The Politics of FDI Expropriation -- by Marina Azzimonti
I examine the role of political instability as a potential explanation for the lack of capital flows from rich countries to poor countries (i.e. the `Lucas Paradox'). Using panel data from 1984 to...
View ArticleDeconstructing Household Wealth Trends in the United States, 1983 - 2013 --...
I use the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) to analyze wealth trends from 1983 to 2013. Asset prices plunged between 2007 and 2010 but then rebounded from 2010 to 2013. Median wealth plummeted by 44...
View ArticleReputation Cycles -- by Boyan Jovanovic, Julien Prat
This paper shows that endogenous cycles can arise when contracts between firms and their customers are incomplete and when products are experience goods. Then firms invest in the quality of their...
View ArticleSubsidy Policies and Insurance Demand -- by Jing Cai, Alain de Janvry,...
Many new products presumed to be privately beneficial to the poor have a high price elasticity of demand and ultimately zero take-up rate at market price. This has led governments and donors to provide...
View ArticleSecuring Property Rights -- by Edward L. Glaeser, Giacomo A.M. Ponzetto,...
A central challenge in securing property rights is the subversion of justice through legal skill, bribery, or physical force by the strong--the state or its powerful citizens--against the weak. We...
View ArticleWhat is the Added Value of Preschool? Long-term Impacts and Interactions with...
We study the impact of targeted high quality preschool over the life cycle and across generations, and examine its interaction with a health intervention during infancy. Using administrative data from...
View ArticleHouse Valuations and Economic Growth: Some International Evidence -- by...
This paper evaluates the relation between house prices and economic growth. Using a dataset that covers house prices for 19 countries from the first quarter of 1975 to the third quarter of 2013. We...
View ArticleTeaching, Teachers Pensions and Retirement across Recent Cohorts of College...
Labor force participation rates of college-educated women ages 60 to 64 increased by 20 percent (10 percentage points) between 2000 and 2010. One potential explanation for this change stems from the...
View ArticleImpediments to Financial Trade: Theory and Applications -- by Nicolae...
We propose a tractable model of an informationally inefficient market featuring non-revealing prices, no noise traders, and general assumptions on preferences and payoff distributions. We show the...
View ArticleLoan Product Steering in Mortgage Markets -- by Sumit Agarwal, Gene Amromin,...
We present evidence of a particular type of loan steering in which lenders lead borrowers to take out high margin mortgage products. We identify this activity by comparing borrowers who were rejected...
View ArticleCredit Expansion and Neglected Crash Risk -- by Matthew Baron, Wei Xiong
By analyzing 20 developed countries over 1920-2012, we find the following evidence of overoptimism and neglect of crash risk by bank equity investors during credit expansions: 1) bank credit expansion...
View ArticleSelf-Fulfilling Debt Crises: A Quantitative Analysis -- by Luigi Bocola,...
This paper uses the information contained in the joint dynamics of government's debt maturity choices and interest rate spreads to quantify the importance of self-fulfilling expectations in sovereign...
View ArticleThe Evolution of U.S. Monetary Policy: 2000 - 2007 -- by Michael T. Belongia,...
A vector autoregression with time-varying parameters is used to characterize changes in Federal Reserve policy that occurred from 2000 through 2007 and describe how they affected the performance of the...
View ArticleStealing Deposits: Deposit Insurance, Risk-Taking and the Removal of Market...
Deposit insurance reduces liquidity risk but it also can increase insolvency risk by encouraging reckless behavior. A handful of U.S. states installed deposit insurance laws before the creation of the...
View ArticleThe Formation of Consumer Brand Preferences -- by Bart J. Bronnenberg,...
Brands and brand capital have long been theorized to play an important role in the formation of the industrial market structure of consumer goods industries. We summarize several striking empirical...
View ArticleEconomic Conditions and Mortality: Evidence from 200 Years of Data -- by...
Using data covering over 100 birth-cohorts in 32 countries, we examine the short- and long-term effects of economic conditions on mortality. We find that small, but not large, booms increase...
View ArticleThe Impact of Medical Marijuana Laws on the Labor Supply and Health of Older...
We study the effect of state medical marijuana laws (MMLs) on labor supply and health outcomes among older adults; the demographic group with the highest rates of many chronic conditions for which...
View ArticleThe Impact of Intergenerational Transfers on Household Wealth Inequality in...
To help shed light on the implications of intergenerational transfers for wealth inequality, this paper examines whether or not individuals who receive intergenerational transfers from their parents...
View ArticleBorrowing Requirements, Credit Access, and Adverse Selection: Evidence from...
We examine the potential of asset-collateralized loans in low-income country credit markets. When a Kenyan dairy cooperative exogenously replaced high down payments and joint liability requirements...
View ArticleIntellectual Property Rights Protection, Ownership, and Innovation: Evidence...
Using a difference-in-difference approach, we study how intellectual property right (IPR) protection affects innovation in China in the years around the privatizations of state-owned enterprises...
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