The literature on class size yields a number of findings. First, class size effects are difficult to find except when using data where class size variations are truly exogenous. Second, Catholic schools have large classes and better performance. Third, to the extent that class size matters, it...

We estimate the effects of electricity shortages on Indian manufacturers, instrumenting with supply shifts from hydroelectric power availability. We estimate that India's average reported level of shortages reduces the average plant's revenues and producer surplus by five to ten percent, but...

This paper establishes the existence of multiple equilibria in infinite-horizon open- economy models in which the value of tradable and nontradable endowments serves as collateral. In this environment, the economy displays self-fulfilling financial crises in which pessimistic views about the...

There are constraints on pricing congestible facilities. First, if heterogeneous users are observationally indistinguishable, then congestion charges must be anonymous. Second, the time variation of congestion charges may be constrained. Do these constraints undermine the feasibility of marginal...

In countries, such as Singapore, that have implemented vehicle congestion policies, recent years have seen a shift towards motor vehicle taxes based on car use. Ownership taxes reduce the number of cars on the road, leaving the price per trip largely unaffected. Use taxes such as fuel taxes and...

A growing number of roads are currently financed by the private sector via Build-Operate-and -Transfer (BOT) schemes. When the franchised road has no close substitute, the government must regulate tolls. Yet when there are many ways of getting from one point to another, regulation may be avoided...

We explore the consequences of safe asset scarcity on aggregate demand in a stylized IS-LM/Mundell Fleming environment. Acute safe asset scarcity forces the economy into a “safety trap” recession. In the open economy, safe asset scarcity spreads from one country to the other via capital...

The direct benefits of infrastructure in developing countries can be large, but if new infrastructure induces in-migration, congestion of other local publicly provided goods may offset the direct benefits. Using the example of rural household electrification in South Africa, we demonstrate the...

We examine two factors that might explain the extent of air traffic delays in the United States: network benefits due to hubbing and congestion externalities. Airline hubs enable passengers to cross-connect to many destinations, thus creating network benefits that increase in the number of...

Both conventional wisdom and leading academic research view pork barrel spending as antithetical to responsible policymaking in times of crisis. In this paper we present an alternative view. When agents are heterogeneous in their ideology and in their information about the economic situation,...