Does U.S. military aid make the United States safer? To answer this question, we collect data on 173 countries between 1968 and 2014. Exploiting quasi-random variation in the global patterns of U.S. military aid, our paper is the first to provide causal estimates of the effect of U.S. military...

This chapter discusses the role of military interventionism and aid in nation-building. We argue that (1) intervention strategies of foreign actors like the United States often unfavorably interact with local institutional settings, which (2) produces undesired outcomes not only for the target...

This paper considers the treatment of multinational business in the system known as an X Tax. The focus is on the choice between origin and destination treatments of transborder transactions. The destination-principle approach sidesteps the transferpricing problem. It remains in the...

How effective are "smart" sanctions in imposing costs on an adversary? We consider this question in a model where a targeted regime may choose to "shield" strategically important firms from harm. Using detailed firm and individual data, we estimate the impact on firm performance from smart...

We analyze the competition in bonus taxation when banks compensate their managers by means of fixed and incentive pay and bankers are internationally mobile. Banks choose bonus payments that induce excessive managerial risk-taking to maximize their private benefits of existing government bailout...

We study the consequences of franchise extension and ballot reform for the size of government in Western Europe between 1820 and 1913. We find that franchise extension exhibits a U-shaped association with revenue per capita and a positive association with spending per capita. Instrumental...

We study how financial frictions affect firm-level heterogeneity and trade. We build a model where productivity differences across monopolistically competitive firms are endogenous and depend on investment decisions at the entry stage. By increasing entry costs, financial frictions lower the...

To understand the effects of trade policy uncertainty on firm-level export decisions, we study firm-product data on Chinese exports to the U.S. in the years surrounding China's 2001 WTO accession. Following predictions based on a model of heterogeneous firms, we provide empirical evidence that...