Aldo Musacchio

Degrees
Stanford University, Ph.D.Expertise
My research focuses on the way governments can support or regulate domestic firms to promote innovation and the energy transition. I am working with Debarshi Nandy on a project that evaluates how the Defense Department Advanced Research Program (DARPA) actually works and the impact it has to promote breakthrough innovation.Second, I am working on ways to improve the management and monitoring of state-owned firms. In particular, ways government have to improve the environmental outcomes of state-owned enterprises. The largest polluting firms and producers of fossil fuels in the world are state owned, which provides an opportunity for governments to use their control to accelerate the energy transition. The issue at stake is how governments can reconfigure their fiscal structures to facilitate the energy transition when many of them get rents and subsidize voters using state-owned firms in the fossil fuel industry. As long as governments get rents from polluting firms, the energy transition will continue to be stalled by the short-term interests of politicians and voters.
Profile
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Aldo Musacchio is Professor of International Business, Director of the MBA Program and of the Perlmutter Institute for Global Leadership at Brandeis University. He also leads both the Brazil and the Latin America Initiatives at IBS. He is a specialist on strategy and corporate governance in multinationals; innovation and industrial policy; state-owned enterprise reform, among other topics. Prof. Musacchio teaches Strategy and Entrepreneurship for graduate students and Competitive Strategy (in technology firms) for undergraduate students. He is also has a long track record of research in economic and financial history. He is the co-editor of Financial History Review and is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research's Development of the American Economy Group.
His current work focuses on ways to improve the management and monitoring of state-owned firms. In particular, his work focuses on policies to reduce fiscal risk for governments and ways to improve the environmental outcomes of these firms. The largest polluters and producers of fossil fuels in the world are state owned, which provides an opportunity for governments to use their control to accelerate the energy transition. The issue at stake is how governments can reconfigure their fiscal structures to facilitate the energy transition when many of them get rents and subsidize voters using state-owned firms in the fossil fuel industry. As long as governments get rents from polluting firms, the energy transition will continue to be stalled by the short-term interests of politicians and voters.
Beyond academia, Musacchio is a leading expert on state-owned enterprise reform, climate change engagement in state firms, and fiscal risk mitigation stemming from these firms, both at the InterAmerican Development Bank (Fiscal Management Division) and at the Infrastructure Group of the World Bank.
Before joining IBS Prof. Musacchio was an Associate Professor and Marvin Bower Fellow at Harvard Business School, as part of the Business, Government, and International Economy Unit (BGIE). Musacchio has a B.A. in economics (with highest honors) from ITAM, in Mexico, and an M.A. and Ph. D. in Economic History of Latin America from Stanford University. In 2012, he won the Manuel Espinosa Yglesias Prize for his research on foreign banks in Mexico (together with Stephen Haber) and was awarded the 2012 Prize for Professional/Academic Merit by the Alumni Association of ITAM (EX-ITAM). Prior to that he won the Cole Prize for the Best Paper in the Journal of Economic History (2008) and the European Banking History Association's Feldman Prize for the best paper by a young scholar.
His teaching experience includes executive education at Harvard Business School, where he led the Building Business in Emerging Markets Program, FGV-YPO Program, the IPADE-INALDE Latin AMerican Management Program, TEC de Monterrey, ESE Chile, YPO Latin America, and the Advanced Management Program at Reykjavik University. Webpage
Courses Taught
BUS | 160a | Competitive Strategy |
BUS | 231a | Entrepreneurial Finances and Business Plans |
BUS | 233a | Entrepreneurship and Rapid Prototyping |
BUS/ECON | 265a | Business and Economic Strategies in Emerging Markets |
Awards and Honors
Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) (2020)
Provost Research Award, Brandeis University (2018 - 2019)
Shiff Undergraduate Fellowship Mentor (2018 - 2019)
Academy of Management Annual Meeting Best Submitted Papers --Hybrid Leviathans Overseas: Government-Private Shareholder Conflicts in Cross-Border Acquisitions" (With Victor Z. Chen and Sali Li) (2016)
Insper (Brazil) Award for Best Research Project (Book Reinventing State Capitalism) , 2014 (w/ Sergio G. Lazzarini) (2015)
Apgar Award for Innovation in Teaching, Harvard Business School (2013)
Academic Merit Award, Alumni Association of the Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico, Mexico CIty (2012)
Gerry Feldman Young Scholar Prize for the best paper of a young scholar, European Association of Banking and Financial History (2012)
Manuel Espinosa Yglesias Prize for the best paper or book on banking, Centro de Estudios Espinosa Yglesias, Mexico City (2012)
Best Paper Presentation, Strategic Managment Society Special Conference, Rio de Janeiro (2011)
Marvin Bower Fellowship, Harvard Business School (2009 - 2011)
Arthur H. Cole Prize for the best paper, Journal of Economic History (2007-2008) (2008)
"30 most promising professionals in their thirties" award, Expansion Magazine, Mexico (2007)
Finalist for the Alexander Gerschenkron Prize for best dissertation in non-North American economic history, Economic History Association (2006)
Fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University (2003 - 2004)
Fellow of the Institute for Humane Studies, George Mason University (2003 - 2004)
Mellon Foundation grant for summer research (2001)
Ford-Hewlett-McArthur Foundations Fellowship to support doctoral studies (1998 - 2000)
Scholarship
Herrera Dappe, Matías; Foster, Vivien; Musacchio, Aldo; Ter-Minassian, Teresa; Turkgulu, Burak. Off the Books : Understanding and Mitigating the Fiscal Risks of Infrastructure. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023.
