Steven Davis welcomes Harvard’s Wenxin Du to discuss her analysis of how to cost-effectively transfer funds across international borders. Perhaps surprisingly, the all-in costs of using stablecoins for small-amount transfers (less than $10,000) greatly exceed the cost of using fintech apps and sometimes exceed the cost of relying on commercial banks. Along the way, Wenxin’s analysis also highlights the consumer benefits of greater competition in the market for remittances and other cross-border payments.
Recorded on August 29, 2026.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Wenxin Du is the Sylvan C. Coleman Professor of Financial Management at Harvard Business School. Her research focuses on global currency and fixed income markets, central banking, financial regulation, and fintechs. She received the 2022 Award for Economics in Central Banking and was an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow from 2021 to 2023. Her work on deviations from covered interest rate parity earned the AQR Insight Award Top Prize. Before joining Harvard, Du was the Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions at Columbia Business School and professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She has also served as a financial research advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, principal economist at the Federal Reserve Board, and central bank research fellow at the Bank for International Settlements. Du is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where she co-leads the Market Frictions and Financial Risks initiative. She serves on the academic advisory committees of the Bank for International Settlements and the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
