Since the early 2000s the number and size of sovereign wealth funds (SWF) have grown substantially. A large proportion of these government-owned and government-run funds were created by oil producing countries in the Gulf region and elsewhere. These funds have made some high-profile investments...

We examine how cheap talk communication between managers within the same firm depends on the type of decisions that the firm makes. A firm consists of a headquarters and two operating divisions. Headquarters is unbiased but does not know the demand conditions in the divisions' markets. Each...

This article develops data on the history of wages and prices in Beijing, Canton, and Suzhou/Shanghai in China from the eighteenth century to the twentieth, and compares them with leading cities in Europe, Japan, and India in terms of nominal wages, the cost of living, and the standard of...

This paper argues that the role of informal institutions as well as formal ones is central to understanding the functioning of corporate governance. We focus on the four largest emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, and China-commonly referred to as the BRIC countries. Our analysis is based...

This note considers the impact of land use planning on economic performance. Specifically, we discuss some of the economic and social costs of the current English system, some of which have been underplayed in public debate. Our aim is to provide evidence to better inform discussions of the...

We test the hypothesis that local government officials in jurisdictions that have higher local sales taxes are more likely to use fiscal zoning to encourage retailing. We find that total retail employment is not significantly affected by local sales tax rates, but employment in big box and...

While the regulation of tenancy arrangements is widespread in the developing world, evidence on how such regulation influences the long-run allocation of land and labor remains limited. To provide such evidence, this paper exploits quasi-random assignment of linguistically similar areas to...

Interim report of the Fuel Poverty Review

This study is one of a pair funded by the Homes and Communities Agency and the Tenant Services Authority. The other report can be found at http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/case/. This pair of studies develops the findings of two previous reports on the relationship between housing and life chances...