Informational asymmetries in financing small business require lenders to continually produce reliable private information about borrower performance. While it is well recognized that information required to monitor short-term working capital loans is quite different from long-term non-recurring...

Various claims have been made by economist and others as to what caused the Asian crisis, as well as what caused its spread through much of East Asia. Here, we perform some initial testing of four hypotheses, including the dominant role of portfolio investors and hedge funds in initiating and...

This paper presents a formal model that characterizes the political mechanisms of demographic change, establishing a critical link in economic development. We demonstrate that fertility decisions are determined by three fundamental political variables: political stability, political capacity and...

We examine the historical record of the financial crises that have often accompanied surges of globalization in the past. The issue of contagion, the spread of financial turbulence from the crisis center to its trading partners, is confronted with historical and statistical evidence on the...

The Panic of 1907 is an important episode in American financial history because it led, in part, to the creation of the Federal Reserve. Although much has been written about the crisis, little has been said about its underlying causes. This study identifies the San Francisco earthquake and its...

Mutual funds generally do not invest in venture capital, private equity, or restricted shares of public companies. Consequently, individuals who desire to invest in such securities are unable to do so through diversified mutual funds. In this paper, we identify public policies and regulations...

This paper investigates the effect of minimum wages on employment using a panel of US state-based data. We estimate a minimalist dynamic version of the specification implied by neo-classical theory. We find statistically and economically significant effects of minimum wages on youth employment....

In 1997, Japan introduced book building an alternative to an auction method of IPO pricing that had been required since 1989. Shortly after its authorization, all IPOs in Japan were priced by book building. The shift occurred despite economic arguments and evidence suggesting that the auction...

A new daily data set of Confederate cotton bonds trading in Liverpool is analyzed in conjunction with Union Greenback prices to asses the impact of war news on Civil War asset prices. The empirical analysis indicates the presence of a cointegrating relationship between Union Greenback prices and...