We study the logic of Peronist interventionist polices and the beliefs that support them. Instead of a comprehensive approach, we focus on three elements. First, we study beliefs and values about the economic system present in Peron's speeches during the period 1943-55. Second, we study survey...

We identify the impact of local firm concentration on incumbent performance with a quasi natural experiment. When Germany was divided after World War II, many firms in the machine tool industry fled the Soviet occupied zone to prevent expropriation. We show that the regional location decisions...

In 2015-2016 Germany experienced a wave of predominantly low-skilled refugee immigration. We evaluate its macroeconomic and distributional effects using a quantitative overlapping generations model calibrated using German micro data to replicate education and productivity differentials between...

This paper looks at the short history of the Eurozone through the lens of an evolutionary approach to forming new institutions. The euro has operated as a currency without a state, under the dominance of Germany. This has so far allowed the euro to achieve a number of design objectives, and this...

This paper investigates the drivers of support for market mechanisms (competition and optimizing behavior by agents). We elicit such attitudes using concrete and simplified situations where respondents face a tradeoff between an economically efficient situation and a pro-social objective. We...

The European Union and the United States operate different variants of market capitalism. The EU model uses social dialogue institutions to help determine economic outcomes, particularly in the labor market, whereas the US relies more on market forces. The theory of competitive markets provides...

Different economies at different times use different institutional arrangements to constrain the people entrusted with allocating the economy's capital and other resources. Comparative financial histories show these corporate governance regimes to be largely stable through time, but capable of...

Where legal systems and market forces enforce contracts inadequately, vertical integration can circumvent these transaction difficulties. But, such environments often also feature highly interventionist government, and even corruption. Vertical integration might then enhance returns to political...

In a cross-section of countries, government regulation is strongly negatively correlated with social capital. We document this correlation, and present a model explaining it. In the model, distrust creates public demand for regulation, while regulation in turn discourages social capital...

We use a micro dataset that collects information across individuals, countries, and time to investigate the determinants of entrepreneurial activity in thirty-seven developed and developing nations. We focus both on individual characteristics and on countries' regulatory differences. We show...