We demonstrate that both the Barnett formula used to calculate changes in public spending by the Scottish Parliament and Government under the Scotland Act (1998), as well as the recent Calman Commission proposals for fiscal reform, are soft budget constraints that do not and will not encourage...

The recent increase in the number of criminally accused politicians elected to state assemblies has caused much furor in India. Despite the potentially important consequences and the widely divergent views, the implications of their elections to state legislative assemblies on constituency-level...

Cigarette taxation has long been a policy tool used to incentivize healthier behavior. Pregnant women are a group of particular interest in this context due to their unique position to pass health capital down to the next generation. This paper reviews the literature on the tax and price...

Evidence suggests that excise taxes on tobacco improve fetal health. It remains unknown if smoke exposure causes lasting harm to children. I find that a one dollar increase in the state cigarette excise tax causes a 10% decrease in sick days from school, and a 4.5% decrease in the likelihood of...

Using quantile regressions and cross-sectional data from 152 countries, we examine the relationship between inflation and its variability. We consider two measures of inflation -- the mean and median -- and three different measures of inflation variability -- the standard deviation, relative...

Recent studies that evaluate inflation targeting through average treatment effects generally conclude the window-dressing view for industrial countries and policy effectiveness for developing countries. Allowing for a time-varying relationship (treatment effect) between the monetary policy and...

In most countries the government is empowered by the Constitution to acquire privately owned land for public use on payment of fair compensation for the land acquired. For infrastructure projects like a highway or a dam, the land acquired remains under public ownership. In many cases, however,...

Generally-accepted appraisal practice assumes the Hypothetical Buyer is not well-diversified because the typical real-world buyer does not possess sufficient wealth to own a well-diversified portfolio with assets each in similar value to the subject closely-held interest under appraisal (e.g.,...

The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) is theoretically incomplete in its demandside focus, risk-averse investors, and internally inconsistent homogeneous beliefs; is not conclusively supported empirically; and yet it legitimizes a notion that investors can earn higher returns by bearing...

We develop a new method for calculating reliable discounts for lack of marketability (DLOMs) for minority family limited partnership (FLP) interests, which we term the Managed Asset Portfolio Market (MAPM) Analysis. DLOMs typically are the largest valuation adjustment in, and often the most...