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To conduct international commerce, businesses have built an intricate system of networks that move money, information, and components around the world. These networks may look decentralized, but all too frequently, they have major choke points. The majority of global finance transactions, for instance, are relayed through a single organization in Belgium. Many global tech firms depend heavily on the chips Qualcomm makes for Android devices. A huge proportion of global communications are routed through private servers on U.S. soil. Increasingly, these choke points are being turned into political weapons by governments, and companies are getting caught in the cross fire. The stakes are high: Firms can go out of business if they're cut off from critical networks. They need to analyze their exposure and develop a strategy to protect themselves.

As the underlying technology of bitcoin, blockchain is expected to create a new economic system by revolutionizing the way we communicate over the internet. Blockchain seeks to improve information security and transparency by sharing encrypted data among peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. Due to its emphasis on security and trust, there is increased demand for blockchain's application in a variety of business sectors. The decentralized nature of blockchain creates the new concept of a token economy in which the community's revenue can be allocated to the actual content producers and service users who create value. This article looks at how blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are evolving and interconnected, creating a token economy through different business models. Blockchain is expected to be a key technology that enables new protocols for the establishment of a token economy in the future, leading to a new economic paradigm.

The case focuses on the risks and rewards of early-stage investing in a successful emerging market consumer start-up (i.e. non-tech), from seed funding in 2004 to raising expansion capital in 2019. We observe the founder of Sula Vineyards, a winemaker from the Nasik Valley in India, as he makes decisions about external fundraising. Case (A) takes the seed investor perspective. It follows Deepak Shahdadpuri, who stays invested in Sula for 13 years, gradually reducing his equity stake along the way. Cases (B) and (C) follow the company as it raises successively larger rounds of funding to fuel its growth and international expansion. As the Sula brand and CEO Rajeev Samant become increasingly well-known, the company attracts the attention of diverse investors ranging from European family offices, Asian institutional investors, venture capital and growth equity, and sovereign wealth funds. Given its emerging market setting, the case can be used to explore investment risks from political and regulatory uncertainty, and currency risk for US$-based institutional investors.

The case focuses on the risks and rewards of early-stage investing in a successful emerging market consumer start-up (i.e. non-tech), from seed funding in 2004 to raising expansion capital in 2019. We observe the founder of Sula Vineyards, a winemaker from the Nasik Valley in India, as he makes decisions about external fundraising. Case (A) takes the seed investor perspective. It follows Deepak Shahdadpuri, who stays invested in Sula for 13 years, gradually reducing his equity stake along the way. Cases (B) and (C) follow the company as it raises successively larger rounds of funding to fuel its growth and international expansion. As the Sula brand and CEO Rajeev Samant become increasingly well-known, the company attracts the attention of diverse investors ranging from European family offices, Asian institutional investors, venture capital and growth equity, and sovereign wealth funds. Given its emerging market setting, the case can be used to explore investment risks from political and regulatory uncertainty, and currency risk for US$-based institutional investors.

The case highlights the differing trajectories of two, contemporaneous models of microfinance in India. The well-known Grameen MFI Model made inroads in the mid-90s, primarily in the four southern states of India. This was in a setting where there was an extensive network of a pre-existing indigenously developed group lending model, called the Self-Help Group Bank Linkage (SHG Bank Linkage) model. Today, the Indian microfinance story stands at a crucial juncture with respect to these two models. The SHG model, while being recognized as a key player in changing the financial inclusion discourse in India, is no longer salient in the current financial inclusion narratives. Grameen MFIs on the other hand, are on their way to being "mainstreamed" as banks, pretty much along the lines of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Using the dramaturgical approach of the sociologist Erving Goffman (1922-1982), the case differentiates the two models based on the front-stage (borrower-groups) and back-stage (organizations, investors, and the State). This distinction is useful for our microfinance narrative because while the front-stage is steeped in discourses of community, and poverty alleviation; the back-stage revolves around the hard-nosed financial ratios, fund disbursement and recovery pressures, break-even analyses around lender-borrower relations - which are unrelated or even detrimental to the front-stage discourse. Differentiating between the front-stage and back-stage interactions thus allows us to reveal processes that played out very differently for both these microfinance models. It helps us parse out a key question: did the more globally attuned model Grameen Model end up gobbling the clunkier and local SHG Bank Linkage Model?

