I have written several papers for BPEA (2002; 1996; 1982) looking at the relation of multiple equation quantitative economic models to the process of monetary policy making. When the first of these papers was written, the impact of the rational expectations critique in undermining academic interest in...

This paper contains a review of the burgeoning research that has been designed to shed light on how the art auction system actually works and what it indicates about price formation. First, we find that in recent years returns on art assets appear to be little different from returns on other...

Despite the expectations of economists that the euro changeover would have no effect on prices, I show that European consumers perceive the contrary. The data indicate that consumers based their perceptions about inflation on goods that are frequently purchased. I use this insight to develop and...

One thing you should never predict is the future. That is generally sage advice, which I try to live by. Futurology is a loser’s game. Nonetheless, I am going to ignore this wise canon in this essay and throw caution to the wind. Why? Because one aspect of our economic future seems to me so...

Using detailed information on the nature of work done in over 800 BLS occupational codes, this paper ranks those occupations according to how easy/hard it is to offshore the work— either physically or electronically. Using that ranking, I estimate that somewhere between 22% and 29% of all U.S....

In this paper we provide a simple, credible method for assessing the effects of climate change on the quality of agricultural land and then apply this method using a rich set of data on the vineyards of the Mosel Valley in Germany. The basic idea is to use a simple model of solar radiation to...

We test the hypothesis that criminal behavior is “contagious” – or susceptible to what economists term “endogenous effects” – by examining the extent to which lower local-area crime rates decrease arrest rates among individuals. Using data from the Moving to Opportunity (MTO)...

In this paper we propose a method to evaluate the effectiveness of U.S. horizontal merger policy and apply it to the study of five recent consumer product mergers. We selected the mergers from those that, from the public record, seemed to be most problematic for the antitrust agencies. Thus we...

This paper surveys China’s globalization in terms of in and out flows of goods, capital, information/technology and people from both the Chinese and the Western, especially American, points of view. It includes a discussion of the issue of revaluation of the RMB.

Past economic reform of the state sector in China consisted mainly of privatization, of agriculture and of small and medium-size state enterprises, leaving large state enterprises in the control of the state. Current reform consists of making state-owned enterprises and banks more efficient and...