We analyze the evolution of the price of paintings in London auctions with a unique dataset of over 200,000 sales in the period 1780-1840. We build a price index for the representative painting through hedonic regressions controlling for the characteristics of auctions and paintings and for the...

We measure technological progress in oceanic shipping directly by using a large database of daily log entries from ships of the British and Dutch East India Companies and Navies to estimate daily sailing speed in different wind conditions from 1750 to 1850. Against the consensus among economic...

We analyze the evolution of the price of paintings in the XVII century Amsterdam art market to test a hypothesis of endogenous entry: higher profitability should attract more entry of painters, which in turn should lead to artistic innovations and more intense competition. We build a price index...

We analyze art pricing in a unique dataset on Madrid inventories between 1600 and 1750. Hedonic regressions reveal a number of interesting facts about the taste of Baroque Spanish collectors and the imports of foreign paintings. The hedonic price index shows an impressive increase in the price...

Although largely absent from modern accounts of the Industrial Revolution, watches were the first mass produced consumer durable, and were Adam Smith's pre-eminent example of technological progress. In fact, Smith makes the notable claim that watch prices may have fallen by up to 95 per cent...

About fifty years after the independence of most former colonies on the African continent, books on African nationalism again rank high on the agenda of the international academic discussion. A selection of three recent publications demonstrates the advances made in scholarly analysis in the...

We study whether the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted risk preferences, comparing the results of experiments conducted before and during the outbreak. In each experiment, we elicit risk preferences from two sample groups: professional traders and undergraduate students. We find that, on average,...

Green bonds (GBs) are a fresh and applicable financial instrument introduced with the purpose of funding environmental projects. In the last years, the development of GBs has shown that this is an effective investment channel for the purpose of protecting the environment. Viet Nam is an Asian...

A sketch of the International Monetary Fund's 70-year history reveals an institution that has reinvented itself over time along multiple dimensions. This history is primarily consistent with a "demand driven" theory of institutional change, as the needs of its clients and the type of crisis...

We take a first pass at quantifying the magnitudes of debt relief achieved through default and restructuring in two distinct samples: 1979-2010, focusing on credit events in emerging markets, and 1920-1939, documenting the official debt hangover in advanced economies that was created by World...