Menstruation can limit female labor force participation, especially in low-income countries, where menstrual hygiene practices are constrained by lack of finances and information. In a randomized controlled trial with around 1,900 female workers from four Bangladeshi garment factories, we relax...

We study how firms respond to import competition by increasing the speed of trade. We use data on all Portuguese textile and clothing exporters' monthly transactions and exploit the exogenous increase in competition following the removal of Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA) quotas on Chinese...

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp relief the connection between the epidemiology of a virus, the structure of the economy and society that becomes exposed to it, and the actions chosen by government and by individuals and communities to combat it or ameliorate its economic impact....

How do financial development and financial integration interact? We focus on Japan's Great Recession after 1990 to study this question. Regional differences in banking integration affected how the recession spread across the country: financing frictions for credit-dependent firms were more...

This paper documents a new consequence of market integration: local reallocation, i.e., the exit of some workers from production even though employment increases in the same area and industry. Thanks to new data on over 150,000 personal bankruptcies combined with detailed microcensus data from...

The development of English-language skills, a near necessity in today’s global economy, is heavily influenced by historical national decisions about whether to subtitle or dub TV content. While prior studies of language acquisition have focused on schools, we show the overwhelming influence of...

This study examines whether the COVID-19 pandemic led to lasting shifts in residential housing valuation in the UK, focusing on Greater London and seven major cities. The following questions are addressed: a) Was this change in residential valuations temporary, or is it likely to be permanent?...

We study the impact of the Brexit referendum on the quality of employment and working conditions of workers in the National Health Service (NHS). Using a difference-in-differences (DiD) design and propensity score matching to compare NHS employees with a control group referring to occupations...

In the UK, the largest proportion of household energy use is for space heating. Popular media make claims of a green hypocrisy: groups which have the strongest attitude towards the environment have the highest emissions. This study examines whether environmental attitudes and behaviours are...

We first establish that policymakers on the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee choose lower interest rates with experience. We then reject increasing confidence in private information or learning about the structure of the macroeconomy as explanations for this shift. Instead, a model...