In a production economy with trade in financial markets motivated by the desire to share labor-income risk and to speculate, we show that speculation increases volatility of asset returns and investment growth, increases the equity risk premium, and reduces welfare. Regulatory measures, such as...

Cryptocurrencies refer to a type of digital cash that use distributed ledger - or blockchain technology - to provide secure transactions. These currencies are generally misunderstood. While initially dismissed as fads or bubbles, many large central banks are considering launching their own...

We show that equity market liberalizations, on average, lead to a one percent increase in annual real economic growth over a five-year period. The effect is robust to alternative definitions of liberalization and does not reflect variation in the world business cycle. The effect also remains...