How did citizens acquire rights protecting their property from the depredations of the government? In this paper, we argue that one important factor strengthening respect for property is how it is distributed. When there is some specificity associated with property, and property is held by those...

A traditionally conservative country in financial matters, India enacted a series of reforms in response to its balance of payments crisis in the early 1990s. But since then only halting progress has been made, raising concerns about India’s rising fiscal deficit, inefficiencies in its...

We study how the availability of credit shapes adaptation to a climatic shock, specifically, the long 1950s US drought. We find that bank lending, net immigration, and population growth decline sharply in drought exposed areas with limited initial access to bank finance. In contrast,...

When the Federal Reserve (Fed) expanded its balance sheet via quantitative easing (QE), commercial banks financed reserve holdings with deposits and reduced their average maturity. They also issued lines of credit to corporations. However, when the Fed halted its balance-sheet expansion in 2014...