We show that the size of collateralized household debt determines an economy's vulnerability to crises of confidence. The house price feeds back on itself by contributing to a liquidity effect, which operates through the value of housing in a collateral constraint. Over a specific range of debt...

We describe the design and implemention of a paradata based method to reduce interviewer induced measurement error in a household survey in India. Our method identifies enumerators exhibiting deviant field practices, and provides them feedback to correct potentially faulty behavior. A novel...

We contribute new UK evidence about measurement errors and employment earnings to a field dominated by findings about the USA. We develop and apply new econometric models for linked survey and administrative data that generalize those of Kapteyn and Ypma (Journal of Labor Economics, 2007). Our...

We implement a survey of Dutch households in which random subsets of respondents receive information about inflation. The resulting exogenously generated variation in inflation expectations is used to assess how expectations affect subsequent monthly consumption decisions relative to those in a...

There is potential for measurement problems in both retrospective and panel microdata. In this paper we compare results on basic indicators related to labor markets and their dynamics from retrospective and panel survey data in Egypt, in order to determine the conditions under which results are...

Imagine the situation in which an econometrician can infer the distribution of welfare gains induced by the provision of higher education financial aid using survey data obtained from a set of individuals, and can estimate the same distribution using a highly incentivized field experiment in...

We explore intertemporal decision-making in later life by looking at temporal preference heterogeneity among older individuals. Using choice tasks responses from Poland collected as part of the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we elicit individual time preferences...

Nowcasting has been a challenge in the recent economic crisis. We introduce the Toll Index, a new monthly indicator for business cycle forecasting and demonstrate its relevance using German data. The index measures the monthly transportation activity performed by heavy transport vehicles across...

In this paper, we develop an aggregation procedure using time-varying weights for constructing the common component of international economic fluctuations. The methodology for deriving time-varying weights is based on some stylized features of the data documented in the paper. The model allows...

We propose and estimate a model where unemployment fluctuations result from self-fulfilling changes in expected inflation (sunspot shocks) affecting nominal wage bargaining. Since the estimated parameters fall near the locus of Hopf bifurcations, country-specific expected inflation shocks can...