Less developed countries tend to experience higher output volatility, a fact that is, in part, explained by their specialization in more volatile sectors. This paper proposes theoretical explanations for this pattern of specialization -- with the complexity of the goods playing a central role....

Rules often are complex in order to distinguish different types of behavior that may have different consequences. Greater complexity thus allows better control of behavior. But individuals may need to incur costs ex ante to determine how more complex rules apply to their contemplated conduct....

Extremely rich data on farm households in Burkina Faso are used to test whether resource are allocated Pareto efficiently. The complexity of household structures, including multi-generation and polygynous households, is taken into account to developing tests from theoretical models of behavior....

We present evidence that complex disclosure can result from the strategic incentives to shroud information. We implement an experiment where senders are required to report their private information truthfully but can choose how complex to make their reports. We find that senders use complex...

In this paper we discuss the properties of confidence intervals for regression parameters based on robust standard errors. We discuss the motivation for a modification suggested by Bell and McCaffrey (2002) to improve the finite sample properties of the confidence intervals based on the...

In this paper we propose a new variance estimator for OLS as well as for nonlinear estimators such as logit, probit and GMM, that provcides cluster-robust inference when there is two-way or multi-way clustering that is non-nested. The variance estimator extends the standard cluster-robust...

This paper examines monetary policy in Rudebusch and Svensson's (1999) two equation macroeconomic model when the policymaker recognizes that the model is an approximation and is uncertain about the quality of that approximation. It is argued that the minimax approach of robust control provides a...