We use data from enforcement actions initiated under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) to examine firms' incentives to pay bribes and their costs when they are caught. Bribery is associated with projects that are valuable even considering the expected penalties. For firms that are...

We develop and test a model linking the duration of financial fraud to information produced by auditors and analysts and efforts by managers to conceal the fraud. Our empirical results suggest fraud termination is more likely in the quarter following the release of audited financial statements,...

We investigate the effect of standard setters in standard setting: We examine how certain professional and political characteristics of FASB members and SEC commissioners predict the accounting “reliability” and “relevance” of proposed standards. Notably, we find FASB members with...

We build a two-country currency union DSGE model with endogenous growth to assess the role of cross-country differences in product and labor market regulations for long-term growth and for the adjustment to shocks. We show that with endogenous growth, there is no reason to expect real income...

This paper analyzes the effects of the revolving door, concentrating not only on the dynamics between regulators and firms but also on whether regulating the revolving door is optimal from the point of view of society. The study explores the trade-off between two interconnected aspects related...

This paper analyzes the effects of the revolving door, focusing not only on the relationship between regulators and firms, but analyzing whether regulating the revolving door is optimal from the point of view of society. This paper examines the tradeoff between these two elements linked to the...

I construct a two-country multisectoral model of capital accumulation, endogenous technological change, trade, and foreign direct investment, whose steady states explain the main features of globalization: (a) increased economic participation of transnational corporation (TNC) profits, (b)...

One of the key determinants of potential growth are productivity gains. Total factor productivity (TFP) differences are the main determinant of per capita income differences between countries. A key factor to understand TFP is misallocation: the aggregate productivity loss from microeconomic...

Policies that spur more efficient corporate restructuring can revive productivity growth by targeting three inter-related sources of labour productivity weakness: the survival of “zombie” firms (low productivity firms that would typically exit in a competitive market), capital misallocation...