We investigate differences in book prices between the United States and other countries. We find that general audience books are similarly priced internationally, but textbooks are substantially more expensive in the United States (often more than double the price). This disparity is much more...

This paper uses the 1998-99 Canadian National Population Health Survey (NPHS) data to examine the health-income relationship that underlies the absolute income hypothesis. To allow for nonlinearity and data heterogeneity, we use a partially linear semiparametric quantile regression model. Among...

We propose a partially adaptive estimator based on information theoretic maximum entropy estimates of the error distribution. The maximum entropy (maxent) densities have simple yet flexible functional forms to nest most of the mathematical distributions. Unlike the nonparametric fully adaptive...

The idea of using estimating functions goes a long way back, at least to Karl Pearson's introduction to the method of moments in 1894. It is now a very active area of research in the statistics literature. One aim of this chapter is to provide an account of the developments relating to the...

The environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) is a relationship across countries between the level of environmental pollution and per capita GDP. This paper investigates the strength of empirical evidence in favour of the existence for an EKC in carbon dioxide emissions, accounting for the model...

. We study the determinants of voting outcomes on the provision of public consumption through marginal income taxes in the context of the simple linear growth model. We focus on how the dynamic politicoeconomic equilibrium maps the economic fundamentals to policies and long-run growth. We find...

This paper studies the general equilibrium implications of two types of education policy in an overlapping generations growth model with second-best policy. We examine vouchers, which augment inherited private education spending, and public investment on economy-wide human capital, that provides...

. Intermediaries often arise in order to facilitate trade in markets characterized by asymmetric information. In this paper we study the intermediary role of tour operators in the market for package tourism. Policymakers have tried to address information asymmetries in this market by providing...

We suggest a simple survey method for obtaining direct subjective estimates of equivalence scales, also appropriate for testing whether equivalence scales depend on reference-household income. We implement our approach in two countries, Germany and France. In both countries independence of base...

This paper investigates the welfare effects of trade liberalization by exploiting a natural policy experiment in the small open economy of Cyprus. A 1993 law relaxed import restrictions on used vehicles and facilitated the flow of used Japanese vehicles into the country. This led to a dramatic...