The rise of civilizations involved the dual emergence of economies that could produce surplus (“prosperity”) and states that could protect surplus (“security”). But the joint achievement of security and prosperity had to escape a paradox: prosperity attracts predation, and higher...

We show that supply-side financial shocks have a large impact on firms' investment. We develop a new methodology to separate firm-borrowing shocks from bank-supply shocks using a vast sample of matched bank-firm lending data. We decompose aggregate loan movements in Japan for the period 1990 to...

School quality and grade completion by students are shown to be directly linked, leading to very different perspectives on educational policy in developing countries. Unique panel data on primary school age children in Egypt permit estimation of behavioral models of school leaving. Students...

We conduct a randomized experiment that generates exogenous variation in the access to foreign markets for rug producers in Egypt. Combined with detailed survey data, we causally identify the impact of exporting on firm performance. Treatment firms report 16-26 percent higher profits and exhibit...

The paper presents a dynamic portfolio model under currency inconvertibility which rationalizes the recent Egyptian experience of real exchange rate appreciation and currency diversification following the increase in oil exports and the partial financial liberalization that took place after...

This paper contains the basic statistical material upon which Effective Rates of Protection (ERPs), Domestic Resource Costs (DRCs), and crop acreage responses were calculated by the authors for their volume on Egypt in the NBER project Foreign Trade Regimes and Economic Development. This...

During Egypt's Arab Spring, unprecedented popular mobilization and protests brought down Hosni Mubarak's government and ushered in an era of competition between three groups: elites associated with Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP), the military, and the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood....

A general equilibrium model featuring multiple realistic sources of financial frictions is developed to study how different constraints interact in equilibrium. We highlight, distinguish, and evaluate their differential impacts and rich interactions. The economic impact of financial inclusion...

Turkey, which is a predominantly Muslim country, enacted an education law in 1997 which increased the compulsory secular education from five to eight years. We employ a unique nation-wide survey of adults in 2012 to investigate the impact of education on religiosity, lifestyles and political...