We use single equation and simultaneous instrumental variable models to explore if individuals smoke during times of stress (i.e., motivation effect) and if they are successful in self-medicating short-term stress (i.e., self-medication effect). Short-term stress is a powerful motivator of...

type="main" xml:lang="en" <p>This study analyzes the effects of the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11 terrorist attacks on stress, smoking, and smoking quit attempts using 1,657,985 observations from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Regression discontinuity results suggest that, in the...</p>

I find causal evidence that Hurricane Katrina increased stress, smoking, binge drinking, and health insurance coverage in the non-impacted storm surge region. In this region, Hurricane Katrina increased health insurance coverage by 440,000 young adults, the number of smokers by 930,000, and the...

In this paper, we investigate empirically the impact of exchange rate volatility on real international trade flows utilizing a 13-country data set of monthly bilateral real exports for 1980-1998. We compute one-month-ahead exchange rate volatility from the intra-monthly variations in the...

This paper investigates how variations in macroeconomic uncertainty distort commercial banks' allocation of loanable funds by analyzing the dispersion of banks' total loan-to-asset ratios over a quarter-century period.