An important issue in the analysis of cross-sectional dependence which has received renewed interest in the past few years is the need for a better understanding of the extent and nature of such cross dependencies. In this paper we focus on measures of cross-sectional dependence and how such...

In this paper we show that the double Pareto lognormal (DPLN) parameterization provides an excellent fit to the overall US city size distribution, regardless of whether cities are administratively defined Census places or economically defined area clusters. We then consider an economic model...

One of the most widely discussed phenomena in American politics today is the perceived increasing partisan divide that splits the U.S. electorate. A central contested question is whether this diagnosis is actually true, and if so, what is the underlying cause. We develop a model that relates the...

We argue that societies with a stronger tendency towards postmaterialist life goals tilt the tax structure towards personal income taxes and away from corporate taxation. We provide empirical evidence for this correlation in OECD countries. To address endogeneity issues we then use an...

This paper quantifies the effect of the government-controlled appreciation of the Chinese renminbi (RMB) vis-à-vis the USD from 2005 to 2008 on the prices charged by US producers. As the RMB during that time was pegged to a basket of currencies, the empirical strategy must account for the fact...

This paper introduces inventories in an otherwise standard Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Model (DSGE) of the business cycle. Firms accumulate inventories to facilitate sales, but face a cost of doing so in terms of costly storage of intermediate goods. The paper's main contribution is...

We examine both the degree and the structural stability of inflation persistence at different quantiles of the conditional inflation distribution. Previous research focused exclusively on persistence at the conditional mean of the inflation rate. Economic theory, however, provides various...

This study examines the education gradient in three chronic conditions - diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol. In the analysis, we take into account diagnosed as well as undiagnosed cases, and we use methods that account for the possibility that unmeasured factors exist that are...

This paper explores differences in the frequency with which students from different schools reach high levels of math achievement. Data from the American Mathematics Competitions is used to produce counts of high-scoring students from more than two thousand public, coeducational, non-magnet,...

In this paper we examine the role of mortgage equity withdrawal in explaining the decline of the US saving rate, since when house prices rise and mortgage rates are low, homeowners have an incentive to withdraw housing equity and this may affect the saving rate. We estimate a Vector Error...