We analyze peer effects in sleeping behavior using a representative sample of U.S. teenagers from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health. The sampling design of the survey causes the conventional 2SLS estimator to be inconsistent. We extend the NLS estimator in Wang and Lee...

In parametric stochastic frontier models, the composed error is specified as the sum of a two-sided noise component and a one-sided inefficiency component, which is usually assumed half-normal, implying that the error distribution is skewed in one direction. In practice, however, estimation...

Using detailed data on friendship networks within neighborhoods, we investigate the importance of social interactions in one's own residential neighborhood in the demand for housing quality. We find evidence consistent with the presence of peer effects, especially for households living in urban...

This paper estimates a hedonic housing model based on flats sold in the city of Paris over the period 1990-2003. This is done using maximum likelihood estimation taking into account the nested structure of the data. Paris is historically divided into 20 arrondissements, each divided into four...

Leonard E. Burman, Daniel Patrick Moynihan Professor of Public Affairs, at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University,presented testimony on “Tax Reform and the Tax Treatment of Capital Gains” before the House Committee on Ways and Means and the Senate Committee on Finance, September 20,...

This study examines whether new health information, obtained through medical s creening, affects entitlements to Social Security benefits. Random assignment of information is derived from a unique feature of the Continuous National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. To examine the effect...

This paper is a synthesis of the 2012 Lourie Lecture, framed as a series of questions and responses, and supported by images used in the lecture. I’m going to focus on the growth of this new field called palliative care and will make the connection that the crisis afflicting healthcare in the...

I examine whether individuals respond to monetary incentives to detect latent medical conditions. The effect is identified by an amendment to Title 38 that deemed diabetes associated with Agent Orange exposure a compensable disability under the VA's Disability Compensation program. Since a...

This paper estimates the redistributive effects of welfare state expenditures on social and economic disparities in the economic well-being of citizens in ten nations. Data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and other sources for cash and non-cash social...

Is medical care worth it? Conventional wisdom says no, but my answer is emphatically yes. The benefits that we have received from medical advance are enormously greater than the costs. I suggest that public policy far outweighs the importance of cost containment relative to coverage expansion;...