We use new data to examine the effects of giant oilfield discoveries around the world since 1946. On average, these discoveries increase per capita oil production and oil exports by up to 50 percent. But these giant oilfield discoveries also have a dark side: they increase the incidence of...

We show that direct investments by consumers without the use of financial intermediaries can efficiently allocate financial capital to firms seeking funding for production of a novel consumption good. In our setting, consumers are also investors, and their privately known consumption preferences...

In most industrialized economies, financial wealth is distributed far more unequally than income. According to Wolff (2007) more than half of the American households possess almost no productive capital while realizing about 20 percent of national income. This mismatch poses a problem for the...