We propose a measure of the extent to which a financial sector is connected to the real economy. The Measure of Connectedness is a mesure of composition of the assets, namely the share of the credit to the non-financial sectors over the total credit market instruments. The aggregate U.S. Measure...

This paper tackles the prediction of the probability and severity of US recessions. We employ parsimonious Probit models to estimate the probability of a recession h periods ahead, for h varying between 1 and 8 quarters. A novel goodness-of-fit measure derived from the Kullback-Leibler...

We examine the dynamic effects of credit shocks using a large data set of U.S. economic and financial indicators in a structural factor model. The identified credit shocks, interpreted as unexpected deteriorations of credit market conditions, immediately increase credit spreads, decrease rates...

We combine the choice data of proposers and responders in the ultimatum game, their expectations elicited in the form of subjective probability questions, and the choice data of proposers ("dictators") in a dictator game to estimate a structural model of decision making under uncertainty. We use...

The role of field experiments in evaluating the effect of compensation policies on worker productivity is considered. Particular attention is paid to the ability of a field experiment to identify the effect of a permanent change in firm policy. While field experiments solve endogeneity problems...

We use the Vietnam War draft avoidance behavior documented by Card and Lemieux (2002) as a quasi-natural experiment to infer causation from education to smoking and find strong evidence that education, whether it be measured in years of completed schooling or in educational attainment...

We investigate how to make poverty comparisons using multidimensional indicators of well-being, showing in particular how to check whether the comparisons are robust to aggregation procedures and to the choice of multidimensional poverty lines. In contrast to earlier work, our methodology...

Variations in aggregate poverty indices can be due to differences in average poverty intensity, to changes in the welfare distances between those poor of initially unequal welfare status, and/or to emerging disparities in welfare among those poor of initially similar welfare status. This note...

This paper develops the link between poverty and inequality by focussing on a class of poverty indices (some of them well-known) which aggregate normative concerns for absolute and relative deprivation. The indices are distinguished by a parameter value that captures the ethical sensitivity of...

We scrutinize and compare, from the perspective of modern theory of social choice, two rules that have been used to rank competitors in Figure Skating for the past decades. The firs rule has been in use at least from 1982 until 1998, when it was replaced by a new one. We also compare these two...