In light of the current economic crisis, we estimate hazard models of divorce to determine how state and national unemployment rates affect the likelihood of divorce. With 89,340 observations over the 1978-2006 period for 7633 couples from the 1979 NLSY, we find mixed evidence on whether...

There is little research on whether new information is correctly synthesized in prediction markets. Previous studies have found evidence consistent with, but have not proved, gambler misperceptions on the existence of momentum effects in the NBA. I use novel momentum measures that, unlike prior...

This study estimates the effect of deployment location and length on the risk of developing PTSD, relative to what it would be from the normal military operations. We use a random sample of activity-duty enlisted personnel serving between 2001 and 2006. We identify PTSD cases from TRICARE...

This article aims to remedy a common misinterpretation of insignificant coefficient estimates and presents a method to find hidden information in insignificant effects. I first discuss possible reasons for insignificant effects. I then use two distinct research areas as case studies: (1) how...

In 2001, use of the STRIDE data base for the purposes of analyzing drug prices and the impact of public policies on drug markets came under serious attack by the National Research Council (Manski et al., 2001; Horowitz, 2001). While some of the criticisms raised by the committee were valid, many of...

Building from Angrist and Pischke's (2017) arguments for how the teaching of undergraduate econometrics could become more effective, I propose a further redesign that would better serve the vast majority of students. The rationale follows from several premises, most notably: (1) few students...

Pope and Schweitzer (AER, 2011) study predictions of prospect theory for the reference point of par on the current hole in professional golf. We study prospect theory predictions for three other plausible reference points: par for recent holes, for the round, and for the tournament. A...

Researchers have, for decades, been attempting to estimate the effects of Selective Reenlistment Bonuses (SRBs) on the probability of reenlistment for the military services. SRBs are targeted to specific military occupations for which reenlistment rates are lower (or expected to be lower) than...

The hot hand bias is the widely documented bias toward overestimation of positive serial correlation in sequential events. We test for the hot hand bias in a novel real-world context, NCAA basketball tournament seeds. That is, we examine whether teams that perform relatively well heading into...

This report contends that most military-manpower research that aims to estimate causal effects suffers from flaws that render the research invalid. I discuss the objectives and ethics of research, and I give a low-math quick guide to the main pitfalls of research, While I do not test the claim...