Drawing from the personal tape recordings made during the presidency of Richard Nixon, we uncover and report in this paper new evidence that Nixon manipulated Arthur Burns and the Federal Reserve Bank into creating a political business cycle that helped secure Nixon’s reelection victory in...

Remittances of Continental Dollars to the national treasury from each state by year from 1779 through 1789 are used to determine state compliance with congressional resolutions regarding Continental-Dollar redemption. From 1781 through 1789, the states as a whole stayed well ahead of the...

This article presents a stated preference study of electric vehicle choice using data from a national survey. We used a choice experiment wherein 3029 respondents were asked to choose between their preferred gasoline vehicle and two electric versions of that preferred vehicle. We estimated a...

Did the 2008 rebate fail to stimulate consumer spending? In their influential AER articles, John Taylor and Martin Feldstein each claim that BEA aggregate time series data show that the 2008 rebate failed. Re-examining the BEA data, we find that the data instead show there is a high probability...

A variation of the Bernanke-Blinder credit-view model reveals that holding constant the money supply following various financial-sector shocks, including an autonomous drop in the money multiplier, is insufficient to prevent aggregate demand from decreasing.

The College Fed Challenge, a competition between undergraduate students from different colleges and universities, is designed to enhance the development of research, critical thinking, and presentation skills. This paper analyzes the value of the competition as an instrument for improving...

The relationship between government size and the unemployment rate is investigated using a panel error-correction model that describes both the short-run dynamics and long-run determination of the unemployment rate. Using data from twenty OECD countries from 1970 to 1999 and after correcting for...

This paper examines the dynamic effects of government outlays on economic growth and the unemployment rate. Using vector autoregression and data from twenty OECD countries over three recent decades, we found: (1) positive shocks to government outlays slow down economic growth and raise the...

While federal financial rescues have become a common response to crises, federal provision of finance was not one of the original powers of the federal government. One man, Eugene Meyer, is largely responsible for the origin of federal financial rescues, through both the War Finance Corporation...

The malaria eradication campaign that started in Sri Lanka in the late 1940s virtually eliminated malaria transmission on the island. I use the pre-eradication differences in malaria endemicity within Sri Lanka to identify the effect of malaria eradication on fertility and child survival....