We solve an optimal land sale problem for a mayor who sells public land and uses the land sale revenue to finance infrastructure. Over an infinite horizon the mayor chooses land sale and infrastructure in each period to maximize the market value of the city net of the spending on infrastructure....

Poleward transport of atmospheric moisture and heat play major roles in the magnification of warming in poleward latitudes per degree of global warming, a phenomenon known as polar amplification (PA). We derive a time series econometric framework using a restricted vector error correction model...

Immigrants in economies with a dominant native language exhibit substantial heterogeneities in language acquisition of the majority language. We model partial equilibrium language acquisition as an equilibrium phenomenon. We consider an environment where heterogeneous agents from various...

This paper questions current empirical practice in the study of growth. We argue that much of the modern empirical growth literature is based on assumptions concerning regressors, residuals, and parameters which are implausible both from the perspective of economic theory as well as from the...

This paper develops a decision-theoretic approach to policy analysis. We argue that policy evaluation should be conducted on the basis of two factors: the policymaker's preferences, and the conditional distribution of the outcomes of interest given a policy and available information. From this...

The relationship between economic growth and the environment is not well understood: we have only limited understanding of the basic science involved and very limited data. Because of these difficulties it is especially important to develop a series of relatively simple theoretical models that...

This paper presents a framework for understanding the limits that exist in optimal policy design in dynamic contexts. We consider the design of policies in the context of dynamic linear models. Fundamental design limits exist for policy rules in such environments in the sense that any policy...