We present a generalized solution to Grossman's model of health capital (1972), relaxing the widely used assumption that individuals can adjust their health stock instantaneously to an "optimalʺ level without adjustment costs. The Grossman model then predicts the existence of a health threshold...

This paper reports the preliminary work under way to analyse the composition of public spending in response to increased economic openness in the advanced industrial societies over recent decades. The compensation hypothesis predicts that public spending will rise in response to greater...

This paper, via the analysis of stated preferences from a nationwide representative survey of 1,100 adults, examines the determinants of preference for overall government expenditure and estimates a Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) model of demand for the three major categories of public...

In 1980, seven out of the seventeen Spanish regions were devolved education spending responsibility. Using a difference-in-differences approach, which I show to be particularly credible in this context, I evaluate the long term effect of this reform on human capital. I find no robust evidence to...

This paper applies a unified methodology to multiple data sets to estimate both the levels and trends in U.S. high school graduation rates. We establish that (a) the true high school graduation rate is substantially lower than widely used measures; (b) the U.S. graduation rate peaked in the...

The internal rate of return to schooling is a fundamental economic parameter that is often used to assess whether expenditure on education should be increased or decreased. This paper considers alternative approaches to estimating marginal internal rates of return for different schooling levels....

This paper discusses (a) the role of cognitive and noncognitive ability in shaping adult outcomes, (b) the early emergence of differentials in abilities between children of advantaged families and children of disadvantaged families, (c) the role of families in creating these abilities, (d)...

We incorporate previously omitted controls of external conditions in transportation and commodity markets into Porter's (1983) analysis of industry demand, conduct and stability of the JEC railroad cartel. We estimate the equilibrium price path, non-parametrically, and find that the reaction of...