In recent years, a large academic debate has tried to explain the rapid rise in CEO pay experienced over the past three decades. In this article, I review the main proposed theories, which span views of compensation as the result of a competitive labor market for executives to theories based on...

Background: The trend in the BMI values of the US population has not been estimated accurately because time series data are unavailable and because the focus has been on calculating period effects. Object: To estimate the trend and rate of change of BMI values by birth cohorts stratified by...

Trends in BMI values are estimated by centiles of the US adult population by birth cohorts 1886-1986 stratified by ethnicity. The highest centile increased by some 18 to 22 units in the course of the century while the lowest ones increased by merely 1 to 3 units. Hence, the BMI distribution...

Little research exists on the historical relationship between BMI variation, wealth, and inequality. This study finds that 19th century US black and white BMIs were distributed symmetrically; neither wasting nor obesity was common. Nineteenth century BMI values were also greater for blacks than...

Although there is much interest in the future retail price of gasoline among consumers, industry analysts, and policymakers, it is widely believed that changes in the price of gasoline are essentially unforecastable given publicly available information. We explore several new forecasting...

Least-squares estimates of the response of gasoline consumption to a change in the gasoline price are biased toward zero, given the endogeneity of gasoline prices. A seemingly natural solution to this problem is to instrument for gasoline prices using gasoline taxes, but this approach tends to...

This paper studies the effects of job creation tax credits (JCTCs) enacted by U.S. states between 1990 and 2007 to gain insights about fiscal foresight (alterations of current behavior by forwardlooking agents in anticipation of future policy changes). Nearly half of the states adopted JCTCs...

Labor force transitions are empirically examined using CPS data matched across months from 1996-2012 for Hispanics, African-Americans and whites. Transition probabilities are contrasted prior to the Great Recession and afterwards. Estimates indicate that minorities are more likely to be fired as...