The wave of privatization in the 1980s and 1990s increased productivity of many previously state owned enterprises (SOEs). However, governments often do not have sufficient support to privatize SOEs. We provide evidence that threatening privatization and market competition (entry of new firms)...

We study the impact of regulation on productivity and welfare in the U.S. sugar manufacturing industry. While this U.S. industry has been protected from foreign competition for nearly 150 years, it was regulated only during the Sugar Act period, 1934-74. We show that regulation significantly...

What are the long-run economic impacts of the policy responses to control pandemics? We investigate this question by exploiting state-level data spanning one of the most consequential global pandemics in centuries, the 1918 influenza pandemic. Specifically, we use a difference-in-differences...