In the field of international trade, data analysis has traditionally had quite modest influence relative to that of pure theory. At one time, this might have been rationalized by the paucity of empirics in the field or its weak theoretical foundations. In recent years empirical research has...

We study the assignment of initial ownership of a good when agents differ in their ability to pay. Selling the good at the market-clearing price favors the wealthy in the sense that they may acquire the good instead of poor buyers who value it more highly. Non-market assignment schemes, even...

In an National Football League overtime, a coin is tossed to determine which team will receive the kick off. In the sudden death format starting on offense has a significantly higher chance of winning. This makes coin tossing one of the most climatic moments and immediately confers an advantage...

Erceg et al. (2000) show that when both wages and prices are sticky, maximization of expected utility is equivalent to minimizing a loss function with three terms, involving measures of the variability of wage inflation, price inflation and the output gap respectively. Here we generalize their...

Samuelson's "neoclassical synthesis" retrieved the theory of fiscal policy from Keynesian economics to the nonmonetary domain. But no agreement emerged over the right kind of "real" model to adopt. In the neo-Keynesian theory fashioned by Tobin and Modigliani, deficits were anti-growth and...

The fuel-use decisions of households in developing economies, because they directly influence the level of indoor air quality that these households enjoy (with its attendant health effects), provide a natural arena for empirically assessing latent preferences towards the environment and how...

In an National Football League overtime, a coin is tossed to determine which team will receive the kick off. In the sudden death format starting on offense has a significantly higher chance of winning. We examine two proposals to improve the ex post fairness: auctions and divide-and-choose. We...