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...

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...

"There is a long-standing debate as to whether the Fisher effect operated during the classical gold standard period. We break new ground on this question by developing a market-based measure of general inflation expectations during the gold standard. Since the gold-silver price ratio was widely...