This paper examines the effects of private financial (non-FDI) capital inflows in Thailand in the pre-crisis period (1980:I–96:IV). Private capital inflows are found to be associated with higher asset prices, lower lending rates, surges in bank lending and domestic spending driven by higher...

This paper considers empirical work relating to models of firm dynamics. We show that a hazard regression model for firm exits, with a modification to accommodate age-varying covariate effects, provides an empirical framework accommodating many of the features of interest in studies on firm...

Most economists congregate on the idea that commodity price instability should be reduced. Since at least one century a variety of instruments have been designed to that end, without much success, especially for agricultural commodities. The failure might be a consequence of the fact that most...

We report that the price of a 6.5oz Coke was 5¢ from 1886 until 1959. Thus, we are documenting a nominal price rigidity that lasted more than 70 years! The case of Coca-Cola is particularly interesting because during the 70-year period there were substantial changes in the soft drink industry...

We use store-level data to document the exact process of changing prices and to directly measure menu costs at five multi-store supermarket chains. We show that changing prices in these establishments is a complex process, requiring dozens of steps and a nontrivial amount of resources. The menu...

We offer the first direct evidence of an implicit contract in a goods market. The evidence we offer comes from the market for Coca-Cola. We demonstrate that the Coca-Cola Company left a substantial amount of written evidence of its implicit contract with its consumers—a very explicit form of...

We combine two data sets to study price rigidity. The first consists of weekly time series of retail, wholesale, and spot prices for twelve products. These time series contain two exogenous cost shocks. We find that prices exhibit more rigidity in response to the second shock than the first. The...

In most OECD countries, the business services industry has grown much faster than the market sector as a whole. The industry in most cases, however, has displayed stagnating productivity growth, in some periods even a fall in productivity. Does this fast-growing industry with a bad productivity...

We empirically study the price adjustment process at multiproduct retail stores. We use a unique store level data set for five large supermarket and one drugstore chains in the U.S., to document the exact process required to change prices. Our data set allows us to study this process in great...

Heroic Plant research shows that persistently-rapid job creation by a select group of plants can be an important source of overall employment growth in manufacturing. Establishments in SICs 34 - 38 whose residual growth (after controlling for differences in plant age, size, industry, etc.) ranks...