Buyout booms form in response to declines in the aggregate risk premium. We document that the equity risk premium is the primary determinant of buyout activity rather than credit-specific conditions. We articulate a simple explanation for this phenomenon: a low risk premium increases the present...

We document basic facts about prices in online markets in the U.S. and Canada, a rapidly growing segment of the retail sector. Relative to prices in regular stores, prices in online markets are more flexible as well as exhibit stronger pass-through (60-75 percent) and faster convergence...

We estimate the trend in the transitory variance of male earnings in the U.S. using the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics from 1970 to 2004. Using both an error components model as well as simpler but only approximate methods, we find that the transitory variance started to increase in the...

This paper investigates three hypotheses to account for the observed shifts in U.S. relative wages of less educated compared to more educated workers between 1967 and 1992: increased import competition, changes in the relative supplies of labor of different education levels and changes in...

We develop a quantifiable multi-country sourcing model in which firms self-select into importing based on their productivity and country-specific variables. In contrast to canonical export models where firm profits are additively separable across destination markets, global sourcing decisions...

A conceptual basis is laid out for measuring the cost of capital for corpora- tions from data typically available in countries such as the US, Canada, and Japan. Attempts are made to carry out the measurement based both on the accounting records of individual companies and on the aggregate...

We study the post-war evidence for Japan to see if the same specification for both the economy and the monetary policy rule is useful for understanding Japan's economy and monetary policy. A recurrent theme in the literature on Japanese monetary policy is that there are significant differences...

Capital income tax policy affects investment by the parent and affiliates of multinational corporations (MNCs). In a model in which technical advances are embodied in new capital, investment will translate directly into productivity gains. In this paper, I use this framework to guide the growth...

Network planning models, which forecast the profitability of airline schedules, support many critical decisions, including equipment purchase decisions. Network planning models include an itinerary choice model that is used to allocate air total demand in a city pair to different itineraries....

Between 1990 and 2008, air pollution emissions from U.S. manufacturing fell by 60 percent despite a substantial increase in manufacturing output. We show that these emissions reductions are primarily driven by within-product changes in emissions intensity rather than changes in output or in the...