This paper examines to what degree trade, FDI and migration promote cellphone usage in developed and developing countries. Since the usage of cellphones requires the installation of costly infrastructure, I analyze the intensive and extensive margin of cellphone diffusion separately. Estimating...

We exploit a large shock to mass migration, the 1920s US Quota Acts, to causally identify the effect of migration restrictions on trade. Estimating a Difference-in-Difference (DiD) model with heterogeneous treatment effects, we derive several conclusions: First, the 1920's quotas lowered...

The UK housing market features some of the most expensive, yet smallest dwellings in Europe. Nonetheless, historically low policy rates fuel housing demand. But because incomes, regulatory and physical constraints differ across regions, so does the transmission of an aggregate policy shock. This...

Using a recently implemented Price Deficiency Payments (PDP) policy in India known as the Bhavantar Bhugtan Yojana (BBY), we examine how such farm support policies affect farm-gate prices and quantity arrivals. We study two major crops covered under the scheme, Urad (Black-gram) and Soyabean. We...

We analyze a unique episode in the history of monetary economics, the 2016 Indian "demonetization." This policy made 86% of cash in circulation illegal tender overnight, with new notes gradually introduced over the next several months. We present a model of demonetization where agents hold cash...

The recent demonetization exercise in India is a unique monetary experiment that made 86 percent of the total currency in circulation invalid. In a country where currency in circulation constitutes 12 percent of GDP, the policy turned out to be a purely exogenous macroeconomic shock that...

We analyze a unique episode in the history of monetary economics, the 2016 Indian "demonetization." This policy made 86% of cash in circulation illegal tender overnight, with new notes gradually introduced over the next several months. We present a model of demonetization where agents hold cash...