We use a new firm-level dataset to examine the efficiency of investment in emerging economies. In the three-year period following stock market liberalizations, the growth rate of the typical firm's capital stock exceeds its pre-liberalization mean by an average of 5.4 percentage points....

We investigate how criminal organizations strategically use violence to influence elections in order to get captured politicians elected. The model offers novel testable implications about the use of pre-electoral violence under different types of electoral systems and different degrees of...

We document that the recent house price experiences within an individual's social network affect her perceptions of the attractiveness of property investments, and through this channel have large effects on her housing market activity. Our data combine anonymized social network information from...

We test for evidence of spatial, residence-based labor market networks. Turnover is lower for workers more connected to their neighbors generally and more connected to neighbors of the same race or ethnic group. Both results are consistent with networks producing better job matches, while the...

In this paper, we estimate the influence of social relationships on educational attainment and social outcomes of students in school. More specifically, we investigate how losing different types of social relationships during the transition from elementary to middle school affect students'...

In the U.S., some sectoral evidence suggests that growth is driven mainly by productivity enhancing reallocation. In countries with greater barriers to entry and imperfect competition, the reallocation process may be inefficient. Therefore, for developing countries, an open question is whether...

We analyze the long-term effects of firm break-up and ownership change on corporate performance. Our analysis is based on a unique data set for a large number of Czech firms spanning the period 1996-2005. We employ a propensity score matching procedure to deal with endogeneity problems. Our...