This case is essentially about economic growth and development in general, and about China in particular. It makes the topic of growth more interesting by discussing the triggering factors of the MIT through comparing the differences between a trapped and an escaped province, i.e., Shaanxi and Jiangsu, respectively. To alleviate the regional development gap, Shaanxi and Jiangsu became paired poverty alleviation partners in 1996 under the guidance of the Chinese central government. However, 20 years have passed and a huge gap still exists between the two provinces in many fields. Jiangsu's gross domestic product (GDP) per capita has surpassed the MIT range, while Shaanxi's has not, and the province is very likely to be trapped with the continuing slowdown of its economic growth. The key difference between the two provinces is not resources, but development policies.

The labor market has long included individuals seeking nonemployee, alternative work arrangements. Now, alternative work arrangements such as freelancing, independent contracting, and temporary contracts have entered the lexicon through the following terminology: the gig economy, the sharing economy, the YouEconomy, agile workforce, and contingent workers. There are currently an estimated 18.6 million independent contractors engaged in direct selling. This article reports the first attempt to empirically investigate and document both the economic and social impacts of direct selling in the U.S. Our findings suggest that direct selling has a consequential impact on the U.S. economy and that the direct selling experience fosters a variety of skills that benefit professional activities as well as the personal lives of millions of independent workers.

According to an analysis led by Ranjay Gulati, during the recessions of 1980, 1990, and 2000, 17% of the 4,700 public companies studied fared very badly: They went bankrupt, went private, or were acquired. But just as striking, 9% of the companies flourished, outperforming competitors by at least 10% in sales and profits growth. A more recent analysis by Bain using data from the Great Recession reinforced that finding, showing that the top 10% of companies studied didn't merely survive; their earnings climbed steadily throughout the downturn and continued to rise afterward. Among the companies that stagnated in the aftermath of the Great Recession, few had made contingency plans, according to the Bain report. "When the downturn hit, they switched to survival mode, making deep cuts and reacting defensively." How should firms prepare for a recession, and what should they do when one hits? This research roundup examines advice in four areas: debt, decision making, workforce management, and digital transformation.

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 government. While observers were divided on whether specific policies yielded positive or negative outcomes, one particular area where Reagan's legacy was debated was the extent to which his administration's actions contributed to growing levels of inequality in the country.

Ontario's basic income pilot was a social policy experiment designed to redistribute income with the aim of reducing poverty and adapting the social safety net in the face of a changing and increasingly precarious labour market. The three-year project, launched in 2017, was described as the largest government-run basic income project to date. It was designed to provide basic income in the form of negative income tax to 4,000 eligible individuals who were assured a minimum level of income regardless of their employment status. The debate about universal basic income (UBI) continues as governments and private entities around the world pilot different projects. How should UBI funded and who should receive the money? How would it change people's behavior and labor market participation? Could UBI help society address surging levels of inequality?

The case is about inflation and how it is computed in the category of food price indexes. The case also covers the tracking and the value of using price data from online sources. The case extends to understanding if it was better or not to formulate inflation through a median CPI. The case provides learning stimulations through rich data sources.

On December 1, 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump and China's Leader Xi Jinping faced each other across a dinner table during a G20 meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina. After what Trump called an "amazing and productive meeting," the two leaders announced a truce in the ongoing trade war between their countries, following months of accusations, tariffs, and mounting retaliation. The U.S. agreed to postpone for 90 days an increase from 10% to 25% in tariffs applied to a large number of Chinese goods, which had been initially scheduled for January 1, 2019. In exchange, the White House announced that China would purchase a "very substantial" amount of agricultural and other products from the United States, adding that it expected the two nations "to immediately begin negotiations on structural changes with respect to forced technology transfer, intellectual property protection, non-tariff barriers, cyber intrusions and cyber theft, services, and agriculture." The Chinese government simply stated that it was "willing to expand imports according to the needs of the domestic market" and that it hoped to "reach a concrete agreement on mutual benefit and win-win as soon as possible." Despite Trump's assurances that China was sending "very strong signals" after the meeting, the outcome of the negotiations was highly uncertain. Would China provide enough concessions to satisfy the demands of the U.S.? Would the U.S. back down? Or would the trade war escalate, causing unprecedented disruptions-and opportunities-in global trade patterns?

