We examine two sets of economies, (19th century U.S. states and 20th century less developed countries) where growth rates are positively correlated with initial levels of development to document how these dynamic increasing returns operate. We find that open economies do not display a positive...

Do business cycles have predictable periodicities or are they random walks without past regularities or predictive value? Arguments in support of either position are found in the literature, with no apparent convergence to an agreement. This paper first examines the implications of the NBER...

This paper argues that analysis of seasonal fluctuations can shed light on the nature of business cycle fluctuations. The fundamental reason is that in many instances identifying restrictions about seasonal fluctuations are more believable than analogous restrictions about non-seasonal...

We assess quantitatively the effect of exogenous health improvements on output per capita. Our simulation model allows for a direct effect of health on worker productivity, as well as indirect effects that run through schooling, the size and age-structure of the population, capital accumulation,...

We investigate whether living arrangements respond to an arguably exogenous shift in the distribution of power in family economic decision-making. In the early 1990s, the South African Old Age Pension was expanded to cover most black South Africans above a sex-specific age cut-off resulting in a...

About 10% of US employees now regularly work from home (WFH), but there are concerns this can lead to "shirking from home." We report the results of a WFH experiment at CTrip, a 16,000- employee, NASDAQ-listed Chinese travel agency. Call center employees who volunteered to WFH were randomly...

More than 17 percent of households in American central cities live in poverty; in American suburbs, just 7.4 percent of households live in poverty. The income elasticity of demand for land is too low for urban poverty to be the result of wealthy individuals' wanting to live where land is cheap...

Since 1950, housing prices have risen regularly by almost two percent per year. Between 1950 and 1970, this increase reflects rising housing quality and construction costs. Since 1970, this increase reflects the increasing difficulty of obtaining regulatory approval for building new homes. In...

For more than a century, educated cities have grown more quickly than comparable cities with less human capital. This fact survives a battery of other control variables, metropolitan area fixed effects and tests for reverse causality. We also find that skilled cities are growing because they are...

Are individuals more likely to smoke when they are surrounded by smokers? In this paper, we examine the evidence for peer effects in smoking. We address the endogeneity of peers by looking at the impact of workplace smoking bans on spousal and peer group smoking. Using these bans as an...