Real and private-value assets--defined here as the sum of real estate, infrastructure, collectibles, and non-corporate business equity--is an investment class worth an estimated $85 trillion in the U.S. alone. Furthermore, private values can affect pricing in many other financial markets, such...

Property rights are the most fundamental institution in any society. They determine who has decision-making authority over assets and who bears the costs and benefits of those decisions. They assign ownership, wealth, political influence, and social standing. They make markets possible; define...

We study the history and geography of wealth accumulation in the US, using newly collected historical property tax records since the early 1800s. The US General Property Tax was a comprehensive tax on all types of property (real, personal, and financial), making it one of the first "wealth...

We argue that recoveries from demand-driven recessions with expenditure cuts concentrated in services or non-durables will tend to be weaker than recoveries from recessions more biased towards durables. Intuitively, the smaller the bias towards more durable goods, the less the recovery is...

We survey a representative sample of the U.S. population to understand stakeholders' desire to see their firms exit Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. 61% of respondents think that firms should exit Russia, regardless of the consequences. Only 37% think that leaving Russia is a purely...

Since 1980, foreign investors have timed their purchases and sales of U.S. Treasurys to yield particularly low returns. Their annual dollar-weighted returns, measured by IRRs, are around 3% lower than a buy-and-hold strategy over the same horizon. In comparison, the IRRs achieved by domestic...

This paper documents the share of investable wealth that middle-class U.S. investors hold in the stock market over their working lives. This share rises modestly early in life and falls significantly as people approach retirement. Prior to 2000, the average investor held less of their investable...

The vast majority of Individual Retirement Account contributions represent net new saving, based on evidence from the quarterly Consumer Expenditure Surveys (CES). The results are based on analysis of the relationship between IRA contributions and other financial asset saving. The data show...

For investors, gold is an asset without a yield that is attractive in times of low and negative real interest rates. Gold also has an embedded put option because investors can sell it to those who value its use as jewelry or as a productive input. This paper presents an approach for pricing gold...

We show that armed actors refrain from using their power to arbitrarily steal from an economy if, and only if, the armed actors' property rights over stealing from that economy are secure. By 2009, armed actors taxed, administered, and protected various villages in Democratic Republic of the...