We analyze the trading activity in an Internet chat room with approximately 1,300 participants. Traders make posts in real time about their activities. We find these traders are more skilled than retail investors analyzed in other studies. 55% make profits after transaction costs, and they earn...

We use information from the tax returns of U.S. multinational corporations to address three questions related to tax competition. First, does tax competition or company tax planning behavior better explain recent decreases in the local effective tax rates faced by U.S. multinationals investing...

The paper examines the processes underlying economic fluctuations by investigating the volatility moderation of U.S. economy in the early 1980's. We decompose the volatility decline using a dynamic factor framework into a common stochastic trend, common transitory component and idiosyncratic...

Many states in the US impose taxes on hazardous waste. This paper conducts an empirical evaluation of the determinants of these taxes and reviews earlier research on their effects on hazardous waste. Earlier studies have shown that the taxes affect waste management, but my results and other...

This paper explores policy options for reducing lead in municipal solid waste. It focuses on policies that rely on economic incentives, such as taxes, deposit-refunds, and recycled content standards. The paper addresses the relative cost effectiveness of these approaches and also considers the...

Various inflation forecasting models are compared using a simulated out-of-sample forecasting framework. We focus on the question of whether monetary aggregates are useful for forecasting inflation, but unlike previous work we examine a wide range of forecast horizons and allow for estimated as...

In this paper we examine the extent to which fluctuations in a number of macroeconomic variables impact on the volume of federal litigation cases. In particular, the impact of aggregate U.S. GDP, consumption, inflation, unemployment, and interest rates on the volume of antitrust, bankruptcy,...