This paper discovers that a campaign contribution to a member of the U.S. House of Representatives by the National Education Association (the major teacher's union) in the 2000 election cycle reduces the probability that a Representative will vote for a pro-choice amendment to the "No Child Left...

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about whether and how much the U.S. stock market is overvalued, leading some economic gurus to suggest that foreign markets may be good investments. We ask whether this is the case and apply the Gordon formula to predict future real rates of return on...

Each month, GMO publishes on the web its predictions of the real rate of return for various asset styles over the next seven years. Its web library also retains its quarterly predictions, dating back to the end of the second quarter of 2000. I ask whether these predictions are accurate. My...

In an overlapping generations model, capital and labor produce two tradeable goods. A kleptocratic government spends the tariff revenue. Trade liberalization, which lowers the relative price of the importable to the private sector, benefits the retired generation if and only if the relative...

We consider an economy (e.g. Chile 1973-83 or modern Turkey) with a minimum wage sector and a free sector, and a tax on labor earnings. We ask can a minimum wage hike raise employment and economic efficiency?

Milton Friedman has suggested that the political power of the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association (the two major teachers unions) has been instrumental in defeating the adoption of educational vouchers. We test this hypothesis. We find that a campaign...

In this paper we ask how to construct a tariff or quota schedule which depends on the behavior of a domestic monopsonistic monopolist in order to achieve the best tradeoff between two objectives of a government. We consider various political and economic tradeoffs which could face the policy...