We analyze the long-run growth effects of automation in the canonical overlapping generations framework. While automation implies constant returns to capital within this model class (even in the absence of technological progress), we show that it does not have the potential to lead to positive...

Based on a theoretical model featuring heterogeneous retailers that may source globally and operate as chains, we derive a number of hypotheses that link trade integration to retail firm performance and to the structure of retail markets. We empirically test these predictions using Danish...

Was the collapse of world trade between 1928 and 1937 caused by higher transport costs, increased protectionism or the collapse of the gold standard? Using recent advances in the estimation of gravity equations, I examine the partial and general equilibrium effects of bilateral distance,...

A growing empirical literature attributes much of the productivity advantages of large, "superstar" firms to their adoption of best practice management techniques that allow them to better identify and use talented workers. The reasons for the incomplete adoption of these "structured management...

The paper analyses how the IMF brought its experience gained in emerging market sovereign debt crises in the troika’s handling of the euro crisis. We link models of multiple equilibria with the IMF's experience made in Latin American crises in the 2000s. We examine subsequent changes in the...

Why do politicians sometimes pursue policies with uncertain outcomes? We present a model in which politicians are unable to pre-commit to a status quo policy, and where investors and voters face a conflict over the division of output. Politicians may deviate from the status quo and pursue risky...

This paper extends the existing literature on the uniqueness and stability conditions for an equilibrium under inflation-forecast-based (IFB) rules. It shows that, for a variety of New Keynesian sticky-price and sticky-inflation models, these are a function not just of the degree of...

Policymakers regularly rely on public financial institutions and government bodies to provide loans to clean energy projects. However, the market failures that public loan provision addresses and the role it can play in a policy strategy that also features de-risking measures, such as interest...

The neo-Fisherian view does not consider a negative interest rate gap a prerequisite for boosting inflation. Instead, a negative interest rate gap is said to lower inflation. We discuss this counterintuitive response - known as the Fisher paradox - in a prototypical new-Keynesian model. We draw...

We conducted a randomised controlled trial (RCT) on a sample of 1,000 female garment workers in three factories in Bangladesh, off ering access to free sanitary pads at work to 500 of the workers. We cross-randomised participation in information sessions for hygienic menstrual health care...