We assess the importance of interpersonal income comparisons using data on suicide deaths. We examine whether suicide risk is related to others' income, holding own income and other individual and environmental factors fixed. We estimate models of the suicide hazard using two independent data...

The use of subjective well-being (SWB) data for investigating the nature of individual preferences has increased tremendously in recent years. There has been much debate about the cross-sectional and time series patterns found in these data, particularly with respect to the relationship between...

This paper outlines a proposed method for gaining continuous information about the activities, attitudes, and concerns of citizens within an urban community. The method provides quick feedback on actions and changes made within the community. It monitors longitudinally, the effects of actions...

A sample of over 400,000 men and women, ages 25-64, from the National Longitudinal Mortality Study (NLMS), a cohort study representative of the noninstitutionalized US population, was followed for mortality between the years of 1979 and 1989 in order to compare and contrast the functional forms...

A rich literature shows that early life conditions shape later life outcomes, including health and migration events. However, analyses of geographic disparities in mortality outcomes focus almost exclusively on contemporaneously measured geographic place (e.g., state of residence at death),...

This special issue of the B. E. Journal of Macroeconomics collects papers presented at a Conference on Empirical Macroeconomics Using Geographical Data, held at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco on March 18, 2011.

Over the past four decades, state investment tax incentives have proliferated. This emergence of state investment tax credits (ITC) and other investment tax incentives raises two important questions: 1) Are these tax incentives effective in achieving their stated objective, to increase...

We evaluate the effects of state-provided financial incentives for biotech companies, which are part of a growing trend of placed-based policies designed to spur innovation clusters. We estimate that the adoption of subsidies for biotech employers by a state raises the number of star biotech...