We explore the role of government in the nexus of finance and trade starting from the earliest days of organised finance in England and then broadening the analysis to 84 countries from 1960 to 2004. For 18th century England, we find that the government expenditures and international trade did...

Despite a vast accumulation of private capital, China is not embracing capitalism. Deceptively familiar capitalist features disguise the profoundly unfamiliar foundations of "market socialism with Chinese characteristics." The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), by controlling the career advancement...

The recent literature on endogenous economic growth allows for effects of fiscal policy on long-term growth. If the social rate of return on investment exceeds the private return, then tax policies that encourage investment can raise the growth rate and levels of utility. An excess of the social...

What is the level of state capacity in developing countries today, and what have been its drivers over the past century? We construct a comprehensive new dataset of tax and revenue collection for 46 African polities from 1900 to 2015. Descriptive analysis shows that many polities in Africa have...

Do other peoples' incomes reduce the happiness which people in advanced countries experience from any given income? And does this help to explain why in the U.S., Germany and some other advanced countries, happiness has been constant for many decades? The answer to both questions is "Yes". We...

We provide an analysis that might help distinguish rationally justified movements in house prices from potentially non-rational movements, using a two-sector business cycle model, in which investment in housing is subject to collateral constraints. A large portion of the evolution of U.S. house...