How should a policy-maker prioritize interventions to improve the public infrastructure with which firms operate and how large are the benefits from doing so likely to be? To address these questions we use survey data on the obstacles arising from poor quality public inputs that managers face in...

We use data from over 20,000 firms in 60 countries to identify constraints on the growth of firms. We interpret managers’ answers to survey questions on the extent to which various aspects of their external environment inhibit the performance of their firm as measuring the shadow cost of...

A stable international monetary system has emerged since the early 1990s. A large number of industrial and a growing number of developing countries now have domestic inflation targets administered by independent and transparent central banks. These countries place few restrictions on capital...

Crowding-out during the British Industrial Revolution has long been one of the leading explanations for slow growth during the Industrial Revolution, but little empirical evidence exists to support it. We argue that examinations of interest rates are fundamentally misguided, and that the...

The economic history of Argentina presents one of the most dramatic examples of divergence in the modern era. What happened and why? This paper reviews the wide range of competing explanations in the literature and argues that, setting aside deeper social and political determinants, the various...

We analyze the impact of non-compliance with a requirement similar to the Basel III Liquidity Coverage Ratio and its impact on bank intermediation applying Regression Discontinuity Designs. Using a unique dataset on Dutch banks, we show that non-compliance with a liquidity requirement causes...