In this paper, I provide an empirical and theoretical analysis on whether and how in-utero negative health shocks affect politicians' human capital and career and governance outcomes, using Chinese Great Famine (1959-1961) and Chinese city Party Secretaries as a case in point. Using a...

Is work overload a friction to public agencies? Using data on R&D procurements, patents, and contracting units from a US federal agency, we investigate how officer workload impacts innovation procurement outcomes. Unanticipated retirement shifts provide an exogenous source of variation that we...

We use a Chinese firm-director level panel dataset to examine the matching of heterogeneous firms and politicians. Based on 36,308 detailed biographies, we identify individuals that previously held bureaucratic positions and classify the rank of each position in the Chinese political hierarchy....

Starting a firm with expansive potential is an option for educated and high-skilled workers. This option serves as an insurance against unemployment caused by labor market frictions and hence increases the incentives for education. We show within a matching model that reducing the start-up costs...

We use a Chinese firm-director level panel dataset to examine the matching of heterogeneous firms and politicians. Based on 36,308 detailed biographies, we identify individuals that previously held bureaucratic positions and classify the rank of each position in the Chinese political hierarchy....

A large body of literature considers the advantages of using informal networks to match workers to jobs. However, family ties may interfere with a genuine process of worker selection, favoring people with connections over more talented workers. We offer a simple model of favoritism to explain...

To overcome market failures society creates common laws that stimulate or penalize individual actions, the enforcement of which depends on the actions of public authorities who may be susceptible to corruption. Thus, a new market emerges where ‘influences’ are traded. Legislators have...

A number of papers considers the use of informal networks (the help of relatives, friends and acquaintances) to find an employment as an efficient mechanism to match workers to jobs. However, evidence in Italy shows that informal networks tend to be used more in less productive jobs and less...

To overcome market failures society creates common laws that stimulate or penalize individual actions, the enforcement of which depends on the actions of public authorities who may be susceptible to corruption. We model this behaviour for an autocracy versus a democracy, using a microeconomic...

Starting a firm with expansive potential is an option for educated and high-skilled workers. This option serves as an insurance against unemployment caused by labor market frictions and hence increases the incentives for education. We show within a matching model that reducing the start-up costs...