The November 2008 Chinese stimulus package seemed to provide almost ideal preconditions for governmental success based upon its size, its concentration on infrastructure, accompanying fiscal expansion at the local level, and supportive expansions in bank lending rates. Our sectoral-level...

A natural experiment is used to study exchange rate depreciation and perceived sovereign risk. France suspended coinage of silver in 1876 provoking a significant exogenous depreciation of all silver standard countries versus gold standard currencies like the British pound - the currency in which...

Research on information economics and securities markets dating back to Stigler (Journal of Political Economy, 69 (1961), 213-225; Journal of Business, 37 (1964), 117-142) argues that trading will tend to centralize in major market centers such as the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The NYSE's...

What might happen if a third-party entity had the power to implement fiscal reforms and/or punish sovereign debt defaulters? In contrast to recent history, extreme sanctions such as gunboat diplomacy and "fiscal house arrest" were used to punish debt defaulters during the period 1870-1913. We...

We use the founding of the Federal Reserve to identify the effects of a lender of last resort. We examine stock return and interest rate volatility during September and October, when markets were vulnerable because of financial stringency from the harvest. Stock volatility fell by 40% and...