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The government contracts with a foreign firm to extract a natural resource that requires an upfront investment and which faces price uncertainty. In states where profits are high, there is a likelihood of expropriation, which generates a social cost that increases with the expropriated value. In...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012464906
damage. As expected, when the environmental damage from mining is known, the socially optimal timing will depend on the … mining until better information arrives. We show conditions under which it is optimal to postpone the mining decision … marginal mine owner is completely indifferent between mining immediately and at any point in the future. Thus, for our problem …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012457342
Confederate monetary reforms encouraged holders of Treasury notes to exchange these notes for bonds by imposing deadlines on their convertibility. We show that Confederate funding acts aimed at precipitating the conversion of currency into bonds did temporarily suppress currency depreciation....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012469479
Recent banking theory holds that durable firm-bank relationships are valuable to both parties. Using contract-specific loan records of a nineteenth-century U.S. bank, this paper shows that firms that form extended relationships with banks receive three principal benefits. First, firms with...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012470076
Why did the most prosperous colonies in the British Empire mount a rebellion? Even more puzzling, why didn't the British agree to have American representation in Parliament and quickly settle the dispute peacefully? At first glance, it would appear that a deal could have been reached to share...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012455956
The rise of civilizations involved the dual emergence of economies that could produce surplus ("prosperity") and states that could protect surplus ("security"). But the joint achievement of security and prosperity had to escape a paradox: prosperity attracts predation, and higher insecurity...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012456842
This paper analyzes the use of the corporate form among nineteenth-century manufacturing firms in Massachusetts, from newly collected data from 1875. An analysis of incorporation rates across industries reveals that corporations were formed at higher rates among industries in which firm size was...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012458569
We explore how changes in ownership and managerial control affect the productivity and profitability of producers. Using detailed operational, financial, and ownership data from the Japanese cotton spinning industry at the turn of the last century, we find a more nuanced picture than the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012458762
We present a dynamic two-country model in which military spending, geopolitical risk, and government bond prices are jointly determined. The model is consistent with three empirical facts: hegemons have a funding advantage, this advantage rises with geopolitical tensions, and war losers suffer...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10015056136
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10000663281