During the past two decades, there has been a dramatic change in IPO activity around the world. Though vibrant IPO activity, attributed to better institutions and governance, used to be a strength of the U.S., it no longer is. IPO activity in the U.S. has fallen compared to the rest of the world...

For U.S. firms with extreme foreign exchange (FX) exposure levels, we ask whether the single-factor global CAPM yields significantly different cost of equity estimates from the local CAPM. For a sample of U.S. firms from 2000-2007, we find a clear and statistically significant relation between...

The central issues addressed are the extent and causes of interdependency between Japanese banks' domestic and US lending. We examine hypotheses that domestic and US credit allocations by Japanese banks during the late 1980s and early 1990s are related through their mutual dependence on capital...

This article compares the direct regulation of hedge funds in the U.S. prior to the Dodd-Frank Act with the direct regulatory measures to address potential systemic risks of hedge funds ensued in its aftermaths. The direct regulation involves regulatory measures focusing immediately on the...

We investigate the long-run historical pattern of R&D-outlays by reviewing aggregate growth rates and historical cases of particular R&D projects, following the historical-institutional approach of Alfred Chandler (1962), Douglass North (1981) and Oliver Williamson (1985). We find that even the...

Many studies have documented a negative association between macroeconomic indicators and fertility in times of economic crisis. These studies are based on research designs that do not allow for excluding that the observed association is driven by confounders. The aim of the present paper is to...

We examine the role of school closures in contributing to the negative labor market impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. We collect detailed daily information on school closures at the school-district level, which we merge to individual level data on various employment and socio- demographic...

By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women's happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. The paradox of women's declining relative well-being is...

This paper critically reviews what is known, based on analyses of micro-level U.S. data, about the role of religion in various interrelated decisions that people make over the life cycle, including investments in secular human capital, cohabitation, marriage, divorce, family size and employment....

Since 1986 the United States has made considerable efforts to curb illegal immigration. This has resulted in an increase in migration costs for undocumented immigrants. More stringent border enforcement either deters potential illegal immigrants from coming to the U.S., or moves the point of...