Private firms in developed and developing markets find themselves competing with the so-called "national champions"—private and state-owned enterprises that receive entitlements, mostly trade protections and/or subsidized credit from the government. Most of these national champions get support by proposing long-term projects with large capital investment that would usually not be easy to fund using private capital. This paper, written by Research by Sergio G. Lazzarini, Aldo Musacchio, Rodrigo Bandeira-de-Mello, and Rosilene Marcon, uses evidence from Brazil to look at what happens to firm performance, investment, and financial expenditures when companies get subsidized credit from the Brazilian National Bank of Economic and Social Development, known as BNDES.
Published in 2011
As nonprofits add more for-profit elements to their business models, they can suffer mission drift. Associate Professor Julie Battilana says hybrid organizations can stay on target if they focus on two factors: the employees they hire and the way they socialize those employees.
In deducing why some nations are more developed than others, it makes sense to look at their educational systems. While comparative studies on the subject focus either on developed nations or on differences between developed and developing economies, this paper hones in four of the largest developing nations at the turn of the twentieth century: Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC). Research was conducted by Aldo Musacchio of Harvard Business School, Laktika Chaundhary of Scripps College, Steven Nafziger of Williams College, and Se Yan of Peking University.
There is a trend in many developing countries toward governments buying minority stakes in private companies. While there has been ample discussion on the wisdom of such actions, little has been said about how governments can make such interventions work better. This paper aims to fill that void, using data from the Brazilian National Development Bank (BNDES). Research was conducted by Sergio G. Lazzarini of the Insper Institute of Education and Research, and Aldo Musacchio of Harvard Business School.
Published in 2010
In their new book, The Big Ditch, Harvard Business School professor Noel Maurer and economic historian Carlos Yu discuss the complicated history of the Panama Canal and its remarkable turnaround after Panama took control in 1999. Q&A with Maurer, plus book excerpt.
Business cycle fluctuations in developed economies tend to have very strong effects on developing countries, says a new study by Harvard Business School professor Diego Comin, Norman Loayza and Luis Serven of the World Bank, and Farooq Pasha of Boston College. The researchers have developed a quantitative model capable of explaining the amplitude and persistence of the effect that U.S. shocks have on Mexico's macroeconomic variables. The model is then used to provide an account of the drivers of business fluctuations in developing economies.
What are the effects of foreign bank entry in developing economies? In recent years, governments around the world have been opening up their banking systems to foreign competition. In Mexico, for example, the market share of foreign ownership of banks increased fivefold between 1997 and 2007. In this paper, Stanford professor Stephen Haber and HBS professor Aldo Musacchio describe their detailed study of the impact of foreign entry in Mexico during that period. Overall, results suggest that while foreign entry in Mexico is associated with greater stability of the banking system, it has not increased the availability of credit, and foreign entry is not a solution to a property rights environment that makes contract enforcement costly.
The Mexican petroleum expropriation of 1938 looms large as the beginning of Latin American resource nationalism and the apogee of America's "Good Neighbor" policy. In Mexico, the expropriation is viewed as a patriotic triumph, in which the federal government seized control of the country's most valuable natural resource. In the U.S., the temperate reaction of the Roosevelt Administration is seen as the decisive break with Washington's imperial relationship towards Latin America. Washington "curbed its finance capital," it is said, and downgraded the protection of American overseas private investments. In this paper, HBS professor Noel Maurer explains how the actual historical record diverges substantially from the accepted view.
How can multinationals, entrepreneurs, and investors identify and respond to new challenges and opportunities around the world? In this Q&A, HBS professors and strategy experts Tarun Khanna and Krishna G. Palepu offer a practical framework for succeeding in emerging markets. Plus: Book excerpt with action items.
When Brazil entered the 20th century, its companies were a model of transparency and offered investor protections that government did not. Can our financial regulators learn a lesson from history? HBS professor Aldo Musacchio shares insights from his new book.
In 1890, with only 15 percent of the population literate, Brazil had the lowest literacy rate among the large economies in the Americas. Yet between 1890 and 1940, Brazil had the most rapid increase in literacy rates in the Americas, catching up with and even surpassing some of its more educated peers such as Mexico, Colombia, and Venezuela. This jump in literacy was simultaneously accompanied by a brisk increase in the number of teachers, number of public schools, and enrollment rates. Why were political elites in Brazil willing to finance this expansion of public education for all? André Martínez-Fritscher of Banco de México, Aldo Musacchio of HBS, and Martina Viarengo of the London School of Economics explain how state governments secured funds to pay for education and examine the incentives of politicians to spend on education. They conclude that the progress made in education during these decades had mixed results in the long run.
