In 1992 the General Accounting Office (GAO) published a quantitative survey of Indian land ownership of twelve reservations, which was the first and still is the only survey of Indian land ownership. In our study we use 2010 data to show how ownership fractionation for these reservations has...

Several theories have been offered to explain the recent declines in violent crime rates in the United States. We hypothesize that technological innovations, which improved information transmission and shortened the response time between an aggravated assault incident and treatment, reduced the...

We document the effectiveness of robo calls for increasing voter participation despite most published research finding little or no effect of automated calls. We establish this finding in a large field experiment in a targeted, partisan get-out-the-vote campaign. Our experimental design includes...

Substantial academic interest and public policy debate centers on campaign finance reform. Campaign resources can provide benefits to constituencies if candidates use them to fund the distribution of useful information. On the other hand, voters can potentially be harmed if candidates trade...

States have soft budget constraints when they can expect a bailout by the federal government in the event of a financial crisis. This gives rise to incentives for unsound state fiscal policy. We test whether states with softer budget constraints have higher debt and deficits, receive more...

This paper examines the long run education and labor market effects from early-life exposure to the Greek 1941-42 famine. Given the short duration of the famine, we can separately identify the famine effects for cohorts exposed in utero, during infancy and at one year of age. We find that...

This paper studies the long-run fiscal consequences of balanced budget rules (BBR) that are enshrined in a country’s constitution. Using historical data dating back to the 19th century and applying a difference-in-difference approach we find that the introduction of a constitutional-BBR...

Altruistic punishment is a fundamental driver for cooperation in human interactions. In this paper, we expand our understanding of this form of costly punishment to help explain a puzzle of voting behavior: why do people who are indifferent between two potential policy outcomes of an election...

We analyze the choice politicians face when seeking votes from groups that lobby for sales tax rate decreases or from groups that lobby for certain tax exemptions, given the constraint that politician wants to raise a certain amount of revenue. Using the application of sales taxes and sales tax...

Considerable concern has been expressed in recent years about declines in voter participation rates in the United States and in several other major democratic countries. Some feel low participation rates introduce a class bias into the political process and thereby worsen the outcomes from it....