Firms in Africa report "regulatory and economic policy uncertainty" as a top constraint to their growth. We argue that often firms in Africa do not cope with policy rules, rather they face deals; firm-specific policy actions that can be influenced by firm actions (e.g. bribes) and...

Many reform initiatives in developing countries fail to achieve sustained improvements in performance because they are merely isomorphic mimicry—that is, governments and organizations pretend to reform by changing what policies or organizations look like rather than what they actually do....

We estimate the “place premiumâ€â€”the wage gain that accrues to foreign workers who arrive to work in the United States. First, we estimate the predicted, purchasing-power adjusted wages of people inside and outside the United States who are otherwise observably...

India is an emerging global superpower as its rapid growth has transformed its economy and has maintained itself as the world’s largest democracy. But at the same time India lags in many dimensions—its malnutrition rate is one of the highest in the world, its immunization rates are...

The Wire is set in a modern American city shaped by economic restructuring and fundamental demographic change that led to widespread job loss and the depopulation of inner-city neighborhoods. While the series can be viewed as an account of the systemic failure of political, economic, and social...

Theorists in all three major branches of deliberative theory have traditionally excluded from the concept of deliberation simple convergence to an outcome as well as any form of negotiation. In a major reformulation of the deliberative ideal, this paper argues that not only convergence but also...

Despite bipartisan interest in advancing American energy policy, comprehensive energy and climate legislation fell short in the Senate last year after passing in the House of Representatives in 2009. The difficulty of coming to broad agreement highlights the need for a more targeted and...

This paper compares how the United States and the European Community dealt with competition policy challenges by two firms operating at the frontiers of technology: Microsoft and Intel. The U.S. Microsoft case was broadly targeted but largely unsuccessful in implementing remedies once violation...

In the Medicare program, increases in cost sharing by a supplemental insurer can exert financial externalities. We study a policy change that raised patient cost sharing for the supplemental insurer for retired public employees in California. We find that physician visits and prescription drug...

Movements in asset prices are a major risk confronting individuals. This paper establishes new asset pricing results when agents differ in risk preference, time preference and/or expectations. It shows that risk tolerance is a critical concept driving savings decisions, consumption allocations,...