We investigate the extent to which conflicts between Native American tribes and U.S. Army troops were caused by poor economic conditions in Europe from 1869 to 1890. We hypothesize that contractions in economic activity pushed many Europeans to move to the western United States in search of...

U.S. stock volatility is 33 percent lower during wartime and periods of conflict. This is true even for World Wars I and II, which would seemingly increase uncertainty. In a seminal paper, Schwert (1989) identified the "war puzzle" as one of the most surprising facts from two centuries of stock...

We study the impact of the 1918 Spanish Flu on U.S. stock prices. Using a new weekly hand collected sample of 136 firms that traded on the NYSE, we examine the impact of the four waves of the flu on stock returns using panel regressions. The second and fourth wave of the pandemic significantly...