The financial crisis drew attention to the crucial role of transparency and the independence of financial certification intermediaries, in particular, statutory auditors. Now any anticompetitive practice involving coordinated increases in prices or concomitant changes in quality that impacts...

We study the consequences of leniency - reduced legal sanctions for wrongdoers who spontaneously self-report to law enforcers - on sequential, bilateral, illegal transactions such as corruption, manager-auditor collusion, or drug deals. It is known that leniency helps to deter illegal...

We consider a setting in which insiders have information about income that outside shareholders do not, but property rights ensure that outside shareholders can enforce a fair payout. To avoid intervention, insiders report income consistent with outsiders' expectations based on publicly...

We analyze corporate fraud in a model in which managers have superior information but are biased against liquidation, because of their private benefits from empire building. This may induce them to misreport information and even bribe auditors when liquidation would be value-increasing. To curb...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, this paper analyses the effects of spending part of adolescents’ leisure time on playing music or doing sports, or both. We find that while playing music fosters educational outcomes compared to doing sports, particularly so for girls and...

We evaluate, using a randomized trial, two school-based financial literacy education programs in government-run primary and junior high schools in Ghana. One program integrated financial and social education, whereas the second program only offered financial education. Both programs included a...

There is relatively little research on peer effects in teenage motherhood despite the fact that peer effects, and in particular social interaction within the family, is likely to be important. We estimate the impact of an elder sister’s teenage fertility on the teenage childbearing of their...

Despite the relevance of cognitive and non-cognitive skills for professional success, their formation is not yet fully understood. This study fills part of this gap by analyzing the role of sports club participation, one of the most popular extra-curricular activities, on children’s skill...

I argue that distinguishing between life expectancy at birth and life expectancy beyond the crucial early childhood years affects the relationship between life expectancy and schooling in a meaningful way. In particular, I show that while the change in life expectancy at birth between 1960 and...

Over the past two decades, technological progress in the United States has been biased towards skilled labor. What does this imply for business cycles? We construct a quarterly skill premium from the CPS and use it to identify skill-biased technology shocks in a VAR with long-run restrictions....