This paper explores alternative methods for adjusting price indices for quality change at scale. These methods can be applied to large-scale item-level transactions data that includes information on prices, quantities, and item attributes. The hedonic methods can take into account the changing...

This paper presents and implements statistical tests of stock market forecastability and volatility that are immune from the severe statistical problems of earlier tests. Although the null hypothesis of strict market efficiency is rejected, the evidence against the hypothesis is not...

This article demonstrates the value of microdata for understanding the effect of wages on life cycle fertility dynamics. Conventional estimates of neoclassical economic fertility models obtained from linear aggregate time series regressions are widely criticized for being nonrobust when adjusted...

Changes in government spending often lead to significant shifts in demand across sectors. This paper analyzes the effects of sector-specific changes in government spending in a two-sector dynamic general equilibrium model in which the reallocation of capital across sectors is costly. The...

This paper surveys new methods for estimatifg labor supply functions. A unified framework of analysis is presented. All recent models of labor supply are special cases of a general index function model developed for the analysis o dummy endogenous variables

Recent fiscal policies, including the 2008 stimulus payments and the 2009 Making Work Pay tax credit, aimed to increase household spending. This paper quantifies the spending response to these policies and examines differences in spending by whether the stimulus was delivered as a one-time...

The recent literature on instrumental variables (IV) features models in which agents sort into treatment status on the basis of gains from treatment as well as on baseline-pretreatment levels. Components of the gains known to the agents and acted on by them may not be known by the observing...

Phased-in tax reductions are a common feature of tax legislation. This paper uses a dynamic general equilibrium model to quantify the effects of delaying tax cuts. According to the analysis of the model, the phased-in tax cuts of the 2001 tax law substantially reduced employment, output, and...

This paper decomposes the participation process of a prototypical program into eligibility, awareness, application, acceptance and enrollment. With this decomposition, we determine the sources of unequal participation for different groups, and demonstrate that variables often have very different...

The Mincer earnings function is the cornerstone of a large literature in empirical economics. This paper discusses the theoretical foundations of the Mincer model and examines the empirical support for it using data from Decennial Censuses and Current Population Surveys. While data from 1940 and...