We measure the impact of individuals' looks on life satisfaction/happiness. Using five data sets, from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Germany, we construct beauty measures in different ways that allow placing lower bounds on the effects of beauty. Beauty raises happiness: A one...

This paper develops a theoretical model of multinational firms with an internal capital market. Main reasons for the emergence of such a market are tax avoidance through debt shifting and the existence of institutional weaknesses and financial frictions across host countries. The model serves to...

The cross-national intragenerational income mobility literature assumes within-country mobility is invariant over the period measured. We argue that a great social transformation--German reunification-- abruptly and permanently altered economic mobility. Using standard measures of mobility (with...

This paper provides quasi-experimental estimates of the causal effect of long-term unemployment on wages. Using standard job search theory, the paper derives and tests conditions on reemployment wages under which Unemployment Insurance (UI) extensions can be used as instrumental variables (IV)...

This paper explores the changing role of government involvement in health care financing policy outside the United States. It provides a review of the economics literature in this area to understand the implications of recent policy changes on efficiency, costs and quality. Our review reveals...

We estimate the degree of amp;apos;stickinessamp;apos; in aggregate consumption growth (sometimes interpreted as reflecting consumption habits) for thirteen advanced economies. We find that, after controlling for measurement error, consumption growth has a high degree of autocorrelation, with a...

Regime-switching models are well suited to capture the non-linearities in interest rates. This paper examines the econometric performance of regime-switching models for interest rate data from the US, Germany and the UK. There is strong evidence supporting the presence of regime switches but...

This paper is a first attempt at evaluating the determinants of the total interest rate differentials on government bonds between high yielders, namely Italy, Spain, Sweden and Germany. In particular we address the question of the relative importance of local and global factors in the...

We define the Fisherian Golden Rule measure of bond market inflation expectations as the difference between bond rates and trend real GDP growth rates. The concept is based on the Fisherian theory that an increase in longer-term inflation expectations would be reflected in longer-term interest...

This paper provides a general framework for integration of high-frequency intraday data into the measurement forecasting of daily and lower frequency volatility and return distributions. Most procedures for modeling and forecasting financial asset return volatilities, correlations, and...