Edward L Glaeser of Harvard University reviews “Chicago before the Fire: An Economic History” by Louis P. Cain The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Examines the economic and business history of Chicago before the Great Fire of 1870, focusing on how the city's early growth and development determined its rise as the Midwest's dominant city.”

The empirical economics literature on taxation in developing countries has centered on the importance of third-party information for enforcement. Yet, while surely a long-run objective, leveraging such information remains out of reach in many developing countries due to largely informal economies and low state capacity. This article examines an emerging complementary literature focused on strengthening the “sinews” of state capacity: tax administration. We argue that reforms to the organizational structure, personnel management, and task management of tax authorities have potential to raise tax capacity in developing countries. We also argue that efforts to improve the state’s legitimacy—popular acceptance of its right to tax—can increase capacity and may complement investments in tax administration. Our approach bridges a long-standing divide between how scholars in public finance and political economy approach tax capacity building in developing countries.

High-frequency traders (HFTs) mainly operate on public exchanges. Since the European regulatory changes in 2018 (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II), some HFTs began operating Systematic Internalizers (SIs), i.e., single-dealer platforms where clients trade against the dealer's inventory. Using Swedish equity market data, we show that higher HFT dealer-platform activity reduces displayed exchange liquidity: quoted spreads widen and depth falls. Effective spreads are largely unchanged for HFTs but increase for non-HFT traders. Price efficiency improves as return autocorrelations and excess variance ratios move closer to random-walk benchmarks. Evidence suggests HFT dealers' inventory management is the main channel behind these results.

Vicki L. Bogan of Duke University reviews “Funding White Supremacy: Federal Wealth Policies and the Modern Racial Wealth Gap” by Robert B. Williams. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Explores why the racial wealth gap has been widening throughout the last half century, focusing on the current economic system that produces and reproduces racial hierarchy and domination.”

Unemployment differentials are greater between countries in the euro area than between U.S. states. In both regions, net migration responds to unemployment differentials, though the response is smaller in the euro area compared to the U.S. We use a multi-country DSGE model with cross-border migration to quantify Mundell’s hypothesis that labour mobility could substitute for independent monetary policy in a currency union. While not as effective as independent monetary policy, increased labour mobility reduces business cycle fluctuations for most countries in the euro area. However, Mundell’s conjecture does not hold uniformly. For countries that primarily face demand shocks, labour mobility stabilizes inflation and unemployment and improves welfare. If supply shocks are dominant however, labour mobility increases the cost of being in a currency union by magnifying inflation volatility.

Publisher Copyright: © 2026 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

We propose life history (LH) theory as an overarching theoretical explanation of CEO preferences and decision-making. LH theory has the potential to integrate prior research on variation in top executives’ impact on decision outcomes and to demonstrate how observable differences in behavior can be explained by evolutionary drivers. According to LH theory, individuals pursue fast or slow LH strategies. Fast individuals tend to follow accelerated reproduction strategies and engage in impulsive, opportunistic, and risk-seeking behavior. We theorize how CEO LH strategies shape both on-the-job and off-the-job decisions and thus add to a growing body of research on evolutionary drivers of preferences and decision-making in accounting. We measure CEO LH strategies based on biodemographic micro-data related to reproductive behavior. Our findings linked to on-the-job decisions suggest that firms managed by CEOs who pursue fast LH strategies exhibit more financial irregularities, lower accounting conservatism, and higher earnings management. Findings related to CEO off-the-job decisions show that fast CEOs are more likely to engage in criminal behavior and to have a higher conspicuous consumption and a higher personal leverage. By applying an LH theory lens, we reconcile and advance prior fragmented research on CEO preferences by showing a clear theoretical link between on-the-job and off-the-job decisions.