This paper analyzes how gasoline tax rates are related to the time workers in the United States spend commuting by private car, public transport, or with other physical modes of transport. Our identification strategy relies on both between-state differences and time variations in gasoline taxes....

There has been an increasing reliance on sales taxation in both the states and counties in the United States. In this paper, we are examining the relationship between state and local sales taxation and business activity in the U.S. by utilizing county-level data for the period 2002-2011. We have...

Both personal bankruptcy and redistributive taxes can insure households' consumption risk and both vary considerably across US states. We derive sufficient conditions under which more redistributive taxation makes bankruptcy exemptions less attractive both for the intratemporal insurance and for...

This paper links between Beckerian literature that shows that marriage is a normal good with respect to male income and the literature that explores cultural changes as a result of exogenous events. I use the oil crisis of the 1970s as a positive shock on some males. The analyzed outcome is...

This paper investigates the impact of oil price variations on sectoral inflation for a sample of 10 top oil importing and exporting countries. Specifically, we analyze the effects of oil prices on the consumer price index using monthly data spanning the July 2009 to February 2021 period. Two...

There is a large gender gap in advanced math coursework in high school that many believe exists because girls are discouraged from taking math courses. In this paper, we exploit an institutional change that reduced the costs of acquiring advanced high school math to determine if access is, in...

In many environments, tournaments can elicit more effort from workers, except perhaps when workers can sabotage each other. Because it is hard to separate effort, ability and output in many real workplace settings, the empirical evidence on the incentive effect of tournaments is thin. There is...

One in nine people between the ages of 18 and 64 in the US, and every second foreign-born person in this age bracket, speaks Spanish at home. And whereas around 80 percent of adult immigrants in the US from non-English speaking countries other than Mexico are proficient in English, only about 50...

For years, anecdotal evidence has suggested increased fertility rates resulting from catastrophic events in an area. In this paper, we measure this fertility effect using storm advisory data and fertility data for the Atlantic and Gulf Coast counties of the United States. We find that...

Exogenous shocks often impact a local labor market more than at the national level. This study improves upon the standard Difference in Difference (DD) approach by examining exogenous shocks using a Generalized Difference in Difference (GDD) econometric approach that identifies the effects of...