Most government expenditure is on goods that yield primarily private benefits, such as education, pensions, and healthcare. We argue that markets are most advantageous in areas where high-powered incentives are desirable, but in areas where high-powered incentives stimulate unproductive...

Most government expenditure is on goods that yield primarily private benefits, such as education, pensions, and healthcare. We argue that markets are most advantageous in areas where high-powered incentives are desirable, but in areas where high-powered incentives stimulate unproductive...

How far can institutional mobility of multi-national banks address the financial development concerns of poor economies? Using a new quarterly panel data set of 80,000 loans over 7 years, I show that greater cultural and geographical distance between a foreign bank's head quarter and the local...

We show that firm demand-side factors are strong drivers of procyclical refinancing be- havior over the credit cycle using novel data from the Shared National Credit program. Firms are more likely to refinance early when credit conditions are good to keep the ef- fective maturity of their loans...

We construct a simple career concerns model where high-powered incentives can distort the composition of effort by inducing excessive signaling. We show that in the presence of this type of career concerns, markets typically fail to limit competitive pressures and cannot commit to the desirable...