We study the aftermath of the 1968 Washington, DC civil disturbance to illuminate the mechanisms that drive urban redevelopment in the presence of low demand and racial tension. Using a within-block identification strategy, we show that destruction caused lots to remain vacant for the next...

The variation in a state-level measure of local economic-policy uncertainty during the 2007-2009 recession matches the cross-sectional distribution of unemployment outcomes in this period. This relationship is robust to numerous controls for other determinants of labor market outcomes. Using...

Can protests cause political change, or are they merely symptoms of underlying shifts in policy preferences? We address this question by studying the Tea Party movement in the United States, which rose to prominence through coordinated rallies across the country on Tax Day, April 15, 2009. We...

We study the local economic spillovers generated by LeBron James' presence on a team in the National Basketball Association. Mr. James, the first overall pick of the 2003 NBA draft, spent the first seven seasons of his career at the Cleveland Cavaliers, and then moved to the Miami Heat in 2010,...