What was hiding behind the aggregate commercial bank loans through the end of 2008? We use balance sheet data for every insured U.S. commercial bank from 1999:Q1 to 2008:Q4 to construct credit expansion and credit contraction series and provide new evidence on changes in lending. Until 2008:Q3...

Analyzing US economic and foreign aid data from 1967 to 2007, this paper investigates whether adverse economic and financial conditions are negatively linked to official development assistance (ODA). It finds empirical evidence that US ODA has tended to decline as its economic conditions worsen....

South Africa's Disability Grant program has been widely criticized for its poor administration and the dependency culture it promotes. This paper attempts to assess the Disability Grant program's targeting effectiveness and its effects on labor market behaviors. Using disability self reports and...

This paper develops a more accurate and robust baseline sales (sales in the absence of price promotion) using Dynamic Linear Models and a Multiple Structural Change Model (DLM/MSCM). We first discuss the value of utilizing aggregated (chain-level) vs. disaggregated (store-level) point-of-sale...

This paper examines the determinants of schooling outcomes - current enrollment status and relative grade attainment - among primary school children in rural Ethiopia. We use repeated cross-sectional data from 15 rural villages in Ethiopia to capture the impact of the changing socioeconomic...

This paper identifies the cumulative impact of early schooling investments on later schooling outcomes in a developing country context using enrollment status and relative grade attainment as short-run and long-run measures of schooling. Using a child-level longitudinal data set from rural...

This paper examines the efficiency of the CDS market by conducting a comparative event study in which both the CDS and the stock markets' responses to earnings announcements are considered. I find that both markets have statistically significant reactions to earnings announcements and both...

In Indonesia, more than 30% of children under the age of 5 years suffer from chronic malnourishment. The long-term consequences of childhood malnutrition are well established in the literature. Yet, little is known about the extent to which these children are able to recover from some of the...

Although the debate about the effect of wealth on entrepreneurship is now almost two decades old, there is little consensus among researchers about the significance of wealth as a determinant for self-employment. We re-visit the relationship between wealth and entrepreneurship using data from...

Consumer theory still maximizes utility subject to a budget constraint, when in fact 2008 data show that consumer debt is 130% of disposable income. Granger-causality tests confirm Consumption precedence over income. We discuss several features of newer US data, such as the ability to start...