In the household sector of the Flow of Funds Accounts, the difference between net acquisition of financial assets and net financial savings is equal to a statistical discrepancy which is often quite large relative to the reported changes in asset holdings. This means that the budget restrictions...

This paper uses the Flow of Funds accounts to assess the impact of a monetary policy shock on the borrowing and lending activities of different sectors of the economy. Our measures of contractionary monetary policy shocks have the following properties: (i) they are associated with a fall in...

The Flow of Funds table on federal funds and security repurchase agreements reports and attempts to balance the net lending/borrowing positions of various types of financial institutions. Prior to 2008, this table shows a huge unallocated discrepancy in the form of missing lending (i.e., reverse...

We examine the effect of language acquisition on the growth of immigrants' earnings. We gathered data on recent Soviet immigrants to Israel that include retrospective questions on earnings and language ability on entry into their current job. Language acquisition is found to interact positively...

Consider migration to a higher income region as a human capital investment in which parents bear migration costs and children share returns. Migrants from a population with heterogeneous intergenerational discount rates will be self-selected on intergenerational altruism. Thus, immigrants may be...

The question of how technology affects learning has been at the center of recent debates over educational inputs. In 1994, the Israeli State Lottery sponsored the installation of computers in many elementary and middle schools. This program provides an opportunity to estimate the impact of...

The israeli high tech sector is widely regarded as a hotbed of cutting-edge technologies, and as the growth engine of the israeli economy in the nineties and beyond. In this paper we present a close-up portrait of innovation in Israel for the past 30 years, with the aid of highly detailed patent...

We estimate the effects of gifted children programs (GCP) in high schools in Israel. We selected a comparison group of equally gifted students from other cities where GCP was not offered at the time. Based on administrative data, we follow 22 cohorts and measure treatment effects on outcomes,...

We estimate the impact of increased access to telemedicine that followed widespread adoption during the March-April 2020 lockdown period in Israel (due to COVID-19). We focus on the post-lockdown period, which in Israel was characterized by a temporary return to normalcy. Prior to the lockdown,...