If there was any time to expect a large peace-time multiplier effect from federal spending in the states, it would have been during the period from 1930 through 1940. Interest rates were near the zero bound, and unemployment rates never fell below 10 percent and there was ample idle capacity. We...

During the New Deal the Roosevelt Administration dramatically expanded relief spending to combat extraordinarily high rates of unemployment. We examine the dynamic relationships between relief spending and local private labor markets using a new panel data set of monthly relief, private...

We examine the importance of Roosevelt's 'relief, recovery, and reform' motives to the distribution of New Deal funds across over 3,000 U.S. counties, program by program. The major relief programs most closely followed Roosevelt's three R's. Other programs were tilted more in favor of areas with...

** Revised version 2005** <p> Using a recently-uncovered data set that describes over 30 federal New Deal spending, loan, and mortgage insurance programs across all U.S. counties from 1933 to 1939, this paper empirically examines the New Deal's impact on inter-county migration from 1930 to 1940. We...</p>

This paper examines the home country bias in the goods market among OECD countries. An average country imports about two and a half times as much from itself as from an otherwise identical foreign country, after controlling for sizes of exporter and importer, their direct distance, geographic...

"While substantial research finds that financial development boosts overall economic growth, we study whether financial development disproportionately raises the incomes of the poor and alleviates poverty. Using a broad cross-country sample, we distinguish among competing theoretical predictions...

While substantial research finds that financial development boosts overall economic growth, the authors study whether financial development is pro-poor: Does financial development disproportionately raise the income of the poor? Using a broad cross-country sample, the authors find that the...

This paper studies the value of external commitment to policy reforms in the case of WTO/GATT accessions. The accessions often entail reforms that go beyond narrowly defined trade liberalization, and have to overcome fierce resistance in the acceding countries, as reflected in protracted...

This paper proposes a simple model to study the relationship between domestic institutions - financial system, corporate governance, and property rights protection - and patterns of international capital flows. It studies conditions under which financial globalization can be a substitute for...

The literature on the benefits and costs of financial globalization for developing countries has exploded in recent years, but along many disparate channels with a variety of apparently conflicting results. We attempt to provide a unified conceptual framework for organizing this vast and growing...