Post WWII globalization forces are facing headwinds in the form of global crises-the "The Great Recession" and the "The Pandemic Recession". Israel's trade and financial globalization, however, is steadily rising. The pandemic-induced slump in economic activity is deep, as consumer spending,...

This paper provides evidence of the long-run effects of a permanent increase in agricultural productivity on conflict. We construct a newly digitized and geo-referenced dataset of battles in Europe, the Near East and North Africa covering the period between 1400 and 1900 CE. For variation in...

Recent theories of the Long Divergence between Middle Eastern and Western European economies focus on Middle Eastern (over-)reliance on religious legitimacy, use of slave soldiers, and persistence of restrictive proscriptions of religious (Islamic) law. These theories take as exogenous the...

We examine the age profile of subjective wellbeing and illbeing in nine Asian countries (Bangladesh, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka) and seven Middle Eastern countries (Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Yemen). We find the...

Individuals of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) ancestry in the US have been targeted by anti-immigrant and counterterrorism policies and have been the focus of vitriolic political rhetoric. Despite this, lack of data identifying MENA individuals has prevented systematic evaluation of the...

The U.S. opioid crisis is now driven by fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that currently accounts for 90% of all opioid deaths. Fentanyl is smuggled from abroad, with little evidence on how this happens. We show that a substantial amount of fentanyl smuggling occurs via legal trade flows,...

We investigate the phenomenon of trade re-allocations across countries as a result of the U.S.- China trade war. Using quarterly data on U.S. imports, we find evidence, as do others, of trade diversion in a range of industries and products, including products not targeted by U.S. tariffs on...

Great powers are increasingly using their economic and financial strength for geopolitical aims. This rise of "geoeconomics" has the potential to reshape the international trade and financial system. This paper examines the role of domestic political economy forces in determining a government's...

Monetary and fiscal policies require coordination to achieve desired macroeconomic outcomes. The literature since Leeper (1991) has focused on two regimes: monetary dominance and fiscal dominance. In both cases, one policy is active while the other is passive and accommodates the former. We...

The interwar period was marked by the end of the classical gold standard regime and new levels of macroeconomic disorder in the world economy. The interwar disorder often is linked to policies inconsistent with the constraint of the open-economy trilemma the inability of policymakers...