We analyze a randomized trial in which microfinance loans were bundled with an unpopular (but cheap) health insurance policy. In randomly assigned treatment villages, purchase of the insurance policy was made mandatory at the time of loan renewal. This requirement led to a 22 percentage point...

We introduce a new, market-based and forward looking measure of political risk derived from the yield spread between a country's U.S. dollar debt and an equivalent U.S. Treasury bond. We explain the variation in these sovereign spreads with four factors: global economic conditions,...

Rosenstein-Rodan (1943) and others posit that rapid development requires a 'big push' -- the coordinated rapid growth of diverse complementary industries, and suggests a role for government in providing such coordination. We argue that Japan's zaibatsu, or pyramidal business groups, provided...

With the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, Mexico entered a bilateral free trade agreement which not only lowered its own tariffs on imports but also lowered tariffs on its exports to the U.S. We find that women's relative wage increased, particularly during the...

This paper studies the trade of China in the past 150 years, starting from the first opening of China after the Opium War. The main purpose of the paper is to identify what is (and was) China's 'normal' level of foreign trade, and how these levels changed under different trade regimes, from 1840...

This paper explores whether one of the most important U.S. policies towards Africa of the past few decades achieved its desired result. In 2000, the United States dropped trade restrictions on a broad list of products through the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). Since the Act was...

Developing countries pay substantially higher transportation costs than developed nations, which leads to less trade and perhaps lower incomes. This paper investigates price discrimination in the shipping industry and the role it plays in determining transportation costs. In the presence of...

Why has the expansion of women's economic and political rights coincided with economic development? This paper investigates this question, focusing on a key economic right for women: property rights. The basic hypothesis is that the process of development (i.e., capital accumulation and...

We investigate the relationship between financial integration and output volatility at micro and macro levels. Using a very large firm-level dataset from EU countries over time, we construct a measure of "deep" financial integration at the regional level based on foreign ownership at the firm...

We quantify the effects of the lending and balance sheet channels on corporate investment, by comparing the performance of foreign-owned exporters to that of domestic during two types of financial crises: "currency" and "twin." A currency crisis involves a depreciated currency, whereas a twin...