Journal Article The Elimination of the Paper Mark As Standard of Value Get access R. R. Kuczynski R. R. Kuczynski Berlin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 37, Issue 4, August 1923, Pages 761–769, https://doi.org/10.2307/1884061 Published: 01 August 1923

Journal Article The Fecundity of the Native and Foreign Born Population in Massachusetts Get access R. R. Kuczynski R. R. Kuczynski Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 16, Issue 2, February 1902, Pages 141–186, https://doi.org/10.2307/1882742 Published: 01 February 1902

Journal Article The Fecundity of the Native and Foreign Born Population in Massachusetts Get access R. R. Kuczynski R. R. Kuczynski Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 16, Issue 1, November 1901, Pages 1–36, https://doi.org/10.2307/1882901 Published: 01 November 1901

In many countries, disproportionately many firms locate their headquarters in the capital city. Spatial proximity to a country’s leading politicians may be beneficial for a number of reasons. Since neither firms nor governments move randomly, the effects of firms’ co-locating with the government are normally hard to identify. I solve this problem by examining a unique event—the decision to relocate the German federal government from Bonn to Berlin in 1991. Following reunification, there was a free vote in the German parliament on the future location of the government. Berlin won by a narrow margin, an event that could not be anticipated even days before and that is free from confounding factors. Firms with corporate headquarters in Berlin experience abnormal equity returns of more than 3% following the relocation decision.

This study investigates if the use of derivatives by corporations is likely to affect their financing strategies. I find a strong positive relation between the minimum revenue guaranteed by hedging and investment expenditure. This result implies that hedging increases the likelihood that investments can be financed internally. I also find that firms tend to finance their investment expenditures externally rather than internally. If external capital is more costly than internal capital it would clearly be in a firm's interestto reduce its dependence on external capital. Consistent with this result, Ifind that the median firm that does not hedge finances 100% of its investment expenditures externally, while the median firm that hedges finances only 86% of investments externally.

This is a review article of the book The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy, by Joel Mokyr, published in 2002.