The impact of imperfections in financial markets on firm-level investment varies greatly across industries. In particular, it appears that the choices of firms producing capital goods are more likely to be constrained by financial factors. We argue that this is the case because the intrinsic...

We investigate why social security arose when it did in the United States to replace family based old-age care. We hypothesize that increases in life-expectancy (conditional on reaching adulthood) interrupted the traditional familial transfer of land on the farm and also led to crowding of that...