We study how the implementation of emissions trading systems (ETS) impacts emissions reductions and the usage of renewable energy using a panel sample of the largest 100 countries worldwide. Exploiting the cross-country variations in ETS implementations, we show that ETS adoption materially...

Land market incompleteness is argued to have pervasive effects in Sub-Saharan Africa, including on agricultural efficiency, equity, and structural transformation. Yet experimental evidence on land market participation is virtually non-existent. We randomly allocate subsidies for agricultural...

Empirical cross-industry cross-country models are applied widely in economics, for example to investigate the determinants of economic growth or international trade. Estimation generally relies on US proxies for unobservable technological industry characteristics, for example industries'...

This paper provides evidence on child penalties in female and male earnings in different countries. The estimates are based on event studies around the birth of the first child, using the specification proposed by Kleven et al. (2018). The analysis reveals some striking similarities in the...

Why is agricultural productivity so low in poor countries relative to the rest of the world? Is it due to geography or constrained economic choices? We assess the quantitative role of geography and land quality for agricultural productivity differences across countries using high-resolution...

Using a new dataset on sectoral credit exposures covering financial and non-financial sectors in 115 economies over the period 1940-2014, we document the following evidence that corporate debt plays a key role in explaining boom-bust cycles, financial crises, and slow macroeconomic recoveries:...

In this paper we first trace the changing nature of banking, currency and debt crises from the last century to the present. Each type of crisis has transmogrified in the presence of official intervention and the creation of a safety net. A similar pattern is observed for international rescue...

The collapse of economic activity in 2020 from COVID-19 has been immense. An important question is how much of that resulted from government restrictions on activity versus people voluntarily choosing to stay home to avoid infection. This paper examines the drivers of the collapse using cellular...

Analysis based on a new measure of financial distress for 24 advanced economies in the postwar period shows substantial variation in the aftermath of financial crises. This paper examines the role that macroeconomic policy plays in explaining this variation. We find that the degree of monetary...

In most national elections, voters face a key choice between continuity and change. Electoral turnovers occur when the incumbent candidate or party fails to win reelection. To understand how turnovers affect national outcomes, we study the universe of presidential and parliamentary elections...