What are the origins and consequences of the state as a provider of public goods? We study legal reforms that established mass public education and increased state capacity in German cities during the 1500s. These fundamental changes in public goods provision occurred where ideological...

Regulation and capital constraints may force banks and collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) to sell deteriorating loans, potentially hampering renegotiation and amplifying the initial negative shock to the borrower. We show that banks and CLOs sell downgraded loans to mutual funds and hedge...

We show that nonbanks (funds, shadow banks, fintech) affect the transmission of monetary policy to output, prices and the distribution of risk via credit supply. For identification, we exploit exhaustive US loan-level data since the 1990s, borrowerlender relationships and Gertler-Karadi monetary...

We examine the role of universities in knowledge production and industrial change using historical evidence. Political shocks led to a profound pro-science shift in German universities around 1800. To study the consequences, we construct novel microdata. We find that invention and manufacturing...