The new Medicare Part D program provides prescription drug coverage for older Americans through highly subsidized and tightly regulated plans offered by private insurance firms. For most eligible individuals without coverage from other sources, obtaining Part D coverage would be rational, but it...

Many initiatives worldwide aim at improving financial literacy through targeted education programs, yet there is little evidence regarding their effectiveness. We examine the impact of a short financial education program on teenagers in German high schools. Our findings reveal that the training...

Based on 2001 Canadian Census data, we investigate the return to investment in human capital in Canada. Internal rates of return (IRR) imply that the value of education varies by gender, level of education, and field of study. A bachelor's degree yields the highest IRR; the IRR from higher...

This study investigates whether federal government budget deficits in the U.S. over the 1990-99 time period acted to crowd out private investment in new plant and equipment. Using quarterly data, empirical estimations clearly indicate that private investment was in fact negatively impacted by...

This study visits the role of shareholder proposals in the governance of public corporations by studying withdrawn shareholder proposals. Among all shareholders, unions are the most likely to withdraw proposals. Furthermore, firms with a record of poor performance, lower insider ownership and...

This study empirically finds, using ECM, that the primary federal budget deficit shares a bi-directional relationship with the ex ante real interest rate yield on long term municipal bonds. That is, the primary budget deficit acts to raise the real municipal bond yield whereas that yield also...

This note provides a modern story for principles instructors to use as a supplement to textbook accounts of problems associated with externalities and the applicability of the Coase theorem. Our story begins in July of 1988, when Larry Ellison paid $3.9 million for a home in the Pacific Heights...

The issue of environmental sustainability is a controversial and extremely diverse multi-faceted topic that ranges from questions as to how to ensure that adequate investment in energy R&D and infrastructure will be undertaken, to state level renewable portfolio standards, to the impact of...

This study empirically investigates three hypotheses. The first is that higher levels of economic freedom in an economy promote a higher growth rate of economic activity and hence yield a higher growth rate of per capita real GDP in that economy. The second hypothesis is that higher quality...

This note empirically investigates the impact of various factors on income tax evasion in the U.S. over the 1973-1997 period. The estimate indicates that income tax evasion is an increasing function of the average effective federal personal income tax rate and the public's dissatisfaction with...