The Origins of Financial Development: How the African Slave Trade Continues...
We assess how the African slave trade--which had enduring effects on social cohesion--continues to influence financial systems. After showing that the intensity with which people were enslaved and...
View ArticleUnderstanding Precautionary Cash at Home and Abroad -- by Michael W....
Has the need for precautionary savings driven the dramatic increase in U.S. corporate cash? We show that the run-up in cash is concentrated in foreign subsidiaries of multinational corporations....
View ArticleFinTech Adoption Across Generations: Financial Fitness in the Information Age...
This paper analyzes how better access to financial information via new technology changes use of consumer credit and affects financial fitness. We exploit the introduction of a smartphone application...
View ArticleLong-Term Care in Latin America and the Caribbean? Theory and Policy...
This paper discusses theoretical and practical issues related to long-term care (LTC) services in Latin America. Demand for these services will rise as the region undergoes a swift demographic...
View ArticleUncertainty Shocks as Second-Moment News Shocks -- by David Berger, Ian...
We provide evidence on the relationship between aggregate uncertainty and the macroeconomy. Identifying uncertainty shocks using methods from the news shocks literature, the analysis finds that...
View ArticleWhere Modern Macroeconomics Went Wrong -- by Joseph E. Stiglitz
This paper provides a critique of the DSGE models that have come to dominate macroeconomics during the past quarter-century. It argues that at the heart of the failure were the wrong microfoundations,...
View ArticleStructural Transformation, Deep Downturns, and Government Policy -- by Joseph...
Most recessions are a result of some shock to the economic system, typically amplified by financial accelerators, and leading to large balance sheet effects of households and firms, which result in the...
View ArticleCan Financial Incentives Reduce the Baby Gap? Evidence from a Reform in...
To assess whether earnings-dependent maternity leave positively impacts fertility and narrows the baby gap between high educated (high earning) and low educated (low earning) women, I exploit a major...
View ArticleHigh-Dosage Tutoring and Reading Achievement: Evidence from New York City --...
This study examines the impact on student achievement of high-dosage reading tutoring for middle school students in New York City Public Schools, using a school-level randomized field experiment....
View ArticleThe Accident Externality from Trucking -- by Lucija Muehlenbachs, Stefan...
How much risk does a heavy truck impose on highway safety? To answer this question, we look at the rapid influx of trucks during the shale gas boom in Pennsylvania. Using quasi-experimental variation...
View ArticleTarnishing the Golden and Empire States: Land-Use Restrictions and the U.S....
This paper studies the impact of state-level land-use restrictions on U.S. economic activity, focusing on how these restrictions have depressed macroeconomic activity since 2000. We use a variety of...
View ArticleFiscal Stimulus and Fiscal Sustainability -- by Alan J. Auerbach, Yuriy...
The Great Recession and the Global Financial Crisis have left many developed countries with low interest rates and high levels of public debt, thus limiting the ability of policymakers to fight the...
View ArticleHow was the Quantitative Easing Program of the 1930s Unwound? -- by Matthew...
Outside of the recent past, excess reserves have only concerned policymakers in one other period: the Great Depression. The data show that excess reserves in the 1930s were never actively unwound...
View ArticleRational Inattention and Sequential Information Sampling -- by Benjamin...
We propose a new principle for measuring the cost of information structures in rational inattention problems, based on the cost of generating the information used to make a decision through a dynamic...
View ArticleThe Second Era of Globalization is Not Yet Over: An Historical Perspective --...
The recent rise of populist anti-globalization political movements has led to concerns that the current wave of globalization that goes back to the 1870s may end in turmoil just like the first wave...
View ArticleHistorical Antisemitism, Ethnic Specialization, and Financial Development --...
For centuries, Jews in Europe have specialized in financial services. At the same time, they have been the victims of historical antisemitism on the part of the Christian majority. We find that...
View ArticleThe Mortgage Rate Conundrum -- by Alejandro Justiniano, Giorgio E. Primiceri,...
We document the emergence of a disconnect between mortgage and Treasury interest rates in the summer of 2003. Following the end of the Federal Reserve expansionary cycle in June 2003, mortgage rates...
View ArticleThe Paper Money of Colonial North Carolina, 1712-1774 -- by Cory Cutsail,...
Beginning in 1712, North Carolina's assembly emitted its own paper money and maintained some of its paper money in public circulation for the rest of the colonial period. This paper money has been...
View ArticleAre Ideas Getting Harder to Find? -- by Nicholas Bloom, Charles I. Jones,...
In many growth models, economic growth arises from people creating ideas, and the long-run growth rate is the product of two terms: the effective number of researchers and their research productivity....
View ArticleAccess to Long-Term Care After a Wealth Shock: Evidence from the Housing...
Home equity is the primary self-funding mechanism for long term services and supports (LTSS). Using data from the relevant waves of the Health and Retirement Study (1996-2010), we exploit the exogenous...
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