Publications

Economic theory suggests that market economies are likely to underprovide innovation because of the public good nature of knowledge. Empirical evidence from the United States and other advanced economies supports this idea. We summarize the pros…

This Data Spotlight provides data and statistics on the venture capital industry and the governance of pre-IPO companies in the United States. This data supplements the issues introduced in the Quick Guide “…

How did personal wealth and slaveownership affect the likelihood Southerners fought for the Confederate Army in the American Civil War? On the one hand, wealthy Southerners had incentives to free-ride on poorer Southerners and avoid fighting; on…

It is common in regression discontinuity analysis to control for third, fourth, or higher-degree polynomials of the forcing variable. There appears to be a perception that such methods are theoretically justified, even though they can lead to…

In this paper, we construct a framework for modeling teams of agents who apply techniques or procedures (tools) to solve problems. In our framework, tools differ in their likelihood of solving the problem at hand; agents, who may be of different…

Companies are required to have a reliable system of corporate governance in place at the time of IPO in order to protect the interests of public company investors and stakeholders. Yet, relatively little is known about the process by which they…

We follow a representative panel of millions of consumers in the U.S. from 2007 to 2017 and document several facts on the long-term effects of the Great Recession. There were about six million foreclosures in the ten-year period after Lehman’s…

The UK’s decision to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum created substantial uncertainty for UK businesses. The nature of this uncertainty is different from that of a typical uncertainty shock because of its length, breadth and political…

Contextual bandit algorithms are sensitive to the estimation method of the outcome model as well as the exploration method used, particularly in the presence of rich heterogeneity or complex outcome models, which can lead to difficult…

Shadow bank market share in residential mortgage origination nearly doubled from 2007 to 2015, with particularly dramatic…

It is conventional wisdom that transparency in cartels—monitoring of competitors’ prices, sales, and profits—facilitates collusion. However, in several recent cases cartels have instead worked to preserve the privacy of their participants’…

Here, we integrate prior work to develop and test a theory of how perceived macro-level trends in racial standing shape whites’ views of welfare policy. We argue that when whites perceive threats to their relative advantage in the racial status…

Abstract

Background

There remains a need to improve patient safety in primary care settings. Studies have demonstrated that creating high-performing teams can improve patient safety and encourage a safety…

Companies are required to have a reliable system of corporate governance in place at the time of IPO in order to protect the interests of public company investors and stakeholders. Yet, relatively little is known about the process by which they…

We appreciate comments from Steve Cooper, Petrus Ferreira, Leslie Hodder, Jim Leisenring, Warren McGregor, Steve Stubben, seminar participants at the 2015 Cambridge University Financial Accounting Symposium, and an anonymous reviewer. We…

This paper examines when and under what conditions whom to hire is a strategic decision. We identify four mechanisms involved in hiring that add to the “strategicness” of human capital decisions. We posit that, to the degree that human capital…

Influential theories indicate concern that campaign donors exert outsized political influence. However, little data documents what donors actually want from government; and existing research largely neglects donors’ views on individual issues. We…

Over the past century, personality theory and research has successfully identified core sets of characteristics that consistently describe and explain fundamental differences in the way people think, feel and behave. Such characteristics were…

The majority of businesses in the UK report that Brexit is a source of uncertainty. This column uses survey responses from around 3,000 businesses to evaluate the level and impact of this uncertainty. It finds that Brexit uncertainty has…