Amanda Guimbeau, Nidhiya Menon and Musacchio, Aldo. "Short and Medium-Run Health and Literacy Impacts of the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic in Brazil." Economic History Review 75. 4 (2022): 997-1025.
Read, Ian and Aldo Musacchio. "Influenza pandemics throughout Brazilian history." Historia Ciencia da Saude Manguinhos . Oct-Dec 29. 4 (2022): 1013-1031 <https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36542035/>.
Wright,Mike, Geoffrey Wood, Aldo Musacchio, Ilya Okhmatovskiy, Anna Grosman, and Jonathan Doh. "State Capitalism in International Context: Varieties and Variations." Journal of World Business 56. 2 (2021).
Pedro Makhoul, Aldo Musacchio and Sergio G. Lazzarini. "“Going the Distance: The Foreign Investment Strategies of Sovereign Wealth Funds”." Strategy Science 5. 1 (2020): 39–54.
Sergio G. Lazzarini, Luiz F. Mesquita, L. Felipe Monteiro and Aldo Musacchio. "Leviathan as an Inventor: An Extended Agency Model of State-Owned vs. Private Firm Invention in Emerging and Developed Economies." Journal of International Business Studies (2020).
Coyle, Christopher, Aldo Musacchio and J. D. Turner. "Law and Finance in Britain c. 1900." Financial History Review 26. 3 (2019): 267-293.
Musacchio, Aldo, Felipe Monteiro, and Sergio G. Lazzarini. "State-Owned Multinationals in International Competition." The Oxford Handbook of Management in Emerging Markets. Ed. Robert Grosse and Klaus E. Meyer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019
Musacchio, Aldo; Emilio I. Pineda. Fixing State-Owned Enterprises in Latin America: Old Problems, New Solutions. Washington D.C.: Inter-American Development Bank, 2019.
Victor Z Chen, Aldo Musacchio and Sali Li. "A Principals-Principals Perspective of Hybrid Leviathans: Cross-Border Acquisitions by State-Owned MNEs." Journal of Management 45. 7 (2019): 2751–2778.
Musacchio, Aldo and Sergio G. Lazzarini. "O Leviatã nos Negócios no Brasil: Práticas Passadas, Mudanças Futuras." Lobby Desvendado: democracia, politicas publicas e corrupcao no Brasil contemporaneo. Ed. Milton G. Seligman. Sao Paulo: Record, 2018
Musacchio, Aldo and Sergio G. Lazzarini. "State Ownership Reinvented? Explaining Performance Differences between State-Owned and Private Firms." Corporate Governance: An International Review 26. 4 (2018): 255-272.
Musacchio, Aldo; Sergio G. Lazzarini. "State-Owned Enterprises as Multinationals: Theory and Research Directions." State-Owned Multinationals: Governments in Global Business. Ed. Alvaro Cuervo-Cazurra. New York: Palgrave, 2018
Musacchio, Aldo, Sergio G. Lazzarini. "State Owned Enterprises as Multinationals: Theory and Research Directions." State Owned Multinationals. Ed. Alvaro Cuervo Cazurra. London and New York: Palgrave, 2017
Musacchio, Aldo; Sergio G. Lazzarini; Pedro Makhoul; Emily Simmons. "The Role and Impact of Development Banks." Mimeo, 2017.
Musacchio, Aldo and Eric Werker. "Mapping Frontier Economies: Where to Play and How to Win." Harvard Business Review December (2016).
Musacchio, Aldo; Rodrigo Wagner; Mauricio Jara; Sergio G. Lazzarini. "Does the Bond Market Discipline State-Owned Enterprises?." 2016.
Musacchio, Aldo; Sergio G. Lazzarini. "The Reinvention of State Capitalism in Brazil, 1970-2012." New Order and Progress: Democracy and Development in Brazil. 1st edition ed. Ed. In Ben R. Schneider. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. 107-133.
