We test the hypothesis that, when thinking about allocating money to a stock, investors mentally represent the stock by the distribution of its past returns and then evaluate this distribution in the way described by prospect theory. In a simple model of asset prices where some investors think...

In the World Bank Enterprise Survey, the share of entrepreneurs who are women first rises and then falls with national income, which reverses the well-known U-shaped relationship between female labor force participation and economic development. This paper presents a model of entrepreneurship in...

This paper examines the 2021-2022 global inflation surge and the belated but aggressive monetary policy response to it by advanced economy central banks. Drawing on body of recent empirical research, it identifies three primary drivers of the global inflation surge: supply shocks from pandemic...

Since the 18th century, policymakers have debated the merits of industrial policy (IP). Yet, economists lack basic facts about its use due to measurement challenges. We propose a new approach to IP measurement based on information contained in policy text. We show how off-the-shelf supervised...

A smaller human population would emit less carbon, other things equal, but how large is the effect? Here we test the widely-shared view that an important benefit of the ongoing, global decline in fertility will be reductions in long-run temperatures. We contrast a baseline of global depopulation...

This paper studies how innovation reacts to foreign political risk and shapes its economic consequences. In a model with foreign political shocks that can disrupt the supply of foreign inputs, we show that greater political risk abroad increases domestic innovation, thereby lowering reliance on...

We study common ownership in 49 countries from 2005 to 2019 and show that it is pervasive and rising around the world. However, despite this global growth, common ownership is still considerably lower in all countries compared to the United States. It is particularly high and growing rapidly...

We uncover a new real effect of harmonizing accounting standards on international trade: following a mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards, exporters experiencing a greater change in reporting requirements become more successful in defending against foreign...

How do investors choose the intensity of their due diligence, and how does that choice affect investment outcomes? Using cell phone signal data, we measure the duration of pre-investment meetings between venture capitalists (VCs) and startup employees. This measure captures one important...