When similar patterns of expansion and contraction are observed across sectors, we call this a business cycle. Yet explaining the similarity and synchronization of these cycles across industries remains a puzzle. Whereas output growth across industries is highly correlated, identifiable shocks,...

This note gives a fairly complete statistical description of the Hodrick-Prescott Filter (1997) which has been proposed in the context of my seasonal adjustment method (Schlicht 1981, 1984). A statistics estimator for the smoothing parameter is proposed that is asymptotically equivalent to the...

This paper documents the major features of Jewish economic history in the first millennium to explain the distinctive occupational selection of the Jewish people into urban, skilled occupations. We show that many Jews entered urban occupations in the eighth-ninth centuries in the Muslim Empire...

The willingness to migrate and locational choice may be influenced by others? choices or plans, particularly if the ?other people?, such as family and friends, are migrants, former migrants, or potential migrants themselves. We examine the roles ?other people? play in influencing an individual?s...

Since the Middle Ages the Jews have been engaged primarily in urban, skilled occupations, such as crafts, trade, finance, and medicine. This distinctive occupational selection occurred between the seventh and the ninth centuries in the Muslim Empire and then it spread to other locations. We...

Assessing the migration potential and predicting future migration streams are among the most relevant, yet least well understood topics of migration research. The usual approach taken to address aggregate-level prediction problems is to fit ad hoc specifications to historical data, and to...