Search Results
Showing results 1 to 10 of approximately 14.
(refine search)
Working Paper
The geography of stock market participation: the influence of communities and local firms
This paper is the first to investigate the importance of geography in explaining equity market participation. We provide evidence to support two distinct local area effects. The first is a community ownership effect, that is, individuals are influenced by the investment behavior of members of their community. Specifically, a ten percentage-point increase in equity market participation of the other members of one's community makes it two percentage points more likely that the individual will invest in stocks, conditional on a rich set of controls. We find further evidence that the influence of ...
Working Paper
Australian growth: a California perspective
Examination of special cases assists understanding of the mechanics of long-run economic growth more generally. Australia and California are two economies having the rare distinction of achieving 150 years of sustained high and rising living standards for rapidly expanding populations. They are suitable comparators since in some respects they are quite similar, especially in their initial conditions in the mid-19th century, their legal and cultural inheritances, and with respect to some long-term performance indicators. However, their growth trajectories have differed markedly in some ...
Conference Paper
External and internal determinants of development
As Rodrik, Subramanian, and Trebbi (2004) point out, factors that affect economic development can be classified using a two-tier approach. Based on a standard production function, inputs such as labor and physical and human capital directly affect per capita income. Much of the empirical cross-country growth literature has focused on these covariates. But the factors themselves are the product of deeper and more fundamental determinants and, thus, are at best proximate factors of economic development. The deeper determinants fall into two broad categories: internal and external. Among the ...
Working Paper
Measuring R & D spillovers : on the importance of geographic and technological proximity
Evidence is presented which suggest that an important measure of the apparent geographic localization of R&D spillovers may be an artifact of industrial agglomeration. A production function framework is used to examine the role of geographic and technological proximity for inter-firm spillovers from R&D. The largest spillovers are found to flow between firms in the same industry. However, spillovers within narrowly defined technological groups do not appear to be attenuated by distance. Geographic proximity does appear to attenuate spillovers that cross narrowly defined technological ...
Working Paper
On the importance of geographic and technological proximity for R&D spillovers : an empirical investigation
Empirical studies of the external effects of R&D suggest that both geographic and technological distance attenuate inter-firm spillovers from innovative activity. The results presented here indicate that the tendency for R&D spillovers to localize economic activity is conditional on the technological relation between spillover generating and receiving firms. The production function framework is generalized to control for correlation between measures of geographic and technological proximity. Coefficient estimates confirm that R&D spillovers are largest among technological neighbors. However, ...
Working Paper
Estimating Border Effects: The Impact of Spatial Aggregation
Trade data are typically reported at the level of regions or countries and are therefore aggregates across space. In this paper, we investigate the sensitivity of standard gravity estimation to spatial aggregation. We build a model in which symmetric micro regions are aggregated into macro regions. We then apply the model to the large literature on border effects in domestic and international trade. Our theory shows that aggregation leads to border effect heterogeneity. Larger regions or countries are systematically associated with smaller border effects. The reason is that due to spatial ...
Working Paper
Institutions Do Not Rule: Reassessing the Driving Forces of Economic Development
The pursuit to uncover the driving forces behind cross-country income gaps has divided economists into two major camps: One emphasizes institutions, while the other stresses non-institutional forces such as geography. Each school of thought has its own theoretical foundation and empirical support, but they share an implicit hypothesis?the forces driving economic development remain the same regardless of a country?s stage of development. Such hypothesis implies a theory that the process of development in human history is a continuous improvement in income levels, driven by the same forces, and ...
Working Paper
Household Financial Distress and the Burden of ‘Aggregate’ Shocks
In this paper we show that household-level financial distress (FD) varies greatly and can increase vulnerability to economic shocks. To do this, we establish three facts: (i) regions in the United States vary significantly in their “FD-intensity,” measured either by how much additional credit households can access or how delinquent they are on debts, (ii) shocks that are typically viewed as “aggregate” in nature hit geographic areas quite differently, and (iii) FD is an economic “pre-existing condition”: the share of an aggregate shock borne by a region is positively correlated ...
Working Paper
Household Financial Distress and the Burden of 'Aggregate' Shocks
The goal of this paper is to show that household-level financial distress (FD) varies greatly, meaning there is unequal exposure to macroeconomic risk, and that FD can increase macroeconomic vulnerability. To do this, we first establish three facts: (i) regions in the U.S. vary significantly in their "FD-intensity," measured either by how much additional credit households therein can access, or in how delinquent they typically are on debts, (ii) shocks that are typically viewed as "aggregate" in nature hit geographic areas quite differently, and (iii) FD is an economic "pre-existing ...
Working Paper
Household Financial Distress and the Burden of “Aggregate” Shocks
The goal of this paper is to show that household-level financial distress (FD) varies greatly, meaning there is unequal exposure to macroeconomic risk, and that FD can increase macroeconomic vulnerability. To do this, we first establish three facts: (i) regions in the U.S. vary significantly in their "FD-intensity," measured either by how much additional credit households therein can access, or in how delinquent they typically are on debts, (ii) shocks that are typically viewed as "aggregate" in nature hit geographic areas quite differently, and (iii) FD is an economic "preexisting ...