Using data from the 1981 Family Expenditure Survey we estimate a logit model for the choice between unemployment and employment, using explanatory variables such as tax and social security benefit rates. Other variables represent the characteristics of the households in the survey and...

This paper studies the relation between macroeconomic fluctuations and corporate defaults while conditioning on industry affiliation and an extensive set of firm-specific factors. Using a multiperiod logit approach on a panel data set for all incorporated Swedish businesses over 1990-2002, we...

This Paper examines city formation in a country whose urban population is growing steadily over time, with new cities required to accommodate this growth. In contrast to most of the literature there is immobility of housing and urban infrastructure, and investment in these assets is taken on the...

Empirical studies consistently report that labour productivity and TFP rise with city size. The reason is that cities attract the most productive agents, select the best of them, and make the selected ones even more productive via various agglomeration economies. This paper provides a...

We develop a new methodology for quantifying the tasks undertaken within occupations using 3,000 verbs from around 12,000 occupational descriptions in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOTs). Using micro-data from the United States from 1880-2000, we find an increase in the employment share...

We propose to model individual educational investments as a rational decision, maximizing expected utility, conditional on some characteristics observed by the student, under the combined risks affecting future wages and schooling duration. Assuming that students' attitudes toward risk can be...

Using a rich sample of students from French junior high schools with a panel structure, we obtain small but significant and negative effects of class size on probabilities of educational success, in grades 6 and 7. An 8 to 10 student reduction of class size puts the child of a non-educated...

We measure how the bundling of television channels affects welfare. We estimate an industry model of viewership, demand, pricing, bundling, and input market bargaining using data on ratings, purchases, prices, bundles, and input costs. We conduct simulations of à la carte policies that require...