This case is set January 2019. Song Jianping is senior advisor to Chinese pharmaceutical firm Artepharm, which has been engaging in malaria elimination in Africa since 2003. With a deep understanding of the African market, the company has developed an innovative approach to malaria elimination, stemming from traditional Chinese medicine. It created a combination drug marketed as Artequick and put forward an innovative programme called Fast Elimination of Malaria by Source Eradication (FEMSE). Despite the success of the FEMSE programme, which had been tested in the Comoros and eliminated about 95% of the malaria cases there, Artepharm had been facing a lot of challenges in commercialising its innovative and effective solution. These challenges include a lack of presence in the public market which was dominated by multinational corporations such as Novartis and generic pharmaceutical companies from India. Artepharm recognises that it has realised only a small fraction of the potential sales of antimalarial drugs on the African continent. Song is thinking about the next steps to increase Artequick sales, so that the company can become profitable and not rely on funding from its parent company and the Chinese government.

This case study illustrates various incentives in the healthcare system using recent research in economics. Healthcare is important but it is difficult to objectively measure it from the perspective of providers, patients and third parties. Hence, incentives are used to motivate behavior in both providers and patients. The design of incentives is an enduring challenge and the case study tries to motivate managers to think through this problem in more detail.

This case, set in October 2017, follows Danielle Sheer, general counsel for Carbonite, as she defends the company against claims of patent infringement. It provides a broad overview of the U.S. patent system and explores the impact that non-practicing entities (sometimes also called "patent trolls") can have on companies.

The goal of this technical note is to give students tools for thinking about how exchange rates will move over a period of five years into the future. While forecasting exchange rates is arguably more art than science, managers, policymakers, and investors are nonetheless often required to form opinions about the future evolution of exchange rates. Specifically, this note defines the real exchange rate and purchasing power parity (PPP) and illustrates that PPP is useful in forecasting nominal exchange rate movements for advanced economies (AEs). For emerging market economies (EMEs), the note explains that PPP is less useful and instead offers a relatively new International Monetary Fund (IMF) model, which evaluates exchange rate over- and undervaluation in EMEs (as well as AEs). The note is designed to be used in a first-year MBA course, specifically in a class structured around exchange-rate forecasts based on recent supplemental data (to be added by the instructor). In that case, the class would build from a question like, "What will the US dollar/British pound exchange rate be in five years, and why?" Note that the IMF material is advanced and, depending on the level of the students and place in the course, may need to be presented as a useful "black box." In any case, this note could also be employed in an advanced undergraduate or master's level course on international finance or macroeconomics.

This note is an introduction to using macroeconomics in evaluating the long-term growth prospects of emerging markets. Methodologically, it is an application of growth theory, the Solow model in particular, and it gives students the opportunity to practice reading and interpreting the data of international macroeconomics. The textbook Solow growth model and its basic extensions align well with how investors and policymakers think about forecasting growth and stagnation in emerging markets. However, using public data to measure everything that affects Solow factors is not trivial or necessarily possible, so the note explains the broader, but nonetheless "Solow" approach, of Ruchir Sharma at Morgan Stanley. The note provides data on direct and indirect "canary in the coalmine" growth factors. Classes using the note should center on the question, how do we find the next BRICs? The note is designed as a practical follow-up to growth theory in a first year MBA course, but it would also be appropriate for use in a master's or advanced undergraduate course on growth, emerging markets, or international finance.

When we introduce macroeconomic models, we assume that goods and services are exchanged within a single country but not across countries. This assumption is useful for understanding some of the primary determinants of output, inflation, and interest rates. In reality, however, economies trade with each other, and the presence of international markets has implications for national economies. In this note, we incorporate international markets to understand how changes in one country can affect other countries.

In the last decade, scholars in the field of organization and management studies have expressed interest in responding to economic inequality, a phenomenon that led to what some commentators label the crisis of capitalism. While engagements with this topic offered important insights into how organizations are implicated in the propagation of economic inequality, researchers have not yet sufficiently considered the broader, though equally as pertinent, normative question: When is economic inequality justified? This article uses John Rawls' theory of justice to respond to this question and contends that Rawls provides the philosophical foundation from which to consider the conditions under which economic inequality could be considered fair and just. To animate its conceptual ideas, I present shared capitalism as one form of arranging compensatory systems in contemporary labor relations that would maintain economic inequality, though in a way that would be consistent with Rawls' conception of justice.

In February 2018, Jerome Powell had taken over as chair of the FOMC. At first glance, the macroeconomic conditions inherited by Powell appeared favorable for continued stability: unemployment and inflation were low, and the economy had been steadily growing for nearly a decade. Yet despite the appearance of stability, the economy faced significant risks that required the Federal Reserve's attention. Was an uptick in inflation imminent, and if so, should Powell raise rates to limit any inflationary pressure? Or was the economy still operating below capacity, and if so, should the Federal Reserve take a more accommodative stance? To gain perspective, Powell needed to look back at the past fifty years of monetary policy in the United States.