We examine the phenomenon of "pockets of teenage illegitimacy" in a model of social approval, where attitudes to such illegitimacy are endogenously determined at a local community level. Both a woman's actual well-being and her community's perception of that well-being in each potential state -...

We model the endogenous emergence of social perceptions about occupations and their impact on occupational choice. In particular, an individual's social approval increases with his community's perception of his skill in his chosen career. These perceptions vary across communities because...

Data on 2,822 Vanderbilt University graduates are used to investigate alumni giving behavior during the eight years after graduation. A two stage model accounting for incidental truncation is used to first estimate the likelihood of making a contribution and second estimate the average gift size...

When data contain errors, parameters of interest typically are not identified without imposing strong assumptions. However, in many cases, bounds on these parameters can be constructed under relatively weak assumptions. This paper addresses under what conditions variables in addition to the one...

In empirical studies of simultaneous-move games, such as sealed-bid auctions, researchers frequently wish to estimate quantities which depend on interactions between the strategies of different players. Examples include the expected revenues of an auction, or the mean allocative efficiency in a...

This paper argues that the interaction between inequality and the demand patterns for goods is a potential source of persistent inequality. Income distribution, in the presence of non-homothetic preferences, affect the demand for goods and, due to differences in their factor intensities across...

We examine the role of visibility in influencing government resource allocation across multiple public goods. In an electoral framework, outcomes are defined to be less visible in tasks if it is harder to assess government ability based on observed outcomes. Such a 'visibility effect' distorts...