When the zero lower bound on nominal interest rate binds, monetary policy makers may lack traditional tools to stimulate aggregate demand. We investigate whether "unconventional" fiscal policy, in the form of pre-announced consumption tax changes, has the potential to meaningfully shift durables...

We analyze whether decreased emergency department access (measured by increased driving time to the nearest ED) results in adverse patient outcomes or changes in the patient health profile for patients suffering from acute myocardial infarction. Data sources include 100% Medicare Provider...

Conventional outcomes report cards-- public disclosure of information about the patient-background-adjusted health outcomes of individual hospitals and physicians -- may help improve quality, but they may also encourage providers to "game" the system by avoiding sick and/or seeking healthy...

We develop a conceptual framework and empirically investigate how a permanent emergency department (ED) closure affects patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI). We first document that large increases in driving time to closest ED are more likely to happen in low-income communities and...

We develop an estimator and tests of a discrete time mixed proportional hazard (MPH) model of duration with unobserved heterogeneity. We allow for competing risks, observable characteristics, and censoring, and we use linear GMM, making estimation and inference straightforward. With repeated...

Barber and Odean study the relationship between trading activity and returns. They find that households who trade more have a lower net return than other households. They argue that these results cannot emerge from a model with rational traders and instead attribute these findings to...

In Becker (1965) and neoclassical microeconomic theory the value of time is a constant fraction of the hourly wage. When taken to data, however, this value departs from theoretical predictions, and appears to vary with the amount of time saved. By observing drivers on freeways opting to enter...

The value of time determines relative prices of goods and services, investments, productivity, economic growth, and measurements of income inequality. Economists in the 1960s began to focus on the value of non-work time, pioneering a deep literature exploring the optimal allocation and value of...

Much recent work in strategy and popular discussion suggests that an excessive focus on "managing the numbers" --delivering quarterly earnings at the expense of longer term investments--makes it difficult for firms to make the investments necessary to build competitive advantage. "Short termism"...

Is the value premium predictable? We study time-variations of the expected value premium using a two-state Markov switching model. We find that when conditional volatilities are high, the expected excess returns of value stocks are more sensitive to aggregate economic conditions than the...