We study how information sharing between banks influences the geographical clustering of branches. A spatial oligopoly model first explains why branches cluster and how information sharing impacts price competition and equilibrium clustering. With data on 59,333 branches of 676 banks in 22...

We interview 379 European bank CEOs to identify their banks' main competitors. We then provide evidence on the drivers of bilateral bank competition, construct a novel competition measure at the locality level, and assess how well it explains variation in firms' credit constraints. We find that...

Could robotization make the gender pay gap worse? We provide the first large-scale evidence on the impact of industrial robots on the gender pay gap using data from 20 European countries. We show that robot adoption increases both male and female earnings but also increases the gender pay gap....

We open up the black box of value creation in private equity with the help of confidential information on value creation plans and their execution. Plans are tailored to each portfolio company's needs and circumstances, have become more hands-on, and vary with deal type, ownership, growth...

We study the effects of staying on daylight saving time (DST) permanently on electricity consumption, generation, and emissions. In October 2016, Turkey chose to stay on DST all year round. Employing alternative identification methods, we find a negligible overall impact on consumption. However,...

Recent studies have highlighted the unequal labour market effects of the COVID-19 crisis in advanced economies. We contribute to this literature by drawing on a new survey of almost 40,000 adults in 14 advanced as well as emerging economies conducted in August 2020. We show that while labour...

The linkage between income inequality and citizens’ support for democracy has widely been discussed in the literature (e.g. Acemoglu and Robinson, 2001; Andersen, 2012). However, drawing inequality can further be decomposed into two components drawing on the theory of inequality of opportunity...

What will be political legacy of the Coronavirus pandemic? We find that epidemic exposure in what psychologists refer to as an individual’s “impressionable years” (ages 18 to 25) has a persistent negative effect on confidence in political institutions and leaders. We find similar negative...

We measure the prevalence of discrimination between Jordanian host and Syrian refugee children attending school in Jordan. Using a simple sharing experiment, we find only little discrimination. Among the Jordanian children, however, we see that those who descended from Palestinian refugees do...

We study the effectiveness of three common bank resolution mechanisms: bailouts, bank sales, and ‘bad banks’. We first apply the financial fragility model of Goodhart et al. (2005, 2006a) to analyze the impact of these resolution mechanisms on bank behavior. We then use a novel bank-level...