In this paper, we calculate the real rate of return from purchasing the S&P 500 index from 1871 through 2001. We assume the investor purchases the index in January of each year and holds it forever, consuming dividends, but never selling the index itself or else selling it after its present...

Recently in the Southern Economic Journal Palivos and Yip marry real and monetary analysis to provide an intriguing new argument for protection. Is this an idea which international agencies like the World Trade Organization and the World Bank should educate their member countries about? The...

We consider an economy (e.g., Chile 1973-83 or modern Turkey) with a minimum wage sector and a free sector, and a tax on labor earnings. We ask "Can a slightly binding minimum wage simultaneously raise tax revenue, employment, and economic efficiency?" We answer "Yes, if the elasticity of demand...

Sebastian Edwards and Alejandra Cox Edwards in their analysis of the Chilean economic liberalization argue that both capital inflows and outflows may have harmed the Chilean economy. They model the Chilean economy as using labor and fixed factors to produce traded and non-traded goods subject to...

Several authors have argued that if exporting firms anticipate a voluntary export restriction in a future period, and they expect VERs to be allocated in proportion to past exports, then they have an incentive to dump in the earlier period. In this paper we ask: How does a regime characterized...

This paper examines the major interest groups in the debate over allowing the wholesale re-importation of prescription drugs through the Pharmaceutical Market Access Act. By making use of the logit model, we see the effects that each of these groups has had on the voting behavior of the 108 th...

Sugar growers have been capturing substantial rents from the U.S. sugar program. Despite well-documented huge welfare losses of this program, legislators have always voted against phasing it out. This paper uses Tobit analysis to explore the determinants of campaign contributions from the sugar...

This study empirically explores the following issue: Does corruption fuel conspicuous consumption? It examines the existence and magnitude of any potential corruption-effect on conspicuous consumption expenditure. Regression analyses of an unbalanced panel data for 20 OECD countries between 2004...

Categorization is essential to everyday cognition, aiding in the organization and comprehension of information and salient stimuli. In many cases, we partake in the process of "lumping" and "splitting," where similar items are lumped together, while dissimilar items are split apart in an...