A key parameter in international economics is the elasticity of substitution between domestic and foreign goods, also called the Armington elasticity. Yet estimates vary widely. We collect 3,524 reported estimates of the elasticity, construct 34 variables that reflect the context in which...

One of the most frequently examined relationships in education economics is the impact of tuition increases on the demand for higher education. We provide a quantitative synthesis of 443 estimates of this effect reported in 43 studies. While large negative estimates dominate the literature, we...

Educational outcomes have many determinants, but one that most young people can readily control is choosing whether to work while in school. Sixty-nine studies have estimated the effect, but results vary from large negative to positive estimates. We show that the results are systematically...

This paper utilizes a data set of over 208,000 U.S. patents applied for between 1975 and 2010 to study development of strategic patenting over time and across industries. With received citations as a measure of patent social value, we use data envelopment analysis to estimate firm-level relative...

The original rationale for adopting daylight saving time (DST) was energy savings. Modern research studies, however, question the magnitude and even direction of the effect of DST on energy consumption. Representing the first meta-analysis in this literature, we collect 162 estimates from 44...

We present the first meta-analysis of the income elasticity of water demand that accounts for the effects of publication selection (the preferential reporting of estimates that are intuitive and statistically significant). Paradoxically, more affected by publication selection are the otherwise...

The European Union has recently decided to stop the policy of biannual clock changes in 2021. One reason is that the original rationale for the policy, energy savings, is not supported by a large portion of recent empirical studies. Whether the new permanent time will be standard time or the...

We examine 567 estimates of habit formation from 69 studies published in peer-reviewed journals. In contrast to previous results for most fields of empirical economics, we find no publication bias in the literature. The median estimated strength of habit formation equals 0.4, but the estimates...

An important question in development studies is how abundance of natural resources affects long-term economic growth. No consensus answer, however, has yet emerged, with approximately 40% of empirical papers finding a negative effect, 40% finding no effect, and 20% finding a positive effect....

We show that three factors combine to explain the mean excess sensitivity reported in studies estimating consumption Euler equations: the use of macro data, publication bias, and liquidity constraints. When micro data are used, publication bias is corrected for, and the households under...