We investigate the role of forward-looking financial factors in propagating the Great Depression, given that much of the existing literature employs coincident or lagging indicators such as failed bank deposits and bank failures. We find that a new hand-collected bank stock index is better at...

No. We document two empirical facts for the U.S. life insurance sector during the 1918–19 Influenza pandemic. First, we find no significant differences among U.S. insurers’ profitability after 1918. Second, there were fewer insurers in distress after the pandemic outbreak. Using synthetic...

Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Reserve (Fed) and Central Banks around the world multilaterally conducted a mix of unconventional monetary policies. We evaluate the effects of these recent interventions vis-a-vis earlier episodes of Quantitative Easing (QE)...

Housing is a crucial channel through which migration affects the local economy and wealth distribution. However, most of what we know about the effects of migration on housing is from studies focused on the inflows of immigrants. This paper quantifies the impact of out-migration on local housing...

We identify a novel channel through which financial constraints propagate in the production chain. Exploiting recent developments on production network data of US-listed firms, we show that firms experience greater valuation losses during industry downturns when their suppliers are financially...

We hand-collect new data on municipal bonds issued by all states and the largest 100 cities in the U.S. between 1920 and 2020 and study how the terms of municipal bond financing evolved over the last century. We document a striking decline of almost 50% in the maturity of these bonds. We analyze...

We compile a new monthly database for each Federal Reserve district between 1923-33 to analyze the national and regional nature of the monetary transmission mechanism around the Great Depression. We employ sign-identified structural VARs and narrative sign restrictions informed by...

The end of the nineteenth century is a remarkable period in Brazilian economic history. In 1889, Brazil had just turned from Empire to a Republic when a monetary and financial crisis known as Encilhamento took place. The infant Brazilian republic had neither experience nor adequate institutions...

Innovation is difficult to finance as mere disclosure reduces its value. We study intellectual property licenses mandatorily disclosed by US public firms. Firms may temporarily redact information from these filings, offering a counterfactual to full-disclosure. Firms with valuable IP in...