In the recent financial crisis, macroeconomic stimuli produced mixed results across developed economies. In contrast, China's stimulus boosted real GDP growth from an annualized 6.2% in the first quarter of 2009 trough to 11.9% in the first quarter of 2010. Amidst this phenomenal response, land...

Economics and history both strive to understand causation: economics using instrumental variables econometrics and history by weighing the plausibility of alternative narratives. Instrumental variables can lose value with repeated use because of an econometric tragedy of the commons bias: each...

Economics has firms maximizing value and people maximizing utility, but firms are run by people. Agency theory concerns the mitigation of this internal contradiction in capitalism. Firms need charters, regulations and laws to restrain those entrusted with their governance, just as economies need...

Despite a vast accumulation of private capital, China is not embracing capitalism. Deceptively familiar capitalist features disguise the profoundly unfamiliar foundations of "market socialism with Chinese characteristics." The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), by controlling the career advancement...

A panel of corporate ownership data, stretching back to 1902, shows that the Canadian corporate sector began the century with a predominance of large pyramidal corporate groups controlled by wealthy families or individuals. By mid-century, widely held firms predominated. But, from the 1970s on,...

Economics and history both strive to understand causation: economics by using instrumental variables econometrics, and history by weighing the plausibility of alternative narratives. Instrumental variables can lose value with repeated use because of an econometric tragedy of the commons: each...

Traditional U.S. industries with higher firm-specific stock return and fundamentals performance heterogeneity use information technology (IT) more intensively and post faster productivity growth in the late 20th century. We argue that this mechanically reflects a wave of Schumpeter's creative...

In 2003, the United States enacted a tax reform that reduced, but did not eliminate, individual dividend income taxes. Cutting the dividend tax deprives corporate insiders of a justification for retaining earnings to build unprofitable corporate empires. But not eliminating it entirely preserves...

Recent economic data reveal that, at the infant stage, China's outward foreign direct investment (FDI) is biased towards tax havens and Southeast Asian countries and are mostly conducted by state-controlled enterprises with government sanctioned monopoly status. Further examination of China's...

Different economies at different times use different institutional arrangements to constrain the people entrusted with allocating capital and other resources. Comparative financial histories show these corporate governance regimes to be largely stable through time, but capable of occasional...