Three essays in economics

This thesis consists of three chapters. I, first, study the long-run growth of finance. I construct comprehensive national financial balance sheets, financial accounts and production accounts for twelve advanced economies over the past two centuries using hundreds of historical sources. Financial asset-to-output ratios more than quintuple while the output share of finance industry more than quadruples. Despite this dramatic growth in the volume of finance, financial deepening is slow and the structure of finance is stable. Financial growth over the past two centuries is primarily driven by capital formation. These results shed new light on the recent dramatic expansion of financial assets, services, and debt, and directly link these secular trends to an ongoing debate on rising wealth-income ratios and inequality. The second chapter, joint with Johannes Hermle, studies the impact of a male breadwinner norm on gender inequality.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Hildebrand, Nikolaus(Nikolaus Valentin)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Daron Acemoglu.

• Economics.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/122104

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/122104