Lazzarini, Sergio G, Aldo Musacchio, Rodrigo Bandeira-de-Mello, Rosilene Marcon. "What Do State-Owned Development Banks Do? Evidence from BNDES, 2002–09." World Development 66. February (2015): 237–253.
Musacchio, Aldo and Sergio G. Lazzarini. "Chinese Exceptionalism or New Varieties of State Capitalism." Regulating the Visible Hand? The Institutional Implications of Chinese State Capitalism. Ed. Benjamin L. Liebman and Curtis J. Milhaupt. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2015
Musacchio, Aldo, Emilio I. Pineda, and Gustavo Garcia. "State-Owned Enterprise Reform in Latin America: Issues and Possible Solutions." (2015): <https://publications.iadb.org/handle/11319/7181>.
Musacchio, Aldo, Sergio G. Lazzarini, and Ruth Aguilera. "New Varieties of State Capitalism: Strategic and Governance Implications." Academy of Management Perspectives 29. 1 (2015): 115-131.
Musacchio, Aldo, Sergio G. Lazzarini. "Chinese Exceptionalism or New Global Varieties of State Capitalism." Regulating the Visible Hand?: The Institutional Implications of Chinese State Capitalism. Ed. Liebman, Benjamin L., and Curtis J. Milhaupt. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. 403–431.
Alvaro Cuervo-Cazurra, Andrew Inkpen, Aldo Musacchio, Kannan Ramaswamy. "Governments as Owners: State Owned Multinational Companies." Journal of International Business Studies 45. 9 (2014): 919–942.
Musacchio, Aldo and Sergio G. Lazzarini. Reinventing State Capitalism: Leviathan in Business, Brazil and Beyond. 1st ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014.
Musacchio, Aldo, Andre Martinez-Fritscher, Martina Viarengo. "Colonial Institutions, Trade Shocks, and the Diffusion of Elementary Education in Brazil, 1889-1930." Journal of Economic History 74. 3 (2014): 730-766.
Musacchio, Aldo. Los Buenos Tiempos son Estos: Bancos Extranjeros y la Banca Mexicana (These Are the Good Old Days: Foreign Entry and the Mexican Banking System). 1st ed. Mexico City: Centro de Estudios Espinosa Yglesias, 2014.
Inoue, Carlos, Sergio G. Lazzarini, Aldo Musacchio. "Leviathan as a Minority Shareholder: Firm-level Implications of Equity Purchases by the State." Academy of Management Journal 56. 6 (2013): 1775-1801.
Musacchio, Aldo and John D. Turner. "Does the law and finance hypothesis pass the test of history?." Business History 55. 3 (2013): 524-542.
Parglendler, Mariana, Aldo Musacchio and Sergio G. Lazzarini. "In Strange Company: The Puzzle of Private Investment in State-Controlled Firms." Cornell International Law Journal 46. 3 (2013): 569-610.
Haber, Stephen and Aldo Musacchio. "Foreign Entry and the Mexican Banking System, 1997–2007." Economia 13. 1 (2012): 13-37.
Latika Chaudhary, Aldo Musacchio. Steven Nafziger, and Se Yan. "Big BRICs, Weak Foundations: The Beginning of Public Elementary Education in Brazil, Russia, India, and China." Explorations in Economic History 49. 2 (2012): 221-240.
Martinez Fritscher, Andre C. and Aldo Musacchio. "Endowments, Fiscal Federalism, and the Cost of Capital for States: Evidence from Brazil, 1891-1930." Financial History Review 17. 1 (2010): 1-38.
Musacchio, Aldo. "Drawing Links between Corporate Governance and Networks: Bankers in the Corporate Networks of Brazil, Mexico, and the United States circa 1910." Enterprises et Histoire 54. 1 (2009): 16-36.
Musacchio, Aldo. Experiments in Financial Democracy: Corporate Governance and Financial Development in Brazil, 1882-1950. 1st ed. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Musacchio, Aldo. "Can Civil Law Countries Get Good Institutions? Lessons from the History of Creditor Rights and Bond Markets in Brazil." Journal of Economic History 68. 1 (2008): 80-108.
Musacchio, Aldo. "Laws versus Contracts: Legal Origins, Shareholder Protections, and Ownership Concentration in Brazil, 1890–1950." Business History Review 82. 3 (2008): 445-473.
Read, Ian and Aldo Musacchio. "Bankers, Industrialists, and Their Cliques: Elite Networks in Mexico and Brazil during Early Industrialization." Enterprise & Society 8. 4 (2007): 842-880.
Aurora Gomez-Galvarriato and Aldo Musacchio. "Un nuevo índice de precios para México, 1886-1929 (A New Price Index for Mexico, 1886-1929)." El Trimestre Economico 67. 1 (1998): 47-91.