This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the role of state-owned banks and also presents some new results and a robustness analysis. The paper shows that state-owned banks located in developing countries have fiscal costs because they are characterized by lower returns than...

It is well documented that voter turnout is lower among persons who grow up in families of low socio-economic status compared to persons from high-status families. This paper examines whether reforms in education can help to reduce the socio-economic gap in voting. We distinguish between reforms...

Over the years, many suggestions have been made on how to reduce the importance of family background in political recruitment. In this study, we examine the effectiveness of one such proposal: the expansion of mass education. More precisely, we utilize a difference-in-difference strategy to...

The long history of sovereign debt and the associated enforcement problem have attracted researchers in many fields. In this paper, we survey empirical work by economists, historians, and political scientists. As we review the empirical literature, we emphasize parallel developments in the...

The emergence of global value chains not only leads to a magnification of trade in intermediate inputs but also to an extensive technology diffusion among the different production units involved in arms-length relationships. In this context, the lack of enforcement of intellectual property...

How do real-time expectations affect firms' economic decisions? We provide evidence by using a dataset on Japanese multinational firms' sales forecasts and exploring an unexpected escalation of a territorial dispute between China and Japan in 2012. Our estimation substantiates that, after the...

We explore the incidence of sudden stops in capital flows on the incentives for building national institutions that secure property rights in a world where sovereign defaults are possible equilibrium outcomes. This paper builds upon the benchmark model of sovereign default and direct creditor...

The concept of the 'military-industrial complex'- which describes an alliance between a nation's military troops, its defense industry as its main supplier, and parts of the political apparatus - is already commonly used when speaking about the US situation. The paper investigates whether the...

This paper focuses on the effects of sanctions on Swedish firms' sales across markets, as well as sanctions' effects on their domestic production. As a case study, the paper uses sanctions imposed on Russia and by Russia in 2014. The results suggest that the total costs of these sanctions due to...

Why have Israel and the Palestinians failed to implement a "land for peace" solution, along the lines of the Oslo Accords? This paper studies the application of game theory to this question. I show that existing models of the conflict largely rely on unrealistic assumptions about what the main...