The expansion of regionalism has spawned an extensive theoretical literature analysing the effects of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) on trade flows. In this paper we focus on FTAs (also called European agreements) between the European Union (EU-15) and the Central and Eastern European countries...

This paper presents new evidence on intergenerational income and earnings mobility in the top of the distributions. Using a large dataset of matched father-son pairs in Sweden we are able to obtain results for fractions as small as 0.1 percent of the population. Overall, mobility is lower for...

This note argues that nonparametric regression not only relaxes functional form assumptions vis-a-vis parametric regression, but that it also permits endogenous control variables. To control for selection bias or to make an exclusion restriction in instrumental variables regression valid,...

In this paper we describe an alternative iterative approach for the estimation of linear regression models with high-dimensional fixed-effects such as large employer-employee data sets. This approach is computationally intensive but imposes minimum memory requirements. We also show that the...

We investigate the problem of optimal choice of the smoothing parameter (bandwidth) for the regression discontinuity estimator. We focus on estimation by local linear regression, which was shown to be rate optimal (Porter, 2003). Investigation of an expected-squared-error-loss criterion reveals...

Researchers are often interested in estimating the causal effect of some treatment on individual criminality. For example, two recent relatively prominent papers have attempted to estimate the respective direct effects of marriage and gang participation on individual criminal activity. One...

We examine differences in the value of statistical life (VSL) across potential wage levels in panel data using quantile regressions with intercept heterogeneity. Latent heterogeneity is econometrically important and affects the estimated VSL. Our findings indicate that a reasonable average cost...

This paper employs conditional second moments to identify the impact of education in wage regressions where education is treated as endogenous. This approach avoids the use of instrumental variables in a setting where instruments are frequently not available. We employ this methodology to...

This paper decomposes differences in poverty incidence (head count ratio) using estimates from a regression equation, synthesizing the approaches proposed in World Bank (2003) and Yun (2004). A significance test is developed for characteristics and coefficients effects when decomposing...

"I perform the joint estimation of a reduced-form dynamic model of the transition from one grade level to the next, and a Mincer wage equation, using panel data taken from the NLSY. A very high degree of flexibility is achieved by approximating the distributions of idiosyncractic grade...