A study of the effects of bank structure and profitability on the births of new firms, arguing that local credit markets potentially affect firm location decisions.

A test of whether the enactment of a dedicated tax leads to higher payroll and wages for public employees, by means of survey results from the local mass-transit industry.

An examination of capital policies in the public and private sector through analysis of the scrappage decisions of local mass-transit providers, showing that the structure of federal grants has a direct impact on scrappage rates that leads to shorter equipment life in the local public sector.

A study of how state and federal grants affect the maintenance policies of local mass-transit providers, showing that private owners of transit capital devote significantly greater resources to maintenance than do public owners of similar capital.

This paper studies how a worsening of the debt overhang distortion on bank lending can explain banking solvency crises that are accompanied by a plunge of bank asset values and by a severe contraction of lending and economic activity. Since the value of bank assets depends on economic prospects,...

This paper quantitatively compares water infrastructure interventions that prioritize equity with those that prioritize efficiency. The community-based model developed by Haiti Outreach (HO) trains communities to operate and maintain wells, and has clear effi ciency gains over the status quo aid...

This paper revisits the phenomenon of stagflation. Using a standard New Keynesian dynamic, stochastic general equilibrium model, we show that stagflation from monetary policy alone is a very common occurrence when the economy is subject to both deviations from the policy rule and a drifting...

Structural Causal Models define causal effects in terms of a single Data Generating Process (DGP), and the Rubin Causal Model defines causal effects in terms of a model that can represent counterfactuals from many DGPs. Under these different definitions, notationally similar causal effects make...

The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment randomly assigned housing vouchers that could be used in low-poverty neighborhoods. Consistent with the literature, I find that receiving an MTO voucher had no effect on outcomes like earnings, employment, and test scores. However, after studying the...

In this article we analyze financial and economic circumstances associated with the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis and the global financial turmoil that has led to severe crises in many countries. We suggest that the level of cross-border holdings of long-term securities between the United States...