This paper investigates the political economy of FEMA’s post-9/11 merger with the Department of Homeland Security. Using panel data for the post-DHS merger but pre-Katrina period, we examine how FEMA’s much-debated reorganization has impacted the strong political influences on disaster...

The rise of the Industrial Revolution is often depicted as a cause of hazardous working conditions and is skillfully epitomized in William Blake's tale of a child chimney sweeper. Conventional wisdom puts firm profit in conflict with occupational safety. We reexamine this argument noting that...

Previous literature stresses the importance of free media for economic development. By its nature TV, radio, and newspapers cross borders, allowing citizens to easily sample media from neighboring countries. This creates pressure for domestic reform and spreads media freedom between countries....

Standard theory neglects that enacting price discrimination is costly to firms. When this costliness is accounted for, perfect price discrimination is often socially inefficient. For pure monopolists it is sometimes socially inefficient. For monopolistic competitors it is always socially...

We find that presidential and congressional influences affect the rate of disaster declaration and the allocation of FEMA disaster expenditures across states. States politically important to the president have a higher rate of disaster declaration by the president, and disaster expenditures are...

Previous studies find state lottery sales are significantly influenced by socioeconomic characteristics of the population. We extend this literature by examining how the overall expected value, the top prize, and the total combinations influence sales after controlling for these other...

Models of expressive voting postulate that voters will `consume' ideological stances on issues by voting for them, even when they are against the voter's own narrow self interest, if the probability of being a decisive voter is low. When a voter is unlikely to sway the outcome, the odds that a...

The distinction between technological and pecuniary externalities, usually made in production, can also be applied to consumption. Technological externalities create resource misallocations while pecuniary externalities do not. Taking a household production approach to consumption, this paper...

Shows that the standard method for estimating elasticity results in asymptotic bias and inconsistent standard errors. Uses time-series econometric techniques to provide unbiased estimates of the long-run growth potential (the long-run elasticity) and cyclical variability (the short-run...