"This paper examines the technical efficiency of U.S. Federal reserve check processing offices over 1980-2003. We use new unconditional quantile estimator of efficiency that avoids some drawbacks of other recently proposed estimators. The new estimator is fully non-parametric, robust with...

During the Great Recession, the collapse of consumption across the U.S. varied greatly but systematically with house-price declines. We find that financial distress among U.S. households amplified the sensitivity of consumption to house-price shocks. We uncover two essential facts: (1) the...

Farmers in developing countries often lack access to timely and reliable information about modern technologies that are essential to improve agricultural productivity. The recent diffusion of mobile phones has the potential to overcome these barriers by making information available to those...

Cash transfer and other social protection programs in developing countries have often been accompanied by measures to foster financial inclusion, such as the adoption and use of bank accounts and electronic means of payments. Argentina's social benefits are paid in bank accounts and accessed...