Two of the greatest financial fiascos of all time took place at the same time and were instigated by two acquaintances: the Mississippi Bubble, on which John Law at first made a vast fortune and gained sway over French finances; and the South Sea Bubble, launched by Law and Thomas Pitt, Jr.,...

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...