This paper investigates whether political connections affect individuals' propensity to engage in illegal activities in financial markets. We use the 2007 French presidential election as marker of change in the value of political connections, in a difference-in-differences research design. We...

This paper investigates whether political connections affect individuals' propensity to engage in illegal activities in financial markets. We use the French 2007 presidential election as a plausibly exogenous change in the value of political connections in a difference-in-differences...

This paper investigates whether directors' political connections affect their behavior in financial markets. We conjecture that directors feel protected by their political connections, which translates in lower perceived enforcement probability. We use the French $2007$ presidential election as...

Corruption has been identified as a significant issue in telecommunications, seen in bribery and nepotism over many years, raising questions as to whether there are comparable problems with the Internet. Complex systems of Internet governance have excluded the issue, failing to put in place any...

We analyze the empirical violation of the Hillman condition, a necessary and sufficient condition for the correspondence between comparative advantage and pre-trade relative prices. Our comprehensive data set allows us to investigate the Hillman condition for virtually all countries of the...

We show that exported products exit the US market sooner if they violate the Heckscher-Ohlin notion of comparative advantage. Crucially, this pattern is stronger when exporting country has a well-developed banking system, measured by a high ratio of bank credit over the GDP. Banks thus push...

In an economy with imperfect labor contracts, differences in the distribution of talent can be an independent source of comparative advantage. I study a world economy with two activities, one in which an individual's contribution to production can be measured accurately and another in which...

What is the impact of import competition from low-wage countries (LWCs) on inflationary pressure in Europe? This paper examines whether labor-intensive exports from emerging Europe, Asia, and other global regions have a uniform impact on producer prices in Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, and the...