The possibility of creating a state bank has received much recent attention in the United States. In 2021, six states introduced legislation to create a state bank; in 2019, similar legislation was enacted in California for municipal banks. This paper develops a framework to evaluate state...

In recent years, policymakers have proposed various fiscal policies to spur long-run economic growth through increased capital formation. The Bush Administration, for example, proposed lowering the capital gains tax rate. The Clinton Administration, among other measures in its economic package,...

The possibility of creating a state bank has received much recent attention in the United States. In 2021, six states introduced legislation to create a state bank; in 2019, similar legislation was enacted in California for municipal banks. This paper develops a framework to evaluate state...

Large and sustained differences in marginal products of capital (MPKs) across countries are sharply at odds with the core implications of the neoclassical framework. Lucas (1990) and many subsequent studies have examined reasons for this MPK differential. In a recent contribution, Caselli and...

Large and sustained differences in marginal products of capital (MPKs) across countries are sharply at odds with the core implications of the neoclassical framework. Lucas (1990) and many subsequent studies have examined reasons for this MPK differential. In a recent contribution, Caselli and...

Economists are skeptical about the economic benefits of hosting "mega-events" such as the Olympic Games or the World Cup, since such activities have considerable cost and seem to yield few tangible benefits. These doubts are rarely shared by policymakers and the population, who are typically...

Recent studies, which have attempted to determine what causes an industrial sector in a state to grow, have ignored the general role of the state's economic development agency. We extend the analysis to include its effect, and determine that economic development expenditure by the state is a...

This paper examines the channels through which country characteristics affect growth. We investigate whether "primitives," or rates of factor accumulation, are sufficient statistics for economic growth, and whether "ancillary variables," such as political instability, income distribution, and...

The influential work of Ramey and Ramey (1995) highlighted an empirical relationship that has now come to be regarded as conventional wisdom—that output volatility and growth are negatively correlated. We reexamine this relationship in the context of globalization—a term typically used to...