This paper introduces newly coded information describing province- and year-specific variation in work requirements, diversion, earning exemptions, and time limits. This new information reveals a large decline in the chance of welfare participation of at least 1.1 percentage points (9.2%...

Heterogeneous welfare reform policies and timing of those policies among Canadian provinces reveal new information about the roles of different policy tools in accounting for declines in welfare participation. Work requirements, diversion, earnings exemptions, and time limits—referred to as...

This paper presents a model of quantity regulation aimed at mitigating externalities from over-use of a commons: for example, restrictions on use of automobiles, fisheries, computer networks and electronic stock quotation systems with high-frequency traders. The model provides a...

When economists' subjective beliefs about the sensitivity and positive predictive value of the Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) test are internally consistent (i.e., satisfying Bayes' Rule), their beliefs about prostate cancer risk are less accurate than among those with inconsistent beliefs....

The emergence of Islamic Banks (IBs) with Sharia boards that restrict the set of permissible products and enforce prohibition of riba and gharar raises basic questions of how IB clients benefit by choosing financial services from a restricted menu of possibly higher-cost cash flows. Norms that...

Our model describes optimal transfer prices as a function of the number of multi-divisional firms. Decentralized firms imperfectly observe downstream pricing and quantity decisions. Therefore, transfer prices have two strategic functions requiring a trade-off: limiting affiliated downstream...

Schelling (1969, 1971a,b, 1978) observed that macro-level patterns do not necessarily reflect micro-level intentions, desires or goals. In his classic model on neighborhood segregation which initiated a large and influential literature, individuals with no desire to be segregated from those who...

Subjective beliefs and behavior regarding the Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) test for prostate cancer were surveyed among attendees of the 2006 meeting of the American Economic Association. Logical inconsistency was measured in percentage deviations from a restriction imposed by Bayes’ Rule...

Under the assumption of perfect competition, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that abandoned properties and long undeveloped neighborhoods remain that way because they are unprofitable. In contrast, this paper introduces a model in which firms systematically overlook neighborhoods with...

We introduce a game theory model of individual decisions to cooperate by contributing personal resources to group decisions versus by free-riding on the contributions of other members. In contrast to most public-goods games that assume group returns are linear in individual contributions, the...