This paper presents a model of rational Bayesian agents with speculative attacks in a regime of exchange rate which is pegged within a band. Speculators learn from the observation of the exchange rate within the band whether their mass is sufficiently large for a successful attack. Multiple...

There are many alleged culprits for the bank runs of 2008 and their devastating economic fallout. But proprietary information and leverage top our list. Claims of proprietary information forced financial markets to operate on trust, while providing the perfect breeding ground for fraud. And...

We analyze the emergence of the first socioeconomic institution in history limiting fertility: west of a line from St. Petersburg to Trieste, the European Marriage Pattern (EMP) reduced childbirths by approximately one-third between the fourteenth and eighteenth century. To explain the rise of...

This paper presents a case study of a well-informed investor in the South Sea bubble. We argue that Hoare's Bank, a fledgling West End London bank, knew that a bubble was in progress and nonetheless invested in the stock: it was profitable to "ride the bubble." Using a unique dataset on daily...

The Industrial Revolution is a topic of renewed interest for growth economists. After the first wave of "new growth" theory that addressed the causes of sustained increases in productivity, more attention has been given to an important additional stylized fact: that rapid growth itself is new in...

We analyze under what conditions intermarriage can be used as an indicator of tolerance, and whether such tolerant attitudes persisted in Germany during the twentieth century. We find strong evidence for the persistence of tolerant attitudes towards intermarriage with Jews. At the same time, our...