This paper describes a series of school-based randomized trials in over 250 urban schools designedto test the impact of financial incentives on student achievement. In stark contrast to simple economicmodels, our results suggest that student incentives increase achievement when the rewards are...

The remote inland province of Shanxi was late Qing dynasty China’s paramount banking center. Itsremoteness and China’s almost complete isolation from foreign influence at the time lead historiansto posit a Chinese invention of modern banking. However, Shanxi merchants ran a tea trade...

We develop a stylized model of economic growth with bubbles. In this model, financial frictions leadto equilibrium dispersion in the rates of return to investment. During bubbly episodes, unproductiveinvestors demand bubbles while productive investors supply them. Because of this, bubbly...

We investigate the relationship between financial integration and output volatility at micro and macrolevels. Using a very large firm-level dataset from EU countries over time, we construct a measureof "deep" financial integration at the regional level based on foreign ownership at the firm...

This paper examines the determinants of intra-firm trade in U.S. imports using detailed country-productdata. We create a new measure of product contractibility based on the degree of intermediation in internationaltrade for the product. We find important roles for the interaction of country and...

Compulsory licensing allows firms in developing countries to produce foreign-owned inventions withoutthe consent of foreign patent owners. This paper uses an exogenous event of compulsory licensingafter World War I under the Trading with the Enemy Act to examine the long run effects of...