We examine changes in the use of nontax revenues for education finance from 1991-2010. Beyond the summary of usage over time, we ask whether non- traditional revenues like fees accentuate or mitigate the impact of downturns. More generally, we examine the extent to which school districts have...

We examine the effect of rainfall shocks on dowry deaths using data from 583 Indian districts for 2002-2007. We find that a one standard deviation decline in annual rainfall from the local mean increases reported dowry deaths by 7.8 percent. Wet shocks have no apparent effect. We examine...

Economic theory suggests that liberalization of trade between countries with differing levels of environmental protection could lead pollution-intensive industry to concentrate in the nations where regulations are lax. This effect, often referred to as the "pollution haven" hypothesis, is much...

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) had a profound impact on corn trade between the United States and Mexico. Negotiated tariff reductions and the Mexican government’s decision not to charge some tariffs to which it was entitled resulted in a doubling of US corn exports to Mexico....

The European Union is moving toward adoption of its new Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals (REACH) policy, an innovative system of chemicals regulation that will provide crucial information on the safety profile of chemicals used in industry. Chemicals produced elsewhere,...

Economic models of climate change often take the problem seriously, but paradoxically conclude that the optimal policy is to do almost nothing about it. We explore this paradox as seen in the widely used DICE model. Three aspects of that model, involving the discount rate, the assumed benefits...

Since the passage of the 1996 Farm Bill, the U.S. market prices of soybeans and corn have dropped 21% and 32%, respectively. These commodities are now sold on the market at a price below what they cost to produce. If U.S. agricultural policies contribute to the prevalence of below-cost soybeans...