The prominent role of monetary policy in the U.S. interwar depression has been conventional wisdom since Friedman and Schwartz [1963]. This paper presents evidence on both the surprise and the systematic components of monetary policy between 1929 and 1933. Doubts surrounding GDP estimates for...

How malleable are preferences? This paper provides experimental evidence on the extent to which insurance sellers can influence buyers and whether mandatory information disclosure offsets these effects. The experiment involves 214 subjects seeking or recently obtaining unsecured loans and 25...

Central bank independence is widely thought be a sine qua non of a credible commitment to price stability. The surprise decision by the UK government to grant operational independence to the Bank of England in 1997 affords us a natural experiment with which to gauge the impact on the yield curve...

This eye-opening book offers a disturbing new look at Japan's post-war economy and the key factors that shaped it. It gives special emphasis to the 1980s and 1990s when Japan's economy experienced vast swings in activity.According to the author, the most recent upheaval in the Japanese economy...

Previous empirical studies of international CAPM models have not found much supporting evidence. In this paper we suggest reasons why this might have happened and perform new tests using improved models and data. A range of monthly CAPM models are estimated for 1973-1987 for aggregate equities...

The stock market capitalization (SMC) of a country, defined as the aggregated market value equity of companies in the respective equity market, is commonly used to measure the widening and deepening of stock market activity. SMC also influences economic growth predictions and public consensus...

Researchers have developed investigations into both initial and seasoned equity offering (SEO) by obtaining data from developed markets (e.g. Denis, 1994; Kothari and Warner, 1997; Corwin, 2003; Eckbo et al., 2006), while the literature in emerging markets is relatively neglected. This thesis provides an...

The use of U.S dollar as unit of account, medium of exchange and store of value in Tanzania has raised concerns among policy makers and the general public. This paper attempts to shed some light on the key stylized facts of dollarization in Tanzania and the EAC region. We show that compared to...

We examine the effects of bank deregulation on the spatial dynamics of retail-bank branching, exploiting, much like a quasi-natural experiment, the context of intense liberalization reforms in Belgium in the late nineties. Using .ne-grained data on branch network dynamics within the metropolitan...

This paper provides a comprehensive description of the financial environment for households and small businesses in a defined geographical region. It develops a new, functional approach to financial access surveys, which involves asking detailed questions about how respondents meet their...