[...]To explore these questions, we present the firstsystematic analysis of the determinants and impact of thesovereign credit ratings assigned by the two leading U.S.agencies, Moody’s Investors Service and Standard andPoor’s.1 Such an analysis has only recently become possibleas a result of...

This paper revisits Bairoch’s hypothesis that in the late 19th century tariffs were positively associated with growth, as recently confirmed by a new generation of quantitative studies (see O`Rourke (2000), Jacks (2006) and Clemens-Williamson (2002, 2004)). This paper highlights the importance...

The question of how Italian Renaissance architecture was takenup in other European countries has been the subject of numerousstudies. One interesting example is the building activity in southGermany at the beginning of the 17th century. Major cities like Stuttgartand Augsburg implemented plans...

This paper shows how a simple modi…fication of estimators based on the RandomEffects principle can preserve the consistency and asymptotic efficiency of the methodin panel data despite non-ignorable persistent heterogeneity driven by correlationsbetween the heterogeneity and the regressors. The...