This paper uses firm level data from the World Bank Enterprise surveys conducted in 2019 in 18 European countries to investigate the link between having a website and firm characteristics. We find that firms which are present in the web are larger, older, more productive, and more often...

Using a new consumer survey dataset, we study the role of macroeconomic preferences for expectations and economic decisions. While household expectations are inversely related to preferences, households with the same in ation expectations can differently assess whether the level of expected in...

Policy announcements by central banks affect financial markets, but their effect on consumer beliefs is limited. This paper studies the implications of using different communication channels: established media outlets versus social media. Information on the news sources comes from our original...

Communication targeting households and firms has become a stand-alone policy tool of many central banks. But which forms of communication, if any, can reach ordinary people and manage their economic expectations effectively? In a large-scale randomized control trial, we show that communication...

Recent empirical evidence suggests that US industrial firms invest heavily in noncash, risky financial assets. Using hand-collected data on financial portfolios of German firms, we show that risky asset holdings are not an anomaly unique to the US. We find that industrial firms in Germany invest...

Binding lower bounds on interest rates and large government deficits limit the scope of fiscal and monetary policies to stimulate households' spending through financial intermediaries and firms. Policymakers have thus been implementing unconventional policies that aim to increase households'...

Willingness to vaccinate and test are critical in the COVID-19 pandemic. We study the effects of two measures to increase vaccination and testing: "choice architecture" and monetary compensations. Choice architecture has the goal of "nudging" people into a socially desired direction without...

We study individual demand for COVID-19 antibody tests in an incentivized study on a representative sample of the US population. Almost 2,000 participants trade off obtaining an athome test kit against money. At prices close to zero, 80 percent of individuals want the test. However, this broad...

This paper uses a tailor-made newly available data set to investigate for the first time the links between the quality of input factors and the quality of exports in enterprises from manufacturing industries in Germany, one of the leading actors on the world market for goods. The paper...

This paper uses a tailor-made newly available data set to investigate for the first time the links between profitability and the quality of exports in enterprises from manufacturing industries in Germany, one of the leading actors on the world market for goods. The paper demonstrates that...