In this paper we provide estimates of the coefficient of relative risk aversion for 80 countries using data on self-reports of personal well-being from the Gallup World Poll. For most countries we cannot reject the null hypothesis that the coefficient of relative risk aversion equals 1. We...

In this paper, we study the welfare consequences of imposing alternative regimes of competition between two non-benevolent local governments that compete for mobile firms which have private information on their degree of locational attachment or home bias.In an environment in which politicians...

In this paper we study the determinants of banks' decision to adopt a transactional web-site for their customers. Using a panel of commercial banks in the United States for the period 2003-2006, we show that although bank-specific characteristics are important determinants of banks' adoption...

We apply spatial econometric techniques to models of state and local fiscal policy convergence. Total tax revenue and expenditures, as well as broad tax and expenditure categories, of state and local governments in each of the 48 contiguous U.S. states are examined. We extend recent work by...

Past studies have argued that housing is an important driver of business cycles. Housing markets, however, are highly localized, while business cycles are often measured at the national level. We model a national housing cycle using a panel of cities while also allowing for idiosyncratic...