Escalating penalties for repeat offenders are a pervasive feature of punishment schemes in a variety of contexts. Economic theory has had a hard time rationalizing this practice, however, because setting the penalty equal to the social cost of an act should achieve optimal deterrence...

This paper examines the role of ethnic networks in disability program take-up among workingage immigrants in the United States. We find that even when controlling for country of origin and area of residence fixed effects, immigrants residing amidst a large number of co-ethnics are more likely to...

Many economists have cited fiscal illusion as an argument against specific types of taxes arguing that less visible taxes may cause voters to systematically underestimate the true burden of taxation. The higher willingness of renters to support an increase in the property tax, often referred to...

We examine spending on consumption items which have signaling value in social interactions across groups with distinctive social identities in India, where social identities are defined by caste and religious affiliations. Using nationally representative micro data on household consumption...

This paper examines the causal relationships between the real house price index and real GDP per capita in the U.S., using the bootstrap Granger (temporal) non-causality test and a fixed-size rolling-window estimation approach. We use quarterly time-series data on the real house price index and...

This paper assesses the long-run effect of growth volatility on income inequality using a comprehensive panel of annual U.S. state-level data during the 1945 to 2004 period. Using the pooled mean group (PMG) estimator, we find overwhelming evidence supporting the hypothesis that larger growth...

This article studies temporal variations in wealth levels and distribution in an Ottoman context during the eighteenth century. By analysing the probate estate inventories of the Muslim deceased in Kastamonu, located in north-central Anatolia, we demonstrate that real wealth levels generally...

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the contents of the volume titled Research Handbook on Economic Models of Law, forthcoming (Edward Elgar).

The monetary authorities affect the macroeconomic activity through various channels of influence. This paper examines the bank lending channel, which considers how central bank actions affect deposits, loan supply, and real spending. The monetary authorities influence deposits and loan supplies...

This paper employs classical bivariate, factor augmented (FA), slab-and-spike variable selection (SSVS)-based, and Bayesian semi-parametric shrinkage (BSS)-based predictive regression models to forecast US real private residential fixed investment over an out-of-sample period from 1983:Q1 to...