Discussion Papers

We theoretically analyze how index investing affects financial markets using a dynamic exchange economy with heterogeneous investors and two Lucas...

This paper explores the effect of oil shocks on electoral outcomes. Using a new polling and election dataset for 207 elections across 50 democracies...

What will be the political legacy of the Coronavirus pandemic? We find that epidemic exposure in an individual’s “impressionable years” (ages 18 to 25...

This paper offers for the first time a global picture of gender discrimination by the law as it affects women’s economic opportunity and charts the...

An effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is sometimes suggested, will be to reverse the secular trend toward questioning the value of scientific...

This paper develops a heterogeneous firm-dynamics model to jointly study firms’ currency debt composition and investment choices. In our model...

The EU’s 2019 Insolvency Directive increases debt holders’ control over bankruptcy reorganization proceedings, mirroring recent trends in U.S. Chapter...

We examine a new data set of laws and practices governing public procurement, as well as procurement outcomes, in 187 countries. We measure regulation...

We estimate the survival time of nearly 7,000 firms in a dozen of high-income and middle-income countries in a scenario of extreme economic distress...

We exploit the exogenous shock of the COVID-19 pandemic on financial markets and regulatory restrictions on dark trading to investigate how volatility...

Loan guarantees are popular policy responses during the COVID-19 crisis. Despite their prevalence, evidence of their effectiveness is sparse. We...

We examine loan insurance when lenders can screen at origination, learn loan quality over time, and can sell loans in secondary markets. Loan...

In the 30 years since the fall of communism, the countries of the former Soviet bloc and Yugoslavia have undergone tremendous change. Income per...

Rank-and-file employees are becoming increasingly critical for many firms, yet we know little about how their employment dynamics matter for stock...

We propose a novel, and simple, Bayesian estimation and model selection procedure for crosssectional asset pricing. Our approach, that allows for both...

Consumption dynamics are hard to measure accurately in the data, yet they are the crucial ingredient of macro-finance asset pricing models. The...