Do in-cash and in-kind transfers to families affect parental fertility choices and economic welfare differently? We examine this question via a demographic transition channel in the context of a two-period overlapping generations model. In childhood, reproductive agents face a non-zero...

The slow economic recovery since the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession requires state and local governments to continue to make difficult decisions concerning which taxes to raise and which expenditures to decrease in order to maintain a balanced budget. As expenditures usually raise...

This paper examines the relationship between US crude oil and stock market prices, using a Markov-Switching vector error-correction model and a monthly data set from 1859 to 2013. The sample covers the entire modern era of the petroleum industry, which typically begins with the first drilled oil...

This paper empirically investigates the determinants of aggregate health expenditure in a panel of OECD countries from 1980-2005. We differ from most existing studies by testing some new determinants motivated by recent theoretical advances in the literature. We find that a one percentage...

This paper compares the all-or-nothing and proportionate damage rules for allocating damages in tort cases under evidentiary uncertainty. The focus is on how the two rules affect litigation expenditures by plaintiffs and defendants. The results of simulation experiments show that the expected...

This paper incorporates the reality that the bulk of law enforcement is decentralized while sanctions are chosen centrally, and explores the implications for the socially optimal sanction level. The presence of interregional externalities in the form of crime diversion induces socially excessive...

This paper reviews recent literature that considers and explains the tendency for neighborhood and city-level economic status to rise and fall. A central message is that although many locations exhibit extreme persistence in economic status, change in economic status as measured by various...

We use novel historical data on economics and social rights from the constitutions of 195 countries and an instrument variable strategy to answer two important questions. First, do economic and social rights provisions in constitutions reduce poverty? Second, does the strength of constitutional...

In a multi-country world, currencies do not move in isolation, and competitors’ exchange rate movements may help or hurt an exporting firm. Motivated by this fact, I construct a multi-country model to examine how export prices are affected by movements in own-currency and cross-currency...

In 2012, the Department of Housing and Urban Development launched the fourth major nationwide housing discrimination study with the goal of measuring housing discrimination in rental and owner-occupied housing for blacks, Hispanics and Asians. The substantial declines in discrimination observed...