Late 19th century investors demanded compensation to invest in countries with poor institutional protection of property rights. Using the monthly stock returns of 1,808 firms located in 43 countries but traded in London between 1866 and 1907, we estimate the country-specific cost of capital. We...

A commonly cited benefit of the pre-World War One gold standard is that it reduced the cost of international borrowing by signaling a country's commitment to financial probity. Using a newly constructed data set that consists of more than 55,000 monthly sovereign bond returns, we test if...

We examine the relative predictive power of the sticky price monetary model, uncovered interest parity, and a transformation of the net exports variable. In addition to bringing a new approach (utilizing our measure of external imbalance suggested by Gourinchas and Rey) and data spanning a more...

Using randomized control trials (RCT) applied over time in different countries, we study how the economic environment affects how agents learn from new information. We show that as inflation has risen in developed economies, both households and firms have become more attentive and informed about...