Finance
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- May 2022
- Case
Rawbank's Illico Cash: Can 'Fast Money' Overcome Cash Dependency in the DRC?
By: Lauren Cohen and Grace HeadingerThomas 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 literally promised “Fast Cash” for its users who also had a Rawbank account. Unlike most mobile money platforms on the African continent, Illico cash was backed by an established bank – not a technology or a telecommunications company. As he contemplated Rawbank’s next strategic move, the future of Illico Cash, and the bank’s future moves into digital payment systems in the DRC, he saw multiple challenges to Illico Cash’s adoption in several regions across the DRC. Seeing lower-than-anticipated usage rates, he wondered if local preferences for cash seemed just too powerful to overcome. Can the bank’s digital payments efforts overcome hurdles in local infrastructure, entrenched interests that favored cash, and currency instability? Would crafting a digital ecosystem be a worthwhile investment for Rawbank without a wholesale structural shift in beliefs?
- May 2022
- Case
Rawbank's Illico Cash: Can 'Fast Money' Overcome Cash Dependency in the DRC?
By: Lauren Cohen and Grace HeadingerThomas 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 literally promised “Fast Cash” for its users who also had a Rawbank account....
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- Article
Weak Corporate Insolvency Rules: The Missing Driver of Zombie Lending
By: Bo Becker and Victoria Ivashina"Zombie lending"—lending to less-productive firms at subsidized rates—can help banks with misaligned incentives in the short run, but it prolongs economic downturns. We propose that inefficient resolution of insolvency is a significant contributor to this problem. We exploit variation in the efficiency of insolvency across countries to show that lack of formal bankruptcies, cheap (zombie) credit, and stickiness of existing creditors is more common in bad economic periods when insolvency works less well.
- Article
Weak Corporate Insolvency Rules: The Missing Driver of Zombie Lending
By: Bo Becker and Victoria Ivashina"Zombie lending"—lending to less-productive firms at subsidized rates—can help banks with misaligned incentives in the short run, but it prolongs economic downturns. We propose that inefficient resolution of insolvency is a significant contributor to this problem. We exploit variation in the efficiency of insolvency across countries to show that...
About the Unit
Our strategy is to assemble and nurture a faculty whose interests and skills complement each other, and who work well together:
a) to produce a broad range of finance-related research that is published in top-tier scientific and practitioner journals, and that addresses issues of present and future importance to managers (including regulators and policy makers);
b) to develop highly-relevant and intellectually rigorous MBA and executive education courses; and
c) to mentor future academics through the Business Economics doctoral program.
Our applied focus and access to business organizations are major advantages which are reinforced by our students and our case-based approach. We have a faculty with broad expertise, and we have resources, field contacts, and institutional support, all of which we can leverage to do richer work and be more productive than we could at other institutions.
Recent Publications
Red Hen Baking Company (Abridged)
- May 2022 |
- Supplement |
- Faculty Research
Rawbank's Illico Cash: Can 'Fast Money' Overcome Cash Dependency in the DRC?
- May 2022 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
From GOP to NFT: Anthony Scaramucci and the Launch of Flatter NFT
- May 2022 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
Weak Corporate Insolvency Rules: The Missing Driver of Zombie Lending
- Article |
- AEA Papers and Proceedings
Crises and Collective Purpose: Distraction or Liberation?
- 2022 |
- Chapter |
- Faculty Research
Can Gambling Increase Savings? Empirical Evidence on Prize-Linked Savings Accounts
- May 2022 |
- Article |
- Management Science
Harvard Business Publishing
Seminars & Conferences
There are no upcoming events.