The British Industrial Revolution triggered a reversal in the social order wherebythe landed elite was replaced by industrial capitalists rising from the middle classes as the economically dominant group. Many observers have linked this transformation to the contrast in values between a...

This study explores individual and country-level environmental drivers of informal “seed” investment. We examine four types of informal investors based on business ownership experience (or no such experience) and close family relationship with investee (or no such relationship): “classic love...

The British Industrial Revolution triggered a reversal in the social order whereby the landed elite was replaced by industrial capitalists rising from the middle classesas the economically dominant group. Many observers have linked this transformation to the contrast in values between a...

Was the London Stock Exchange (LSE) little more than a Dickensian den of speculation, or did itmake a contribution to industrial development in interwar Britain? The interwar stock marketlaboured under problems of weak disclosure, inadequate investor protection and ineffectiveunderwriting. New...

The remote inland province of Shanxi was late Qing dynasty China’s paramount banking center. Itsremoteness and China’s almost complete isolation from foreign influence at the time lead historiansto posit a Chinese invention of modern banking. However, Shanxi merchants ran a tea trade...

In the data, individual prices change frequently and by large amounts. In standardsticky price models, frequent and large price changes imply a fast response of the aggregate price level to nominal shocks. This paper presents a model in which price setting firms optimally decide what to observe,...

Is the Chinese growth miracle - a remarkably high growth rate sustained for over twodecades - likely to persist or are the seeds of its eventual demise contained in the policiesthat have boosted growth? For all its presumed flaws, the particular approach tomacroeconomic and structural policies...

Die Frage nach der Kausalität fällt in die Methodologie. Methodologie ist in denWirtschaftswissenschaften ein Bereich, der sowohl bei Ökonomen als auch bei Philosophenkaum Beachtung findet. ....

The paper evaluates the performance of three popular monetary policy rules when the central bank is learning aboutthe parameter values of a simple New Keynesian model. The three policies are: (1) the optimal non-inertial rule; (2)the optimal history-dependent rule; (3) the optimal price-level...

A striking fact about pricing is the prevalence of \sales": large temporary price cuts followedby prices returning exactly to their former levels. This paper builds a macroeconomic modelwith a rationale for sales based on firms facing customers with different price sensitivities.Even if firms...