We employ newly developed methods to disentangle age, period and cohort effects on nonmarital fertility ratios (NFRs) from 1972 to 2002 for black and white women aged 20-44 in the United States. We focus on three cohort factors: family structure, school enrollment, and the sex ratio. For both...

Failure to allow for directional heterogeneity can obscure otherwise statistically significant distance effects in hedonic property value models. If ambient pollution data are unavailable, researchers often rely upon distance from a point source of pollution as a proxy for ambient environmental...

This paper explores from a new perspective the forward premium puzzle, i.e., why a regression of the change in the future spot exchange rate on the forward premium paradoxically yields a coefficient that is frequently negative. This traditional specification is compared theoretically and...

This is the text of an interview with Thomas J. Sargent. The interview will be published in Macroeconomic Dynamics.

Forward-looking monetary models with Taylor-type interest rate rules are known to generate indeterminacies, with a potential dependence on extraneous "sunspots," for some structural and policy parameters. We investigate the stability of these solutions under adaptive learning, focusing on...

We study how the use of judgement or "add-factors" in macroeconomic forecasting may disturb the set of equilibrium outcomes when agents learn using recursive methods. We isolate conditions under which new phenomena, which we call exuberance equilibria, can exist in standard macroeconomic...

We conduct an empirical investigation into whether networking effects affect foreign direct investment (FDI) activity. Using bibliographical information on CEOs’ birth and education locations, we are able to identify changes from U.S. to foreign-connected CEOs that occurred in U.S....

Recent publicity about “concierge physicians” has raised concerns about the potential adverse effects of allowing physicians to bill their patients for fees that are above normal copayments and insurance reimbursements. In particular, consumers who are unable to afford the additional...

Using New Keynesian models, we compare Friedman's k-percent money supply rule to optimal interest rate setting, with respect to determinacy, stability under learning and optimality. First we review the recent literature: open-loop interest rate rules are subject to indeterminacy and instability...