Conventional wisdom suggests that small businesses are innovative engines of Schumpetarian growth. However, as small businesses, they are likely to face credit rationing in financial markets. If true then policies that promote lending to small businesses may yield substantial economy-wide...

Our research examines the impact of dwindling community bank numbers on community investment and economic development. Initially, we confirm the vital role of community banks' small business lending in local development. Contrary to popular belief, we find that a decrease in community banks...

Classic theories suggest that common pool resources are subject to overexploitation. Community-based resource management approaches may ameliorate "tragedy of the commons" effects. Using a randomized evaluation in Namibia's communal rangelands, we find that a comprehensive four-year program to...

Work requirements in means-tested transfer programs have grown in importance in the U.S. and in some other countries. The theoretical literature which considers their possible optimality generally operates within a traditional welfarist framework where some function of the utility of the poor is...

in Mexico due to migration. The principal hypothesis of this study is that remittances, knowledge and experience acquired by migrants during their migratory cycle, can be translated into larger economic growth in the out migration municipalities. This result presupposes that Government could...

We assess the extent to which unemployment insurance (UI) serves as an automatic stabilizer to mitigate the economy's sensitivity to shocks. Using a local labor market design based on heterogeneity in local benefit generosity, we estimate that a one standard deviation increase in generosity...

We propose a new source of cross-sectional variation that may identify causal impacts of government spending on the economy. We use the fact that a large number of federal spending programs depend on local population levels. Every ten years, the Census provides a count of local populations....

Research on the effects of prenatal care on birth outcomes has produced a patchwork of findings that are not easily summarized. Studies have used varying definitions of prenatal care, leading to estimates that are difficult to compare. The identification of causal effects is particularly...

We find consistent evidence of negative autocorrelation in decision-making that is unrelated to the merits of the cases considered in three separate high-stakes field settings: refugee asylum court decisions, loan application reviews, and major league baseball umpire pitch calls. The evidence is...