Private ownership should generally be preferred to public ownership when the incentives to innovate and to contain costs must be strong. In essence, this is the case for capitalism over socialism, explaining the dynamic vitality' of free enterprise. The great economists of the 1930s and 1940s...

Fire sales are forced sales of assets in which high-valuation bidders are sidelined, typically due to debt overhang problems afflicting many specialist bidders simultaneously. We overview theoretical and empirical research on asset fire sales, which shows how they can arise, how they can lead to...

We revisit the debate over whether political institutions cause economic growth, or whether, alternatively, growth and human capital accumulation lead to institutional improvement. We find that most indicators of institutional quality used to establish the proposition that institutions cause...

We examine the relationship between urban characteristics in 1960 and urban growth (income and population) between 1960 and 1990. Our major findings are that income and population growth move together and both types of growth are (1) positively related to initial schooling, (2) negatively...

This paper presents two propositions about corruption. First, the structure of government institutions and the political process are a very important determinant of the level of corruption. In particular, weak governments which do not control their agencies would lead to ultra-high corruption...

We present a model of investment hangover motivated by the Great Recession. In our model, overbuilding of residential capital requires a reallocation of productive resources to nonresidential sectors, which is facilitated by a reduction in the real interest rate. If the fall in the interest rate...