This paper* develops a social unrest measure by revising Esteban-Ray (1994, Econometrica) polarization index. For the purpose of measuring more effectively the level of social unrest that is generated by separation of income classes, the new index allows for asymmetry between the rich and the...

Malaysian authorities implemented controls on international capital flows late in the Asian crisis, when most of the portfolio outflows had already occurred. The exchange rate had depreciated sharply and was fixed at an undervalued level, making further capital flight unlikely. The turnaround in...

The U.S. income tax badly needs reform. It is complex, unfair, and inefficient. It doesn’t come close to raising enough revenue to finance government expenditures, and won’t any time in the foreseeable future unless it is revised. Raising tax rates could increase revenues, but it wouldn’t...

In the stochastic frontier model we extend the multivariate probability statements of Horrace (2005) to calculate the conditional probability that a firm is any particular efficiency rank in the sample. From this we construct the conditional expected efficiency rank for each firm. Compared to...

The standard LM tests for spatial dependence in linear and panel regressions are derived under the normality and homoskedasticity assumptions of the regression disturbances. Hence, they may not be robust against non-normality or heteroskedasticity of the disturbances. Following Born and Breitung...

Using detailed data on friendship networks within neighborhoods, we investigate the importance of social interactions in one's own residential neighborhood in the demand for housing quality. We find evidence consistent with the presence of peer effects, especially for households living in urban...

We use order statistics to analytically derive demand functions when consumers choose from among the varieties of two brands—such as Coke and Pepsi—and an outside good. Soft-drinks have no price variability across varieties within a brand, so traditional demand systems (e.g., mixed logit)...

The school desegregation efforts following the historic Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) represent one of the most important social policy initiatives of the 20th century. Despite a large research literature on desegregation and educational outcomes, its effects on the...

This paper modifies the Hausman and Taylor (1981) panel data estimator to allow for serial correlation in the remainder disturbances. It demonstrates the gains in efficiency of this estimator versus the standard panel data estimators that ignore serial correlation using Monte Carlo experiments.

We investigate the issue of testing for structural breaks in large cointegrated panels with common and idiosyncratic regressors. We prove a panel Functional Central Limit Theorem. We show that the estimated coefficients of the common regressors have a mixed normal distribution, whilst the...