Many firms voluntarily incur the costs of attempting to influence politicians. However, estimates of the value of political connections have been made in only a few cases. We propose a new approach to valuing political ties that builds on these previous studies. We consider connected to a...

This Paper empirically studies the effect of instrumental and institutional stabilization of the exchange rate on the integration of goods markets. An instrumental stabilization of the exchange rate is accomplished through intervention in the foreign exchange market, or by monetary policies. An...

The real exchange rate has been called the single most important price in an economy, yet its behaviour exhibits several puzzles. In this project, we use Big Mac prices as a unique prism to study the movement of real exchange rates. Part of our innovation is to match these prices to the prices...