Although developing economies are more volatile, firms in developed countries hold more cash and less debt. We show that despite greater aggregate and industry stability, the performance and balance sheets of individual firms in developed countries are more volatile. In developing countries,...

A large literature suggests that European settlement outside of Europe shaped institutional, educational, technological, cultural, and economic outcomes. This literature has had a serious gap: no direct measure of colonial European settlement. In this paper, we (1) construct a new database on...