"When the mortality rate is high, repeated interaction alone may not sustain cooperation, and religion may play an important role in shaping economic institutions. This insight explains why during the fourteenth century, when plagues decimated populations and the church promoted the doctrine of...

"Does finance follow the real economy, or the other way around? This paper unites the two competing schools of thought in a general equilibrium framework. Our key result is that there are threshold effects defined by a set of deep institutional parameters (cost of financial intermediation,...

"We examine the choice between Foreign Direct Investment and Foreign Portfolio Investment at the level of the source country. Based on a theoretical model, we predict that (1) source countries with higher probability of aggregate liquidity crises export relatively more FPI than FDI, and (2) this...

"Adaptable property-rights institutions, we argue, foster economic development. The British example illustrates this point. Around 1700, Parliament established a forum where rights to land and resources could be reorganized. This venue enabled landholders and communities to take advantage of...

"We use the World Bank Investment Climate Surveys data to analyze the employment of both labor and capital in Indian manufacturing. We focus on disparities among states in manufacturing employment patterns, and provide reduced form evidence of their relationship to both (i) institutional...