campbell, Adi Sunderam and Luis M. Viceira
The covariance between U.S. Treasury bond returns and stock returns has moved considerably over time. While it was slightly positive on average in the period 1953–2009, it was unusually high in the early 1980s and negative in the 2000s, particularly in the downturns of...
View Details
- July 2017
- Article
Inflation Expectations, Learning, and Supermarket Prices: Evidence from Survey Experiments
By: Alberto Cavallo, Guillermo Cruces and Ricardo Perez-Truglia
Information frictions play a central role in the formation of household inflation expectations, but there is no consensus about their origins. We address this question with novel evidence from survey experiments. We document two main findings. First, individuals in...
View Details
- February 2017 (Revised January 2018)
- Case
Womenomics in Japan
By: Boris Groysberg, Mayuka Yamazaki, Nobuo Sato and David Lane
This case profiles Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's vigorous attempts to revive Japan's economy, specifically by advocating for a larger role for women in the economy—not as a matter of social policy or gender equity per se, but as an essential element of any solution to...
View Details
Keywords:
Gender Equality;
Japan;
Leadership;
Government-business Relations;
Shinzo Abe;
Economic Growth;
Aging Society;
Womenomics;
Abenomics;
Labor Market Discrimination;
Workplace Culture;
Women And Leadership;
Change Management;
Leading Change;
Gender;
Business and Government Relations;
Growth and Development;
Employment;
Working Conditions
- Article
L'autodiscipline en guise de régulation. La stratégie patronale à l'heure de la surchauffe économique en Suisse autour de 1960
By: Sabine Pitteloud
Die Strategie der Unternehmensverbände zur Bekämpfung der konjunkturellen «Überhitzung» um 1960 Sabine Pitteloud interessiert sich für den Versuch, privatwirtschaftliche Antworten auf die Teuerung der 1960er-Jahre zu finden. Arbeitgeber und Gewerkschaften waren sich...
View Details
- May 2016
- Supplement
2016 Update: Argentina Turns the Page
By: David E. Bell, Forest Reinhardt and Natalie Kindred
This brief case is a supplement to “Cresud and Argentina” (515-043) and “Note on Agriculture in Argentina” (515-069). Set in early 2016, it describes developments in Argentina under newly elected President Mauricio Macri, including the country’s return to international...
View Details
Keywords:
Argentina;
＂ Cresud;
Agriculture;
Economic Reform;
Economic Policy;
Land Investment;
Macri;
Currency;
Agribusiness;
Diversification;
Economy;
Emerging Markets;
Credit;
Currency Exchange Rate;
Investment;
Business and Government Relations;
Government and Politics;
Inflation and Deflation;
Trade;
Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry;
Argentina;
Buenos Aires;
South America
- Article
Learning from Potentially Biased Statistics: Household Inflation Perceptions and Expectations in Argentina
By: Alberto Cavallo, Guillermo Cruces and Ricardo Perez-Truglia
When forming expectations, households may be influenced by perceived bias in the information they receive. In this paper, we study how individuals learn from potentially biased statistics using data from both a natural experiment and a survey experiment during a...
View Details