When foreign and domestic firms collude under free trade, a tariff can be pro-competitive because it drives a wedge between the interests of the firms. However, only if the firms meet in a small number of countries can a tariff be used to prevent international collusion. In the case in which a...

This paper estimates the dynamics of the personal-bankruptcy rate over the business cycle by exploiting large cross-state variation in recessions and bankruptcies. We find that bankruptcy rates are significantly higher than normal during a recession and rise as a recession persists. After a...

We present a general equilibrium analysis of biofuel subsidies in an open-economy context. In the small-country case, when a Pigouvian tax on conventional fuels such as crude is in place, the optimal biofuel subsidy is zero. When the tax on crude is not available as a policy option, however, a...

Nearly all journal rankings in economics use some weighted average of citations to calculate a journal's impact. These rankings are often used, formally or informally, to help assess the publication success of individual economists or institutions. Although ranking methods and opinions are...

We analyze the effects of outsourcing in the presence of a minimum wage by presenting a general-equilibrium model with an oligopolistic export sector and a competitive import-competing sector. An outsourcing tax is politically popular because it switches jobs to unemployed natives. It is also...

The authors devise an "ambition-adjusted" journal ranking based on citations from a short list of top general-interest journals in economics. Underlying this ranking is the notion that an ambitious economist wishes to be acknowledged not only in the highest reaches of the profession, but also...

Data from Using the Gravity Model to Estimate the Costs of Protection, Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis Review, Jan 1999. Annual bilateral trade flows, 1994-1996. Originally acquired from ICPSR Publication-Related Archive, Study 1200.

We discuss specification of regression models for using migration data to infer the living standards of different regions, and for observing how much of the standard of living is determined by economic opportunities versus non-pecuniary amenities. We estimate a regression using Canadian data...

This paper presents a model of legal migration of temporary skilled workers from one source country to two host countries, both of which can control their levels of such immigration. Because of complementarities between capital and labor, the return on capital is positively related to the level...