At least early in the financial crisis, the high rate of foreclosures seemed to be due more to households' overreaching than to predatory lending. A disproportionate number of those being foreclosed on were well-educated, well-off and relatively young people.

Opening up to global trade and investment is often thought to trigger institutional improvement by raising the expected benefits of institutional reform and reducing incumbents' incentives and ability to preserve the status quo. However, recent experience is not entirely consistent with this...

Compared with mortgage brokers and universal banks, community banks have stronger incentives to originate high-quality residential home loans. Using the RealtyTrac database on residential foreclosures between 2005 and 2008, we show that county-level foreclosure rates are lower in counties with...

What is good for a country may not be good for its big businesses, at least recently. More turnover in top businesses correlates with faster per capita gross domestic product, productivity, and capital growth; supporting Schumpeter's [1942. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, third ed., Harper...