Prisoners employed in manufacturing constitute 4.2% of total U.S. manufacturing employment in 2005; they produce cheap goods, creating labor demand shock. I study the economic externalities of convict labor on local labor markets and firms. Using newly collected panel data on U.S. prisons and...

Disparities in cross-city pandemic severity during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic remain poorly understood. This paper uses newly assembled historical data on annual mortality across 438 U.S. cities to explore the determinants of pandemic mortality. We assess the role of three broad factors: i)...

Proposals to match higher foreign tariffs with higher, “reciprocal” US tariffs would be an economic and administrative nightmare. This policy would violate the long-standing US commitment to apply tariffs on a nondiscriminatory “unconditional most-favored nation” (MFN) basis, a core...

Using multiple econometrics methods, this paper examines the cointegration and causality relationships between the futures prices of gasoline and the spot prices of two major types of crude oil (i.e. WTI and Brent). The existence of cointegration between prices in adjacent markets, crude oil...

This year marks the 90th anniversary of both the percentage depletion allowance and the Joint Committee on Taxation. This essay relates the curious tale of Norman Beecher, a New York maritime lawyer with little background in energy, natural resources, or tax, who convinced Congress in 1918 to...

Electricity is a general purpose technology and the catalyst for the second industrial revolution. Developing countries are currently making huge investments in electrification, with a view to achieving structural change. What does history say about its impact on the structure of employment? We...

Anaerobic digestion technology uses microorganisms to consume waste and produce methane gas, which serves as a source of clean renewable energy. Although anaerobic digestion is widely used for both purposes throughout the rest of the world, it is rarely applied in the United States. This Article...

This paper examines the integration between the prices of different types of physical (upstream/end-use) and futures contracts of natural gas in the US for the period of June 1990-Dec 2014. To examine the equilibrium relationship between physical and futures prices, several cointegration tests,...

Voting trust arrangements have a long history at both the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Surface Transportation Board as devices to protect the incentives of acquiring firms and maintain the independence of acquiring and target firms during the pendency of regulatory investigation of the...

Pollution is a common byproduct of economic activity. Although policymakers should account for both the benefits and the negative externalities of polluting activities, it is difficult to identify those who are harmed and those who benefit from them. To overcome this challenge, our paper uses a...