The Great War of 1914-18 constituted a major rupture for the economies of Europe in several respects. It marked the end of almost a century of uninterrupted economic growth. It ended a long period of near-universal currency stability, and set in motion a painful process of de-globalisation. It...

Economic institutions encompassing increasingly sophisticated concepts of risk-sharing and liability flourished in Europe since the High Middle Ages. These innovations occurred in an environment of fragmented local jurisdictions, not within the framework of the territorial state. In this short...

Both conventional wisdom and leading academic research view pork barrel spendingas antithetical to responsible policymaking in times of crisis. In this paper we presentan alternative view. When agents are heterogeneous in their ideology and in theirinformation about the economic situation,...

We contribute to the intense debate on the real effects of …fiscal stimuli by showingthat the impact of government expenditure shocks depends crucially on key countrycharacteristics, such as the level of development, exchange rate regime, openness totrade, and public indebtedness. Based on a...

A large empirical literature claims that …fiscal policy in developingcountries is procyclical, in contrast to high-income countries where it is countercyclical. Some authors, however, have questioned this …finding because theliterature has typically ignored endogeneity problems. To settle this...

Advocates of fair value accounting believe that fair valuesprovide more relevant measures of assets, liabilities, andearnings than do historical costs. These advocates assertthat fair value accounting better reflects underlying economicvalues. The advantages of this method—and thecorresponding...