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Behavioral Foundations for Conditional Markov Models of Aggregate Data
(Department of Economics, 2007)
Conditional Markov chain models of observed aggregate share-type data have been
used by economic researchers for several years, but the classes of models commonly
used in practice are often criticized as being purely ad ...
Long-Term Oil Price Forecasts: A New Perspective on Oil and the Macroeconomy
(Department of Economics, 2010)
-space oil market model, in which global real economic activity and real oil prices share a common stochastic trend. Changes in unanticipated fluctuations and changes in the forecasted longterm average of discounted real oil prices sum to real oil price...
Winner's Curse Corrections Magnify Adverse Selection
(Department of Economics, 2009)
The adverse-selection literature has only considered the case in which competing sellers' costs of supply are independent and privately known by the individual sellers. In contrast, the auction literature has ignored adverse ...
Campaign Finance Laws and Political Efficacy: Evidence From the States
(Department of Economics, 2005)
the last half of the 20th century. Our analysis reveals no large positive effects of campaign finance laws on political efficacy. Public disclosure laws and limits on contributions from organizations are in some cases associated with modest increases...
The Effects of Campaign Finance Laws on Turnout, 1950-2000
(Department of Economics, 2006)
of elections, resulting in higher turnout. Existing studies tend to focus on only one causal pathway, ignoring the net effects of campaign finance reforms on voter turnout. We exploit the variation in state campaign finance laws from 1950 to 2000 in order...
High Corruption Income in Ming and Qing China
(Department of Economics, 2005)
We develop an economic model that explains historical data on government corruption in Ming and Qing China. In our model, officials' extensive powers result in corrupt income matching land's share in output. We estimate corrupt income to be between...
An Information Theoretic Approach to Flexible Stochastic Frontier Models
(Department of Economics, 2007)
Parametric stochastic frontier models have a long history in applied production economics, but the class of tractible parametric models is relatively small. Consequently, researchers have recently considered non-parametric alternatives...
Environmental Policy Attitudes: Issues, Geographical Scale, and Political Trust
(Department of Economics, 2008)
Objectives. This article examines environmental policy attitudes, focusing on the differences in preferences across issue type (i.e., pollution, resource preservation) and geographical scale (i.e., local, national, global). ...
Incentive Schemes in Peer-to-Peer Networks
(Department of Economics, 2008)
In this paper we use mechanism design approach to find the optimal file-sharing mechanism in a peer-to-peer network. This mechanism improves upon existing incentive schemes. In particular, we show that peer-approved scheme is never optimal...
Selection of Multivariate Stochastic Volatility Models via Bayesian Stochastic Search
(Department of Economics, 2009)
We propose a Bayesian stochastic search approach to selecting restrictions on multivariate regression models where the errors exhibit deterministic or stochastic conditional volatilities. We develop a Markov Chain Monte ...
On Fed Watching and Central Bank Transparency
(Department of Economics, 2000)
In this paper, I examine central bank transparency in two different general equilibrium settings. A transparent central bank eliminates any uncertainty about future money growth. Agents can expend resources to process messages about future money...
Inequality, Group Cohesion, and Public Good Provision: An Experimental Analysis
(Department of Economics, 2004)
Recent studies argue that inequality reduces group cohesiveness and dampens support for expenditures on public goods and social programs. In light of competing theoretical explanations and mixed empirical evidence of the ...
TELRIC Pricing with Vintage Capital
(Department of Economics, 2001)
This paper studies the effect of technical progress on competitive equilibrium prices in a formal dynamic setting that includes the dynamic effects of business income taxes. The model is designed to facilitate comparison between competitive...
Excess Sensitivity in Consumption without Liquidity Constraint: Evidence from Monthly Household Panel Data
(Department of Economics, 2007)
The monthly salaries and allowances of Korean government employees are known in advance but vary greatly throughout the year. Using a large Korean monthly panel data set from 1994 to 2003, we examine how nondurable consumption ...
What's in a Name?
(Department of Economics, 2004)
Plenty. This paper analyzes two broad questions: Does your first name matter? And how did you get your first name anyway? Using data from the National Opinion Research Center's (NORC's) General Social Survey, including access to respondent's first...
Inflationary Finance in a Simple Voting Model
(Department of Economics, 2001)
This paper is an attempt at answering the somewhat counterfactual question: if monetary policy was to be decided in the arena of public voting (that is not by independent central banks), then what kind of monetary policies (specifically, inflation...
Networks, Standards and Intellectual Property Rights
(Department of Economics, 2007)
This paper reviews issues that lie at the intersection between intellectual property rights (IPR) and network effects, especially in the context of the global economy. Some of the relevant questions are: (1) How do IPR influence the provision...
Accounting for Fluctuations in Social Network Usage and Migration Dynamics
(Department of Economics, 2004)
In this paper, we examine network capital usage and migration patterns in a theoretical model. Networks are modeled as impacting the migration decision in many ways. When young, larger networks reduce the time lost moving from one region to another...
Rational Participation Revolutionizes Auction Theory
(Department of Economics, 2005)
Potential bidders respond to a seller's choice of auction mechanism for a common-value or affiliated-values asset by endogenous decisions whether to incur a participation cost (and observe a private signal), or forego ...
Labor-Market Returns to the GED Using Regression Discontinuity Analysis
(Department of Economics, 2010)
In this paper, we evaluate the labor-market returns to General Educational Development (GED) certification using Missouri administrative data. We develop a fuzzy regression discontinuity (FRD) method to account for the fact that GED test takers can...