AN NBER PUBLICATION
ISSUE: No. 5, May 2011
The Digest
A free monthly publication featuring non-technical summaries of research on topics of broad public interest
Credit growth emerges as the single best predictor of financial instability.
There is remarkably little empirical evidence on the relative importance of global imbalances and other factors in credit boom-bust episodes in advanced economies. In Financial Crises, Credit Booms, and External Imbalances: 140 Years of Lessons (NBER Working Paper No. 16567), authors Òscar Jordà, Moritz Schularick, and Alan Taylor fill that gap as they analyze whether external imbalances,...
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In modern manufacturing... team work, planning, decision making, and problem solving ...may be required of workers, and all of these are harder to observe than the output of a single good.
The simplest form of pay-for-performance -- the piece rate -- has been in decline in manufacturing in recent decades. In Analyzing Compensation Methods in Manufacturing: Piece Rates, Time Rates, or Gain-Sharing? (NBER Working Paper No. 16540), authors Susan Helper, Morris Kleiner,...
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The output multiplier associated with federal spending is likely to be lower today than during the New Deal period.
The 2009 federal stimulus package has generated new interest in measuring the effect of government spending in raising overall economic activity. This is sometimes labeled the "output multiplier." It is a measure of the rise in income associated with an additional dollar of government grants. A multiplier of 1.5 implies that an additional dollar of...
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Repealing anti-takeover provisions...leads to lower investments [and] fewer acquisitions.
In The Vote is Cast: the Effect of Corporate Governance on Shareholder Value (NBER Working Paper No. 16574), authors Vicente Cunat, Mireia Gine, and Maria Guadalupe present evidence on how corporate governance provisions affect the firm's market value and its long-term performance. They quantify the effect of a governance vote by studying the outcomes of votes on governance...
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The island nation was able to adapt [to external shocks] with business-friendly policies that allowed its economy to continue to diversify and thrive.
When it comes to success in the African region, few countries can top Mauritius. Despite its remote location, small size, and ethnic divisions, the Indian Ocean country has prospered compared with most other African nations. That this 720-square-mile island is an African success story is borne out in various rankings:...
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Each additional year of exposure to desegregated schools increased black men's annual earnings by roughly 5 percent.
Court-ordered desegregation of U.S. schools began in the 1960s and continued through the 1980s. As a result, school segregation decreased dramatically from 1968 to 1972, particularly in the Southeastern states. In Long-run Impacts of School Desegregation and School Quality on Adult Attainments (NBER Working Paper No. 16664), author Rucker Johnson...