The main lotteries individuals face during their lifetime are country and family of birth. How much consumption growth would a newborn sacrifice to avoid these lotteries? We find that he may be willing to sacrifice a large fraction, if not all, to avoid them. Critical elements for the results...

How do firm-specific actions—in particular, innovation—affect firm productivity? What is the role of the financial sector in facilitating higher productivity? Using a rich firm-level data set, we find that innovation is crucial for firm performance as it directly and measurably increases...

We present a stylized real model of the Chinese economy with the objective of explaining two features: (1) domestic production is highly competitive in the sense that an accumulation of capital that raises the marginal product of labor elicits increases in employment and output rather than only...