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...

informationally-demanding way to ensure efficient make-or-buy decisions is to price inputs at marginal cost. The extent to which input prices can depart from marginal cost while still inducing efficient make-or-buy decisions depends on the relative efficiency...

This paper applies the theories of exposure order effects, developed in the psychology literature, to an industrial organization model to explore their role in advertising competition. There are two firms and infinitely many identical consumers...

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 ...

Although the Internet reduces market frictions by making it easier for consumers to obtain information about prices and product offerings, goods sold by electronic firms are not perfect substitutes for otherwise identical ...

We propose a new explanation for the observed difference in the cost of intraday and overnight liquidity. We argue that the low cost of intraday liquidity is an application of the Friedman rule in an environment where a ...

Scholars have proposed many routes by which campaign finance laws may impact turnout. For instance, laws restricting campaign spending may decrease mobilization, resulting in lower turnout. Alternatively, such laws might ...

This paper investigates the statistical properties of estimators of the parameters and unobserved series for state space models with integrated time series. In particular, we derive the full asymptotic results for maximum likelihood estimation using...

recidivism comparing cohorts of leavers prior to and after welfare reform. We find that after welfare reform leavers are much more likely to be working, have higher total earnings, work for employers with similar characteristics, and are less likely to return...

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...

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 ...

In school finance lawsuits plaintiffs often claim that pay levels are not sufficient to recruit teachers who can deliver constitutionally-mandated levels of educational services. In this paper I consider several ways in which one might bring...

Several non-experimental studies report that income inequality and other forms of population-based heterogeneity reduce levels of trust in society. However, recent work by Glaeser et al. (2000) calls into question the reliability of widely used...

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...

We analyze the long-run relationship between the world price of crude oil and international stock markets over 1971:1-2008:3 using a cointegrated vector error correction model with additional regressors. Allowing for ...

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 ...

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...

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...

In this paper we examine how increases in intertemporal price uncertainty affect the welfare of a consumer. In the preference structure of the consumer the coefficient of relative risk aversion and the elasticity of intertemporal substitution (EIS...

In this paper a simple dynastic overlapping-generations model with homogeneous agents is used to analyze the optimal use of capital income tax, labor income tax and estate tax. The results of this analysis add to the conventional wisdom about...