We use panel data from 1983 to 1997 for the 42 police force areas in England and Wales to test the hypothesis that legalizing abortion contributes to lower crime rates. We provide an advance on previous work by focusing on the impact of possible endogeneity of effective abortion rates with...

We use a publicly available data set drawn from the professional sport industry to test for the impacts of coworker heterogeneity on firm performance. We focus particularly on the National Hockey League (NHL). NHL teams are truly global firms - they employ workers (players) from a variety of...

The literature on economics of corruption is lacking in evidence on consumer responses to identifiable scandals. The Calciopoli episode affecting Italian football in the 2005/06 season serves as an opportunity for an empirical investigation into consumer (fan) behaviour following punishments...

This paper investigates spatial competition and the price-quality relationship in the UK gourmet restaurant sector using a comprehensive panel data set compiled from the UK Good Food Guide. A positive relationship between meal prices and restaurant quality as assessed by the Guide is identified....

The use of the GARCH-class of models is commonplace when examining stock market returns. In this paper we use data on stock markets in two transition economies, the Czech Republic and Romania, to demonstrate the importance of using the correct GARCH specification. When residuals are...

Much of the recent discussion on the impact of immigrants on the host economies relate to the costs they impose on the host country’s public finances and the labour market rather than their contribution to the growth of incomes, technology and trade. This paper analyses the contribution...

This paper shows that electoral incentives affect the occurrence of trade disputes. Focusing on WTO disputes filed by the United States during the 1995-2012 period, we show that U.S. presidents are more likely to initiate a dispute in the year preceding their re-election date. Moreover, disputes...

We estimate a variety of models to evaluate costs in US higher education institutions. A novel feature of our approach involves the estimation of latent class and random parameter stochastic frontier models of the multiproduct cost function. This allows us fully to accommodate both the...

We extend the analysis of price caps in oligopoly markets to allow for sunk entry costs and endogenous entry. In the case of deterministic demand and constant marginal cost, reducing a price cap yields increased total output, consumer welfare, and total welfare; results consistent with those for...

Several recent studies advocate the use of nonparametric estimators of daily price vari- ability that exploit intraday information. This paper compares four such estimators, realised volatility, realised range, realised power variation and realised bipower variation, by examining their in-sample...