How can the West’s economic and political polarization be explained? We argue that persuasive lobbying at various levels of government leads to systematic deviations of policies from those desired by the majority. Implemented policies diverge from the majority position despite centripetal...

How can the West’s economic and political polarization be explained? We argue that persuasive lobbying at various levels of government leads to systematic deviations of policies from those desired by the majority. Implemented policies diverge from the majority position despite centripetal...

An important strand of research in macro-finance investigates which factors impede enterprise investment, and quantifies their aggregate cost. In this paper, we make two contributions to this literature. The first contribution is methodological: we introduce a novel framework to calibrate...

Against the background of a notoriously high macroeconomic instability and the need to raise tax revenues to meet the demands of public spending, this paper analyzes the tradeoff between growth and volatility of tax revenues in Latin America. We use a two-step Engle-Granger-type model to...

The consequences for countries of past foreign rule are the subject of a vast literature across history and the social sciences. This paper constructs a novel measure of past foreign (or minority) rule - the genetic distance of a country's ruling elite in the year 1900 from the country's ethnic...

The consequences for countries of past foreign rule are the subject of a vast literature across history and the social sciences. This paper constructs a novel measure of past foreign (or minority) rule - the genetic distance of a country's ruling elite in the year 1900 from the country's ethnic...

An important strand of research in macro-finance investigates which factors impede enterprise investment, and quantifies their aggregate cost. In this paper, we make two contributions to this literature. The first contribution is methodological: we introduce a novel framework to calibrate...

While the COVID-19 pandemic had a large and asymmetric impact on firms, many countries quickly enacted massive business rescue programs which are specifically targeted to smaller firms. Little is known about the effects of such policies on business entry and exit, factor reallocation, and...

I present the following proposal: information revealed during non-cartel investigations by competition law enforcement authorities, such as evaluation of M&As or investigation of monopolization (dominance) conduct, should be directly used to investigate and prosecute cartels. Currently, in...

We estimate the value of the revolving door for firm executives and directors joining the cabinets of the Trump I and Biden administrations. By combining intraday stock and prediction market data, we take the degree of anticipation of political appointments into account and we offer estimates...