We study the location-specific component in research productivity of economics and finance faculty who have ever been affiliated with the top 25 universities in the last three decades. We find that there was a positive effect of being affiliated with an elite university in the 1970s; this effect...

We study the location-specific component of research productivity for economics and finance faculty over the last three decades. We find that there was a positive effect of being affiliated with a top 25 university in the 1970s; this effect weakened in the 1980s and disappeared in the 1990s. The...

Citations are one way that past research echoes through time. In this paper, we compile a list of articles published in major refereed economics journals in the last 35 years that have received more than 500 citations as of June 2006. We then use this list to examine various trends: what fields...

What external control mechanisms are most effective in detecting corporate fraud? To address this question we study in depth all reported cases of corporate fraud in companies with more than 750 million dollars in assets between 1996 and 2004. We find that fraud detection does not rely on one...

We compile the list of articles published in major refereed economics journals during the last 35 years that have received more than 500 citations. We document major shifts in the mode of contribution and in the importance of different sub-fields: Theory loses out to empirical work, and micro...

What external control mechanisms are most effective in detecting corporate fraud? To address this question we study in depth all reported cases of corporate fraud in companies with more than 750 million dollars in assets between 1996 and 2004. We find that fraud detection does not rely on one...

We study the location-specific component in research productivity of economics and finance faculty who have ever been affiliated with the top 25 universities in the last three decades. We find that there was a positive effect of being affiliated with an elite university in the 1970s; this effect...

To identify the most effective mechanisms for detecting corporate fraud, we study all reported fraud cases in large U.S. companies between 1996 and 2004. We find that fraud detection does not rely on standard corporate governance actors (investors, SEC, and auditors), but rather takes a village,...

Can peer-to-peer lending (P2P) crowdfunding disintermediate and mitigate information frictions in lending such that choices and outcomes for at least some borrowers and investors are improved? I offer a framing of issues and survey the nascent literature on P2P. On the investor side, P2P...

Have rising income and consumption at the top of income distribution since the early 1980s induced households in the lower tiers of the distribution to consume a larger share of their income? Using state-year variation in income level and consumption in the top first quintile or decile of the...