We benchmark seven global optimization algorithms by comparing their performance on challenging multidimensional test functions as well as a method of simulated moments estimation of a panel data model of earnings dynamics. Five of the algorithms are taken from the popular NLopt open-source...

Historical city growth, in the United States and worldwide, has required remarkable transformation of outdated durable buildings. Private land-use decisions may generate inefficiencies, however, due to externalities and various rigidities. This paper analyzes new plot-level data in the aftermath...

The role of good management practices in organizations has recently been emphasized. Do the same principles also apply in government organizations, even the most bureaucratic and hierarchical of them? And can skilled, motivated managers identify how to improve these practices, or is there a role...

Should police activity be narrowly focused and high force, or widely-dispersed but of moderate intensity? Critics of intense “hot spot” policing argue it primarily displaces, not reduces, crime. But if learning about enforcement takes time, the police may take advantage of this period to...

Do natural resources benefit producer economies, or is there a “Natural Resource Curse,”0 perhaps as the crowd-out of manufacturing productivity spillovers reduces long-term growth? We combine new data on oil and gas endowments with Census of Manufactures microdata to estimate how oil and...

This paper investigates whether the religious identity of state legislators in India influences development outcomes, both for citizens of their religious group and for the population as a whole. To allow for politician identity to be correlated with constituency level voter preferences or...

The human capital construct is deep in the bones of economics and finds reference by many classical economists, even if they did not use the phrase. The term “human capital,” seldom mentioned in economics before the 1950s, increased starting in the 1960s and blossomed in the 1990s. The...