Home ownership is touted as the "American Dream". It is credited with enhancing wealth, increasing civic pride, improving self-esteem, crime prevention, child development, and better educational outcomes, among other benefits. This paper does not dispute any of these claims. Instead, this study...

Will a major shock awaken US citizens to the threat of catastrophic pandemic risk? Using a natural experiment administered both before and after the 2014 West African Ebola Outbreak, our evidence suggests “no”. Our results show that prior to the Ebola scare, US citizens were relatively...

Developing countries pay substantially higher transportation costs than developed nations, which leads to less trade and perhaps lower incomes. This paper investigates price discrimination in the shipping industry and the role it plays in determining transportation costs. In the presence of...

We model demand for quality differentiated goods to derive a relationship between trade costs and the quality composition of trade. Detailed data on traded goods' prices, quantities and shipping costs for many importers and exporters are used to test these predictions. These data provide a...

Alchian and Allen show that a per unit transactions cost lowers the relative price of, and raises the relative demand for, high-quality goods. We extend their theory, deriving a relationship between per unit and ad valorem trade costs and the quality composition of trade. Detailed international...