We document recent international changes in bankruptcy law pertaining to personal liabilities. Implications are investigated within a theoretical model, focusing on interest rates, employment, and bankruptcy incidence. Our abstraction of bankruptcy law covers issues of eligibility, debt...

Automated trade execution systems are examined with respect to the degree to which they automate the price discovery process. Seven levels of automation of price discovery are identified, and 47 systems are classified according to these criteria. Systems operating at various levels of automation...

A taxonomy of existing and planned automated trade execution systems in financial markets is provided. Over 50 automated market structures in 16 countries are analyzed. The classification scheme is organized around the principle that such markets consist of an algorithm that performs a trade...

We measure soft information contained in the congressional testimonies of U.S. Federal Reserve Chairs and analyze its effect on financial markets. Our measures of Fed Chairs' emotions expressed in words, voice and facial expressions are created using machine learning. Increases in the Chair's...

This thesis examines two closely related issues: (1) the ability of imperfect information models to explain some aspects of business cycle dynamics, and (2) the interaction between central bank communications and monetary policy. These issues are related because central bank communications can...

New indicators, based on technology titles, are used to measure the impact of innovative activity on the U.S. labor market between 1909 and 1949. We find positive technology shocks raised productivity, employment, vacancies and labor turnover and lowered unemployment. Moreover, innovations in...

Are uncertainty shocks an important source of post WWII business cycle fluctuations? The evidence we present in this paper suggests they are. Using both the traditional measure of uncertainty – the stock market volatility index – and a new one - based on the number of New York Times’...

New indications of managerial innovations are created and then used to show that changes in organizational technologies are an important source of economic growth. Specifically, the analysis demonstrates that, first, in response to a positive managerial technology shock, output, productivity and...

We present new indicators of technological change for the period 1909-49 for the U.S. based on information contained in the Library of Congress’ catalogue. We use these indictors to estimate the connections between technological change and economic activity, and investigate the relationship...

New indicators of technical change in the field of computers based on new titles held by Canadian libraries are presented, and are used to demonstrate that a positive computer technology shock in Canada increases hours worked, output, and productivity in the short run. These measures indicate,...