Using a new daily dataset for all stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange, we study the impact of information asymmetry during the liquidity freeze and market run of October 1907 - one of the most severe financial crises of the 20th century. We estimate that the run on the market increased...

Over the last millennium, the clan and the city have been the locus of cooperation in China and Europe respectively. This paper examines - analytically, historically, and empirically - the cultural, social, and institutional co-evolution that led to this bifurcation. We highlight that groups...

This article offers a critical review of recent literature on Chinese legal tradition and argues that some subtle but fundamental differences between the Western and Chinese legal traditions are highly relevant to our explanation of the economic divergence in the modern era. This paper seeks to...

This paper estimates a structural model of economic geography using cross-country data on per capita income, bilateral trade, and the relative price of manufacturing goods. More than 70% of the variation in per capita income can be explained by the geography of access to markets and to sources...

This paper reviews the empirical evidence on the relationship between economic output and various dimensions of air and water quality. Pollution may rise with growth, because an increased scale of economic activity means more emissions, ceteris paribus. Economic growth may be associated with a...

This Paper investigates the determinants of countries’ export performance looking in particular at the role of international product market linkages. We begin with a novel decomposition of the growth in countries’ exports into the contribution from increases in external demand and from...

Is social capital long lasting? Does it affect long term economic performance? To answer these questions we test Putnam’s conjecture that today marked differences in social capital between the North and South of Italy were due to the culture of independence fostered by the free city-states...

Drawing on the recent literature on economic institutions and the origins of economic development, we offer a political economy explanation of why institution building has varied so much across transition economies. We identify dependence on natural resources and the historical experience of...