This paper uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Yoth to examine the effect of smoking on wages and employment. The panel nature and household structure of these data enable us to implement methods to account for differences in observed and unobserved individual characteristics that...

This paper argues that Blomberg and Hess's (Journal of International Economics 1997) finding that political variables can be used to predict exchange rate movements better than the random walk model must be seen in the context of the decade and half of previous research which failed to beat this...

We investigate the lending behavior of banks by exploiting a rich oanel dataset on the contract terms of approximately two million commercial and industrial loans granted by 580 banks between 1977-1993. Using a Markov switching panel model we demonstrate that banks change their lending standards...

This is a survey of the literature linking economics and politics. In the introduction, I explain why it is necessary to study these issues as a separate course in economics. I then proceed to analyze voting models, the political business cycle, international and foreign policy issues. The...

This paper explores several characteristics of patents in the biotechnology field, comparing and contrasting them to patents in other fields of research. We find that biotechnology patents face a longer lag between application and grant date, and their secrecy would be heavily affected if...

In this paper, we examine the effect of refulations, resource and referral agencies, and subsidies on the child\staff ratio at child care centers.

A theory is developed which predicts that people with relatively extreme opinions are relativly rigid in that they are less inclined to modify their opinions. That extremists tend to be rigid and moderates tend to be flexible is found to hold for members of Congress.

We examine the impact on the employment and earnings of low-income families of federal and state increases in funding for child care and of the changing policies and administrative procedures within the Child-Care Subsidy system that accompanied these funding increases.