How well does the pivotal-voter model explain voter participation in small-scale elections? This paper explores this question using data from Texas liquor referenda. It first structurally estimates the parameters of a pivotal-voter model using the Texas data. It then uses the estimates to...

Since 1914, incumbent U.S. senators running for reelection have won almost 80% of the time. We investigate why incumbents win so often. We allow for three potential explanations for the incumbency advantage: selection, tenure, and challenger quality, which are separately identified using...

The chapters presented in this volume adopt a variety of these methodological tools in order to explore the extent to which discrimination against women and demographic minorities is pervasive in Latin America. In chapter two, Castillo, Petrie, and Torero present a series of experiments to...

This research adds to the literature on relationship lending in the small business context by discussing the roles of entrepreneurial competence and voluntarily disclosed information as determinants of credit access. More specifically, we propose that the loan manager's evaluation of the...

We investigate the role of the judicial system on whether or not the firms obtain the credit they applied for, by looking at the strength of the creditor protection, the strength of property rights, the time for resolving a dispute, its costs and the number of procedures the plaintiff faces. We...

This research explores the effects of adding bitcoin to an optimal portfolio (naïve, long-only, semi-constrained with and without bitcoin shorting) by relying on the mean-CVaR approach. We explore bitcoin's role in portfolios of U.S., European and Chinese assets. We back-test to compare the...

This paper reassesses the role of financial intermediation in inducing the European financial crisis of 2008. Our empirical investigation sheds light on the causal effects of excessive household leverage on economic structural distortions, beyond the already established links between credit...