We use a panel of over 120,000 Chinese firms of different ownership types over the period 2000-2007 to analyze the linkages between investment in fixed and working capital and financing constraints.  We find that those firms characterized by high working capital display high sensitivities of...

Was the London Stock Exchange (LSE) little more than a Dickensian den of speculation, or did it make a contribution to industrial development in Interwar Britain?  The interwar stock market laboured under problems of weak disclosure, inadequate investor protection and ineffective...

Individual behaviors such as smoking, fashion, and the adoption of new products is influenced by taking account of others' actions in one's decisions.  We study social influence in a heterogeneous population and analyze the long-run behavior of the dynamics.  We distinguish between cases in...

We theoretically and empirically examine the relationship between natural resource revenues and financial development.  In the theoretical part, we present a politico-economic model in which contract enforcement is low and decreasing in resource revenues when political institutions are poor,...

Panel data on 54 developing countries between 1960 and 2000 are used to investigate how the impact of opening to trade on economic growth is affected by wealth inequality.  The results suggest (a) that opening to trade tends to accelerate growth but (b) that the addition to growth depends...

As poor countries deplete their natural resources, for increased consumption to be sustainable some of the revenues should be invested in other public assets.  Further, since such countries typically have acute shortages of public capital, the finance from resource depletion is an opportunity...

We report the short-term results from a randomized evaluation of a mobile phone literacy and numeracy program (Project ABC) in Niger, in which adult literacy students learned how to use mobile phones as part of a literacy and numeracy class.  Students in ABC villages showed substantial gains in...

Interpersonal relationships have long been suspected of shaping agrarian institutions, probably because weak formal institutions must be supplemented by interpersonal trust. This is particularly true for informal risk sharing, a fundamental risk coping mechanism for the rural poor (e.g. Mark R....

This paper argues that rural opposition to land reform in transition Russia is a consequence of individually rational decisions by members of former state and collective farms about whether to support further land reform, or preserve the status quo, collective farming. Evidence from survey data...

Using detailed data from rural Pakistan, this paper investigates whether human capital, learning by doing, gender, and one`s status within the family - heretoforth family status - affect the division of labor within households. Results suggest the presence of returns to individual specialization...