We show that both option and search theory suggest that workers should be less likely to migrate out of labor markets in which there is greater uncertainty about future economic opportunities. The intuition for this result is that, the more volatile the labor market, the greater the likelihood...

In this paper we draw on the literature on political property rights, political accountability, and strategic management and entrepreneurship to propose a cost neutral reform aimed at promoting long-run economic prosperity. We propose replacing politicians' defined benefit pensions with a...

President William McKinley's decision to go to war with Spain is not well understood. Since McKinley kept very few written records, little is known about his actual thought process. As a result, historians have struggled with the apparent contradiction between McKinley's initial commitment to...

In The Curse of Cash, Kenneth Rogoff lists reductions in criminal activity and tax evasion among the primary benefits of eliminating cash. We maintain that, to the extent that individuals are interested in purchasing illicit goods and services or evading taxes, eliminating cash will encourage...

Historically, Medicare has operated under the assumption that health care providers respond to reductions in reimbursement through increased provision of services in an effort to offset declining practice revenue; however, recent empirical work examining fee reductions has found either small...

Some economists have advocated nominal GDP targeting as an alternative to the Taylor Rule. These arguments are largely based on the idea that nominal GDP targeting would require less knowledge on the part of policymakers than a traditional Taylor Rule. In particular, a nominal GDP targeting rule...

In this paper, I estimate a cointegrated VAR with three long run equilibrium conditions that are consistent with the New Keynesian model. The equilibrium conditions estimated in the VAR do not provide evidence of a negative relationship between the federal funds rate and investment, or output...

Some have argued that nominal income targeting is desirable because it would replicate characteristics of a free banking regime. However, the degree to which this is true and desirable depends on the properties of commodity-based monetary regimes. In this paper, I provide a model of commodity...

In this paper we provide a framework for determining when it is optimal to move when labor market opportunities are declining. We model the decision to migrate as akin to owning a financial option in which the exercise price is the fixed cost of moving. We show that a higher fixed cost...

The Bullionist Controversy in the United Kingdom is one of the first debates about the determination of the price level and the exchange rate under a paper money standard. Despite the importance of the debate in the development of monetary theory, there remains little empirical evidence that...