By using a nonlinear VAR model, we investigate whether the response of the US stock and housing markets to uncertainty shocks depends on financial conditions. Our model allows us to change the response of the US financial markets to volatility shocks in periods of normal and financial distress....

Quantitative school performance measures (QPMs) are playing an ever larger role in education systems on both sides of the Atlantic. In this paper we outline the rationale for the use of such measures in education, review the literature relating to several important problems associated with their...

We investigate whether commonly used value-added estimation strategies can produce accurate estimates of teacher effects. We estimate teacher effects in simulated student achievement data sets that mimic plausible types of student grouping and teacher assignment scenarios. No one method...

The recent literature on instrumental variables (IV) features models in which agents sort into treatment status on the basis of gains from treatment as well as on baseline-pretreatment levels. Components of the gains known to the agents and acted on by them may not be known by the observing...

Instrumental variables (IV) is an indispensable tool for establishing causal relationships between variables. Recent work has focused on improving bounds for cases when an ideal instrument does not exist. We leverage a principle, "Intransitivity in Correlations," related to an under-utilized...

Job insecurity exerts negative effects on self-reported health. Using the Spanish Survey of Household Finances for 2011-2014, this paper asks whether and to what extent debt burdens enhance these detrimental health effects. To address potential endogeneity problems surrounding this question, the...

In a growing number of countries, the delivery of social welfare services is contracted out to private providers, and increasingly, using performance-based contracts. Critics of performance-based incentive contracts stress their potential unintended effects, including cream-skimming and other...

The risk of default that business firms face is very significant and differs widely across countries. This paper explores the links between countries' business conditions and international trade embedment and the default risk at the country level from a theoretical point of view. Our main...