We investigate the relationship between financial integration and output volatility at micro and macrolevels. Using a very large firm-level dataset from EU countries over time, we construct a measureof "deep" financial integration at the regional level based on foreign ownership at the firm...

This paper describes a series of school-based randomized trials in over 250 urban schools designedto test the impact of financial incentives on student achievement. In stark contrast to simple economicmodels, our results suggest that student incentives increase achievement when the rewards are...

Estimates of the marginal product of capital can help forecast economic growth, test competing businesscycle theories, and perform cost-benefit analysis. This paper presents annual and quarterly estimatesof the marginal product of capital in the U.S. separately for the residential and...

I argue that progress in understanding economic development (as in other branches of economics)must come from the investigation of mechanisms; the associated empirical analysis can usefully employa wide range of experimental and non-experimental methods. I discuss three different areas of...

The remote inland province of Shanxi was late Qing dynasty China’s paramount banking center. Itsremoteness and China’s almost complete isolation from foreign influence at the time lead historiansto posit a Chinese invention of modern banking. However, Shanxi merchants ran a tea trade...

This paper examines the determinants of intra-firm trade in U.S. imports using detailed country-productdata. We create a new measure of product contractibility based on the degree of intermediation in internationaltrade for the product. We find important roles for the interaction of country and...

Inventories and price changes are correlated. The inverse relation is most obvious in housing whereinventories build in low demand markets and shrink in high demand markets. This is a puzzle. Ifsellers and buyers had symmetric views of the world, one would think that sellers would lower...

We develop a stylized model of economic growth with bubbles. In this model, financial frictions leadto equilibrium dispersion in the rates of return to investment. During bubbly episodes, unproductiveinvestors demand bubbles while productive investors supply them. Because of this, bubbly...

In this paper we critically review the literature on the political economy of monetary policy, with aneye on the questions raised by the recent financial crisis. We begin with a discussion of rules versusdiscretion. We then examine the issue of Central Banks independence both in normal times and...

Adverse shocks to stock markets propagate across the world, with a jump in one region of the worldseemingly causing an increase in the likelihood of a different jump in another region of the world.To capture this effect mathematically, we introduce a model for asset return dynamics with a...