We analyze linked databases on all Small Business Administration (SBA) loans, on all SBA lenders, and on all U.S. employers to estimate the effects of financial access on employment growth. Our methods combine regressions with matching on firm age, size, industry, year, and employment history,...

Analyzing a list of all Small Business Administration (SBA) loans in 1991 to 2009 linked with annual information on all U.S. employers from 1976 to 2012, we apply detailed matching and regression methods to estimate the variation in SBA loan effects on job creation and firm survival across firm...

This paper studies the importance of dynamic earnings modeling for the design of income contingent student loans (ICLs). ICLs have been shown to be theoretically optimal in terms of efficiency in the presence of risk aversion, adverse selection and moral hazard, and have attractive equity...

Current literature on the impact assessment of government innovation subsidies is mainly empirical driven and lacks an overarching theoretical model to explain the conditions under which government subsidies create positive additionalities on private R&D investment. In this paper, we present a...

Small Business Administration (SBA) loans have long been one of the most significant policy interventions in the U.S. affecting firm behavior, but little is known about their outcomes. This paper estimates the effects on employment using a list of all SBA loans linked to annual data on all U.S....

Improving productivity among microenterprises is important, especially in low-income countries where market imperfections are pervasive, and resources are scarce. Relaxing credit constraints can increase the productivity of microenterprises. Using a field experiment involving agricultural...

Black-owned businesses tend to operate with less finance and employ fewer workers than those owned by Whites. Motivated by a simple conceptual framework, we document these facts and show they are causally connected using large firm-level surveys linked to universal employer data from the Census...

Small Business Administration (SBA) loans have long been one of the most significant policy interventions in the U.S. affecting firm behavior, but little is known about their outcomes. This paper estimates the effects on employment using a list of all SBA loans linked to annual data on all U.S....

This paper studies the importance of dynamic earnings modeling for the design of income contingent student loans (ICLs). ICLs have been shown to be theoretically optimal in terms of efficiency in the presence of risk aversion, adverse selection and moral hazard, and have attractive equity...

An arms race for an artificial general intelligence (AGI) would be detrimental for and even pose an existential threat to humanity if it results in an unfriendly AGI. In this paper an all-pay contest model is developed to derive implications for public policy to avoid such an outcome. It is...