We document that the recent decline in aggregate volatility has been accompanied by a large increase in firm level risk. The negative relationship between firm and aggregate risk seems to be present ...

U.S. and European banking institutions were hit by a wave of distress in March 2023. Policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic reacted with an array of interventions, some targeting individual ...

Recent years have seen the development of a large literature on balance sheet factors in emerging-market financial crises. In this paper we discuss three concepts widely used in this literature. Two ...

This paper estimates the long-term effects of the global recession of 2008-2009 on output in 23 countries. I measure these effects by comparing current estimates of potential output from the OECD and ...

This paper investigates whether preschool children exposed to Sesame Street when it began in 1969 experienced improved educational and labor market outcomes subsequently. We exploit geographic ...

We evaluate the effect of California's 11 percent excise tax on firearms, introduced in July 2024, on retail prices. Using price quotes for 48 popular firearms from over 2,200 licensed dealers, we ...

In doing so we systematically document for the first time the extent to which Africa was politically decentralized, calculating that in 1880 there were probably 45,000 independent polities which were ...

How does a task-level minimum pay requirement for gig workers affect their earnings and employment? We study this question in the context of a January 2024 law in Seattle that establishes a per-task ...

We exploit plausibly exogenous, localized increases in anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment generated by combat fatalities of U.S. service members from a given state during the wars in Iraq and ...

We examine how differences in financial reporting practices shape firm productivity. Leveraging new audit questions in the U.S. Census Bureau's 2021 Management and Organizational Practices Survey ...

Despite the scarcity of infrastructure in emerging-market and developing economies (EMDEs), in the absence of readily accessible data on the historical performance of EMDE infrastructure as an asset ...

This paper examines the process of nation building, drawing lessons from the remarkable experience of Indonesia over the past century. I discuss conceptual perspectives on nation building and review ...