This paper investigates the role of model uncertainty in explaining the different findings in the literature regarding the determinants of government expenditure and its components. In particular, we systematically assess the evidentiary support for nine different theories using a novel model...

This paper investigates the role of social influences in preferences for redistribution using data from the General Social Survey. We employ social interaction models with a socioeconomic network structure and intertemporal feedbacks during the impressionable years. We find substantial evidence...

We introduce easy to implement regression-based methods for predicting quarterly real economic activity that use daily financial data and rely on forecast combinations of Mixed Data Sampling (MIDAS) regressions. We also extract a novel small set of daily financial factors from a large panel of...

Recent work in the growth literature has provided various explanations for transition delays and the great divergence. This paper provides empirical support for one theory of transition delays: initial land inequality. Our analysis is designed to elucidate the channels via which land inequality...

In this paper we uncover growth volatility regimes and identify their robust determinants using a large international panel of countries. In doing so we propose a novel empirical methodology that allows us to simultaneously deal with two key elements of model uncertainty, namely theory...

This paper revisits the influential work by Chetty, Hendren, Kline, and Saez (2014) who attempt to explain the variation in intergenerational mobility across commuter zones in the US (i.e., spatial mobility) using nine classes of variables. We employ Bayesian model averaging methods that allow...

This paper revisits the influential work by Chetty, Hendren, Kline, and Saez (2014) who attempt to explain the variation in intergenerational mobility across commuter zones in the US (i.e., spatial mobility) using nine classes of variables. We employ Bayesian model averaging methods that allow...