Indonesia’s 1999 decentralization law gave local governments in Indonesia an unprecedented opportunity to adopt pro-development policies. We estimate the effect of decentralization (enacted in 2001) on national economic performance using a synthetic case control methodology. Our results...

Comparative quantitative research into the causes, responses to, and effects of banking crisis uses two series of crisis data: Reinhart and Rogoff (2009, 2010) and Laeven and Valencia (2013, and their predecessors). While these data sets provide broad coverage, the measures they code have...

How do markets discipline governments? The most direct way is through sovereign borrowing costs. Investors charge more interest when they anticipate that the risks of default increase. Where markets get their information from and how they use this information, however, is not well documented. In...