This paper presents empirical support for the existence of wealth effects in the contribution of financial intermediation to economic growth, and offers a theoretical explanation for these effects. Using GMM dynamic panel data techniques applied to study the growth-promoting effects of financial...

The authors revisit the debt overhang question. They first use nonparametric techniques to isolate a panel of countries on the downward sloping section of a debt Laffer Curve. In particular, overhang countries are ones where a threshold level of debt is reached in sample, beyond which (initial)...

How do the liquidity functions of banks affect investment and growth at different stages of economic development? How do financial fragility and the costs of banking crises evolve with the level of wealth of countries? We analyze these issues using an overlapping generations growth model where...

This paper offers empirical evidence that real exchange rate volatility can have a significant impact on the long-term rate of productivity growth, but the effect depends critically on a country's level of financial development. For countries with relatively low levels of financial development,...

This paper studies the apparent contradictions between two strands of the literature on the effects of financial intermediation on economic activity. On the one hand, the empirical growth literature finds a positive effect of financial depth as measured by, for instance, private domestic credit...

How do credit standards on the mortgage market affect neighbourhood choice and the resulting level of urban segregation? To answer this question, we first develop a model of neighbourhood choice with credit constraints. The model shows that a relaxation of credit standards can either increase or...

The paper presents a dynamic model of neighborhood segregation where fee motivated real estate brokers match sellers optimally either to minority or to white buyers. In an initially all-white neighborhood, real estate brokers thus either keep the neighborhood in a steady-state white equilibrium...

We put forward a new experimental economics design with monetary incentives to estimate students' perceptions of grading discrimination. We use this design in a large field experiment which involved 1200 British students in grade 8 classrooms across 29 schools. In this design, students are given...

The underrepresentation of minority teachers and male teachers remains an issue in US elementary education, and there is evidence that racial interactions partly shape student performance. However there is little work on discrimination within the classroom. Do teachers give better grades to...

Do teachers assess same-race students more favorably? This paper uses nationally representative data on teacher assessments of student ability that can be compared with test scores to determine whether teachers give better assessments to same-race students. The data set follows students from...