Fragrance, eyeliner, toothpaste—the beauty business has permeated our lives like few other industries. But surprisingly little is known about its history, which over time has been shrouded in competitive secrecy. HBS history professor Geoffrey Jones offers one of the first authoritative accounts in Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry.
Published in 2009
Do endowments matter in determining the cost of capital for a country or state? Endowments, according to Banco de México's André C. Martínez Fritscher and HBS professor Aldo Musacchio, are the conditions that determine what kind of commodities can be produced and exported in a determined geographical region. Studying the determinants of the risk premium of the bonds issued by Brazilian states between 1891 and 1930—a period of extreme decentralization of fiscal revenues and expenditures in Brazil—the researchers find that risk premia are highly correlated with state public revenue per capita. Because these revenues came, to a large extent, from the taxes states levied on commodity exports, the researchers argue that endowments mattered to determine the cost of capital for states.
At the end of 2007, the U.S. economy entered a recession that, by the first quarter of 2009, had reduced U.S. GDP by 2.2 percent. The Mexican economy was showing no sign of distress until the U.S. recession began. Despite that, Mexican GDP declined by 7.8 percent during the same period. This and similar episodes from other developing countries motivate several questions: Why do shocks to developed economies affect developing countries to such an extent? Does the response of developing economies to shocks that originate in their developed neighbors account for the larger volatility of developing economies? More broadly, what ingredients do macroeconomic models need to incorporate in order to account for the unique features of economic fluctuations in developing economies? To investigate these questions, the researchers developed a two-country asymmetric model to study the business cycle in developing countries. The mechanisms introduced in the model should provide an accurate account of business cycles in other developing countries.
Agribusiness has come to be seen not just as economically important, but as a critical part of society. The future for this massive industry will be both exciting and complex.
Professor Diego Comin and fellow researchers find a little observed link between private savings and country growth. The work may offer a simple interpretation for the East Asia "miracle" and for failures in Latin America. Q&A.
Published in 2008
Mexico was the first emerging market compelled to reformulate the financial reporting of its banks as a result of a financial crisis. In the last decade, Mexico has undergone a process of internationalization of its banking industry. Today, more than 80 percent of the equity of Mexican banks belongs to internationally active bank corporations. This internationalization demands more transparent regulation, including standardized accounting rules and better disclosure of information. The case of Mexico can therefore serve as an example of the relevance of these changes, as well as of their scope and limitations. This paper attempts to clarify the nature and structure of the new accounting standards, and explains how they have affected financial statements and their interpretation.
Compiling a handbook on the current thinking in any area of study seems daunting enough, but the just-published Oxford Handbook of Business History carries an even larger mission: bring the lessons of business history to current research in other disciplines and to the practice of business management itself. A Q&A with coeditor Geoffrey Jones.
The early development of large multidivisional corporations in Latin America required much more than capable managers, new technologies, and large markets. Behind such corporations was a market for capital in which entrepreneurs had to attract investors to buy either debt or equity. This paper examines the investor protections included in corporate bylaws that enabled corporations in Brazil to attract investors in large numbers, thus generating a relatively low concentration of ownership and control in large firms before 1910. The case of Brazil is particularly interesting because, in Latin America before World War I, it boasted the second-largest equity market and largest number of traded companies. As HBS professor Aldo Musacchio shows, the considerable variation of investor protections over time at the country level, and even at the company level, urges cautions against notions about the persistency of institutions, especially of legal traditions.
Capitalism is not as widespread as economists would hope. Data from surveys of public opinion, as well as on the distribution of political parties, confirm the idea that capitalism doesn't flow to poor countries. In some countries, anti-market sentiment has increased in recent years, a period where the price of oil and other primary commodities have soared. This combination of anti-market sentiment and high oil prices has led to renegotiations of oil contracts and even nationalizations in some countries such as Bolivia and Venezuela. It is tempting for economists trained in the theory of political capture to argue that this is just another instance where special interests exploit the circumstances to make an extra dollar. Given that these nationalizations are often popular with the majority of voters, however, the researchers resist this temptation and ask if there are explanations where a positive correlation emerges between voter anti-market sentiment and dependence on oil.
