Empirical analyses of public corruption focus predominantly on international differences; regional differences in public corruption within a single country receive little attention. We empirically investigate the effect of public corruption in the United States on state bond ratings, which...

Given President Bush's popularity among relatively poor rural residents and lack thereof among wealthier urban dwellers in the 2004 presidential election, analysts have suggested that voters contradicted their economic self-interests. We investigate whether this conventional wisdom implied an...

We estimate the impact of corruption on a country's creditworthiness. Corruption affects creditworthiness through its impact on the size of the formal sector of an economy. We find that creditworthiness, as measured by sovereign credit ratings, is decreasing in corruption. It follows from our...

The goal of this essay is to introduce advanced undergraduates to urban general equilibrium theory.

I show that equilibria exist in closed city-system models with production externalities if firms' production possibilities vary continuously with the source of the externality, are constant returns to scale in own inputs, include inaction, and satisfy free disposal; if firms have to employ their...