The paper proposes a simple equilibrium model of venture capital, entrepreneurship and innovation. Venture capitalists not only finance but also advise start-up entrepreneurs and thereby add value to new firms. The paper demonstrates how a productive and active VC industry boosts innovation...

What are the macroeconomic consequences of changing aggregate lending standards in residential mortgage markets, as measured by loan-to-value (LTV) ratios? In a structural VAR, GDP and business investment increase following an expansionary LTV shock. Residential investment, by contrast, falls, a...

The recent plunge in oil prices has brought into question the generally accepted view that lower oil prices are good for the US and the global economy. In this paper, using a quarterly multi-country econometric model, we first show that a fall in oil prices tends relatively quickly to lower...

Rational politicians are interested in judicial independence (JI) in order to make their promises credible. But if politicians preferences deviate from the dicta of the judiciary, they also have incentives to renege on judicial independence. These two conflicting aspects are measured by two...

Government is often considered the safe sector of an open economy that provides households with insurance against external risk exposure. Among highly integrated economies, however, households should be able to exploit common financial markets to insure themselves. In this paper we examine the...

When types of workers are imperfect substitutes, the Mincerian rate of return to human capital is negatively related to the supply of human capital. We work out a simple model for the joint evolution of output and wage dispersion. We estimate this model using cross-country panel data on GDP and...

Considerable concern has been expressed in recent years about declines in voter participation rates in the United States and in several other major democratic countries. Some feel low participation rates introduce a class bias into the political process and thereby worsen the outcomes from it....

This paper attempts to reconcile the apparent contradiction between two strands of the literature on the effects of financial intermediation on economic activity. On the one hand, the empirical growth literature finds a positive effect of financial depth as measured by, for instance, private...

This paper is intended to demonstrate, in theory as well as empirically, how increased dependence on natural resources tends to go along with less rapid economic growth and greater inequality in the distribution of income across countries. On the other hand, public policy in support of education...