Standard error corrections for clustered samples impose untested restrictions on spatial correlations. Our example shows these are too conservative, compared with a spatial error model that exploits information on exact locations of observations, causing inference errors when cluster corrections...

Whether the poor face higher food prices is unsettled in the literature after more than four decades of study. While unit values from household surveys suggest higher prices for the poor, outlet surveys typically find food prices varying with store type but not with neighborhood income. Most...

Asian governments intervene in the world rice market to protect domestic consumers. Whether consumers are nutritionally vulnerable depends on the elasticity of calories with respect to rice prices. Common demand models applied to household survey and market price data ignore quality substitution...

If relative prices of goods within a commodity group are constant, Hicksian separability lets the price of a single good represent the group price level. This is relied on by price questionnaires used in household surveys. Methods of estimating demand systems from household survey data also rely...

The income of the self-employed is often assumed to be understated in economic statistics. Debate exists about the extent of under-reporting and the resulting measures of the size of the underground economy. This paper refines a method developed by Pissarides and Weber (1989) and uses...

Measurement error in short-run expenditures from household surveys may attenuate estimated effects of permanent income on economic outcomes. Repeated observations on households during the year are used to calculate reliability ratios and estimate errors in variables regressions of the impact of...

This paper analyzes measurement errors in crime data to see how they impact econometric estimates, particularly of the key relationship between inequality and crime. Criminal victimization surveys of 140,000 respondents in 37 industrial, transition and developing countries are used. Comparing...

Several recent studies in labour and population economics use retrospective surveys to substitute for the high cost and limited availability of longitudinal survey data. Although a single interview can obtain a lifetime history, inaccurate long-term recall could make such retrospective surveys a...

We propose a mechanism to implement the distributional goal of "specific egalitarianism", or that allocation of a good be independent of income, but increasing in relative strength of preference or need. Governments could offer the good at multiple "outlets" that charge different money and time...

This paper documents that virtually all of the growth in the skilled wage premium over the 1980’s in the United States was confined to metropolitan areas. Explanations for the growth in the skilled wage premium will therefore need to take location into account.