Seasonal adjustment procedures attempt to estimate the sample realizations of an unobservable economic time series in the presence of both seasonal factors and irregular factors. In this paper we consider a factor which has not been considered explicitly in previous treatments of seasonal...

Traffic fatalities are the leading cause of mortality in the United States despite being preventable. While several policies have been introduced to improve traffic safety and their effects have been well documented, the role of transitory health shocks or situational factors at explaining...

This paper examines the intergenerational transmission of gender attitudes in India, a setting where discrimination against women and girls is severe. We use survey data on gender attitudes (specifically, views about the appropriate roles and rights of women and girls) collected from adolescents...

The functioning and well-being of any society and organization critically hinges on norms of cooperation that regulate social activities. Empirical evidence on how such norms emerge and in which environments they thrive remains a clear void in the literature. To provide an initial set of...

In the 2018 comprehensive update of the national income and product accounts, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released not seasonally adjusted data, and modified its seasonal adjustment procedures. I find some indication of residual seasonality in the seasonally adjusted data as published before...

We study the usefulness of root tests as diagnostic tools for selecting forecasting models. Difference stationary and trend stationary models of economic and financial time series often imply very different predictions, so deciding which model to use is tremendously important for applied...

Here's why. (1) The HP filter produces series with spurious dynamic relations that have no basis in the underlying data-generating process. (2) Filtered values at the end of the sample are very different from those in the middle, and are also characterized by spurious dynamics. (3) A statistical...

We use a theory of apologies to design a nationwide field experiment involving 1.5 million Uber ridesharing consumers who experienced late rides. Several insights emerge from our field experiment. First, apologies are not a panacea: the efficacy of an apology and whether it may backfire depend...

Digital platforms like Uber can enhance market transparency and mitigate moral hazard via ratings of buyers and sellers, real-time monitoring, and low-cost complaint channels. We compare driver choices at Uber with taxis by matching trips so they are subject to the same optimal route. We also...

The amount of computational power devoted to anonymous, decentralized blockchains such as Bitcoin's must simultaneously satisfy two conditions in equilibrium: (1) a zero-profit condition among miners, who engage in a rent-seeking competition for the prize associated with adding the next block to...