Nauro Campos (University College London) will present his research co-authored with Fabrizio Coricelli (University of Siena, Paris School of Economics and CEPR) and Marco Frigerio (University of Siena) entitled The Political U: New Evidence on Democracy and Income. Jarko Fidrmuc (Zeppelin...

Decades of investment decisions by central planners left communist societies with structures of production ill-prepared for competitive markets. Their vulnerability to liberalization, however, varied across space. Similar to the effects identified in the "China shock'' literature, we hypothesize...

This paper investigates whether foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows are higher in countries ruled by trustworthy-looking or competent-looking leaders. After collecting pictures of 276 nondemocratic leaders in office between 1975 and 2010, we use a computer-based survey to assess how these...

Using an international panel of banks, we study whether banks’ capitalization and risk-taking are shaped by their prior economic experience. We find that, on average, bank’s past undercapitalization experience leads to more prudent lending and higher capitalization. However, we show that...

We invite contributions from both senior and junior researchers that focus on the role of families in insuring individuals against downside risk. Potential topics include: - The role of households in insuring against income risk or health risk; - The trade-off between self-insurance of...

The objective of the Summer School is to bring together PhD students and senior lecturers to study topics in labor economics. Students have the opportunity to present their work and discuss ideas with established researchers in a relaxed and open atmosphere. The Summer School is open to advanced...

This paper sheds light on the effectiveness of policies addressing high non-performing loans (NPLs). Using data on ownership of subsidiaries of foreign banks in Emerging Europe, we first show that changes in NPLs of parent banks are associated with changes in NPLs of their foreign affiliates,...

Does income inequality affect banks' credit-risk reallocation when facing financial distress? Using novel branch-level data on Colombian banks I find that facing a large liquidity shock, exposed banks shift more credit towards low-risk borrowers in municipalities with higher income inequality....

We present unique data on governance in Russian financial institutions. Despite the recent introduction of the corporate governance code, we observe large cross-sectional differences in the composition of supervisory and executive boards of directors of Russian banks. We begin analyzing the data...

Loan-to-deposit ratio may bring unintended consequences on the financial stability. We employ China’s LDR deregulation in 2015 to examine the effect of LDR on bank stability. We show that the deregulation of LDR increases the stability of banks with high LDR. Specifically, the deregulation of...