Appropriate measurement of competitive balance is a cornerstone of the economic analysis of professional sports leagues. We examine the distributional properties of the ratio of standard deviations (RSD) of points percentages, the most widely used measure of competitive balance in the sports...

A discrete choice experiment was conducted to discover the relative importance of five characteristics of developing countries, as suggested by the literature, considered by people when choosing countries to donate money to. The experiment was administered via an online survey involving almost...

Using search engine query data as a measure for public awareness of sexual health outcomes, this study extracts a measure of general interest in sexually transmitted disease for the United States (2004 - 2012). This trend is compared to a measure of overall economic prosperity. Heightened...

The effects of business cycles on health outcomes in general, and on traffic fatalities in particular, have received much attention recently. In this paper, we focus on motorcycle safety and examine the impact of changing levels of economic activity on fatal crashes by motorcyclists in the...

We develop a model of lobbying in which a time and resource constrained policymaker first chooses which policy proposals to learn about, before choosing which to implement. The policymaker reviews the proposals of the interest groups who provide the highest contributions. We study how policy...

The emergence of Islamic Banks (IBs) with Sharia boards that restrict the set of permissible products and enforce prohibition of riba and gharar raises basic questions of how IB clients benefit by choosing financial services from a restricted menu of possibly higher-cost cash flows. Norms that...

This article analyses civil case disposition time by developing hypotheses to explain behavioral and structural determinants of so-called 'delay' and suggesting a novel methodology ('Echronometrics') to account for factors, operating at both macro and micro socio-economic levels, that influence...

There is some evidence from field studies and natural experiments that levels of charitable donation depend on the method in which donations are solicited. There is also some experimental evidence that spending on private consumption depends on how much loose change people have. We use a simple...

This study measures the efficiency of government secondary schools in New South Wales, Australia, using a recently developed methodology of two-stage semi-parametric modeling. In contrast to previous research comparing school performance, we control for prior academic achievement of students by...