We discover and document errors in public use microdata samples ("PUMS files") of the 2000 Census, the 2003-2006 American Community Survey, and the 2004-2009 Current Population Survey. For women and men ages 65 and older, age- and sex-specific population estimates generated from the PUMS files...

We study local government incentives to misreport the information required to implement a formula grant. We focus specifically on population, in theory the easiest variable for the grantor to verify. We analyze the Spanish case and show how a switch from the use of census to registered...

Measuring effective tax rates using tax revenue data is attractive, given that revenues collected capture the net effect of tax provisions and taxpayer behaviour that are difficult to model. Yet reliance on aggregate tax and income data requires restrictive assumptions and significantly limits...

I present the first database of historical local population figures for all Germany. The German Local Population Database (GPOP) includes total population in 1871, 1910, 1939, 1946, 1961, 1987, 1996, 2011, and 2019 for the universe of all German municipalities, counties, and states at consistent...

This paper examines the responses of private consumption, residential investment, and business investment in 11 EU countries, Japan, and the United States to shocks in housing and equity prices. The effects are assessed with a Structural Vector Auto Regressive (SVAR) model, and four key findings...

Building on a new data set which is combined from national micro-data bases, we highlight differences in the structure of migrants to four countries, viz. France, Germany, the UK and the US, which receive a substantial share of all immigrants to the OECD world. Looking at immigrants by source...

The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in the economic literature. While much is known about 19th century black legal and material conditions, less is known about how 19th century biological conditions were related to the physical environment and...