Japanese atomic bomb survivors irradiated 8-25 weeks after ovulation subsequently suffered reduced IQ [Otake and Schull, 1998]. Whether these findings generalize to low doses (less than 10 mGy) has not been established. This paper exploits the natural experiment generated by the Chernobyl...

Reliable estimates of the value of electricity transmission are critical if these heavily-regulated investments are to be made cost-effectively. In this paper, we exploit the abrupt closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in February 2012. During the previous decade, SONGS...

We study the causal effect of social media on ethnic hate crimes and xenophobic attitudes in Russia using quasi-exogenous variation in social media penetration across cities. Higher penetration of social media led to more ethnic hate crimes, but only in cities with a high pre-existing level of...

Voluntary social distancing plays a vital role in containing the spread of the disease during a pandemic. As a public good, it should be more commonplace in more homogeneous and altruistic societies. However, for healthy people, observing social distancing has private benefits, too. If sick...

While international election interference is not new, Russia is credited with "industrializing" trolling on English-language social media platforms. In October 2018, Twitter retrospectively identified 2.9 million English-language tweets as covertly written by trolls from Russia's Internet...

Using micro-level data, we examine the effects of Russia's 2001 flat rate income tax reform on consumption, income, and tax evasion. We use the gap between household expenditures and reported earnings as a proxy for tax evasion with data from a household panel for 1998-2004. Utilizing...

We study how transition has affected human resource policies of a Russian heavy industry firm. Our data set contains personnel files of 1538 white-collar workers over 17 years: from 1984 to 2000. We find career paths before the first year of Gaidar's reforms, 1992, when Russian transition to a...

Ten years ago, donors committed $1.5 billion to a pilot Advance Market Commitment (AMC) to help purchase pneumococcal vaccine for low-income countries. The AMC aimed to encourage the development of such vaccines, ensure distribution to children in low-income countries, and pilot the AMC...

Using both the onset of the US-China trade war in 2018 and the most recent Russia-Ukraine war and associated trade tensions, we show a counterintuitive pattern in global trade. Namely, while the average firm trading with these nations significantly decreases their trade with these jurisdictions...

We study the effect of media coverage on corporate governance by focusing on Russia in the period 1999-2002. This setting offers us three ideal conditions for such a study: plenty of corporate governance violations, no alternative mechanisms to address them, and the presence of an investment...