We construct a time series of political party ideology, based on Poole and Rosenthal's (1997) NOMINATE scores, for the 1950-98 period. The results show that (1) party ideology has become increasingly more polarized over this period; and (2) that it is very sensitive to business cycle conditions....

We examine whether corporate corruption scrutiny affects corporate investment in China. A corruption news index (CNI) containing firm-specific measures of corruption scrutiny is developed by tracking all articles in the press about corruption for all firms trading on the Shanghai and Shenzhen...

An extensive number of studies investigate the effects of political relations on trade by estimating a gravity model using annual (or quarterly) data. We argue that the use of low-frequency data introduces an aggregation bias because the cycle of moderate political shocks is much shorter...

This paper tests whether deposit insurance promotes financial depth by influencing depositor behavior. To do so, we rely on two schemes operating in the U.S. during the 1920s: the Postal Savings System and the deposit insurance schemes that some states had adopted. We exploit the discontinuity...

Many scholars argue that a sizable share of the news about China published in U.S. newspapers engages in “China Bashing.” This paper quantifies the extent of the bashing and examines its effect on Sino-American relations. To measure bashing, I develop an index based on the count of articles...

Using a large sample of U.S. mortgages observed over the 2005-2009 period, we find that foreclosures are contagious. After controlling for major factors known to influence a borrower's decision to default, including borrower and loan characteristics, local demographic and economic conditions,...

Using a newly discovered dataset of U.S. bank suspensions from 1921 to 1929, we discovered that banking panics were more common in the 1920s than had been believed. Besides identifying panics, we investigate their determinants, finding that local banking panics were more likely when fundamental...

Using a large sample of U.S. mortgages observed over the 2005-2009 period, we find that foreclosures are contagious. After controlling for major factors known to influence a borrower's decision to default, including borrower and loan characteristics, local demographic and economic conditions,...

This paper investigates the effect of bank failures on economic growth using data from 1900 to 1930, a period that predates active government stabilization policies and includes periods of banking system distress that are not coincident with recessions. Using both VAR and a...

Using a newly discovered dataset of U.S. bank suspensions from 1921 to 1929, we discovered that banking panics were more common in the 1920s than had been believed. Besides identifying panics, we investigate their determinants, finding that local banking panics were more likely when fundamental...