This paper deals with the early stages of transformation of centrally-planned economies (CBEs) into market economies during which expectations playa key role. It focuses on the transitional phase during which the economy is not any more a CPE but has not yet become a market economy. During this...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the price of alcoholic beverages and the incidence of criminal violence in different countries around the world. The positive association between alcoholic beverage consumption and violence is well documented, as is the negative...

While much is known about the impacts prices and tobacco control policies have on smoking participation and frequency of cigarette use, little is known about their impacts on smoking cessation. This paper addresses the dynamics of smoking cessation using longitudinal data on young adults from...

The importance of sticky prices in business cycle fluctuations has been debated for many years. But we argue, based on a large empirical literature from the 1950's and 60's, that it is necessary to distinguish the response of price to an increase in factor prices from its response to an increase...

Substantial econometric efforts have been devoted to examining the impacts prices and tobacco control policies have on smoking propensity and intensity. However, little is known about the effects prices, smoking restrictions, and other influences have on smoking cessation. This paper uses...

Conventional wisdom has it that global financial markets were as well integrated in the 1890s as in the 1990s, but that it took several post-war decades to regenerate the connections that existed before 1914. This view has emerged from a variety of tests for world financial capital market...

Drug copayment coupons to reduce patient cost-sharing have become nearly ubiquitous for high-priced brand-name prescription drugs. Medicare bans such coupons on the grounds that they are kickbacks that induce utilization, but they are commonly used by commercially-insured enrollees. We estimate...

There is wide dispersion in pharmaceutical prices across countries with comparable quality standards. Under monopoly, off-patent and generic drug prices are at least four times higher in the United States than in comparable English-speaking high income countries. With five or more competitors,...

This paper shows that small costs of changing nominal prices can lead to rigidities that cause highly inefficient fluctuations in real variables. As a result, aggregate demand stabilization can be very desirable even though the frictions that cause fluctuations in aggregate demand to have real...

This paper studies the dynamic behavior of changes in productivity, wages, and prices. Results are based on a new data set that allows a consistent analysis of the aggregate economy, the manufacturing sector, and the nonmanufacturing sector. Results are presented for the U. S., Japan, and an...