The basic answer to the question posed by the title is: yes. We follow Ewing et al. (2006) and examine the US federal revenue-expenditure nexus in an error-correction model allowing for asymmetric adjustment. Symmetric adjustment is rejected by data from the 1959.3 to 2007.4 period. However, as...

Cover and Pecorino (2005) claim that the March 1933 departure from the gold standard is the most probable break point ushering in an era of longer U.S. expansions, both absolutely and relative to subsequent recessions. Their analysis is based on cycle durations as defined by National Bureau of...

We use a CES production function with no restrictions on technical bias to derive relationships between the growth in relative factor shares and (i) the capital to labor ratio and (ii) the ratio of marginal products. These relationships constitute a parsimonious specification used to identify...

The US time structure of production during the 2002 through 2009 business cycle is characterized empirically using industry-level input-output data. An industry’s total industry output requirement (TIOR) is proposed as a metric for "roundaboutness". I find that the time structure of production...

Cover and Pecorino (2005) demonstrate, using monthly NBER reference dates, that, the March 1933 departure from the gold standard is the most probable breakpoint ushering in an era of longer expansions, both absolutely and relative to recessions that follow. Cover and Pecorino view this finding...

We use US county-level data to estimate convergence rates for 22 individual states. We find significant heterogeneity. E.g., the California estimate is 19.9% and the New York estimate is 3.3%. Convergence rates are essentially uncorrelated with income levels.

It is a well known fact that economic development and distance to the equator are positively correlated variables in the world today. It is perhaps less well known that as recently as 1500 C.E. it was the other way around. The present paper provides a theory of why the "latitude gradient"...

We use U.S. county-level data containing 3,058 cross-sectional observations and 41 conditioning variables to study economic growth and explore possible heterogeneity in growth determination across 32 individual states. Using a 3SLS-IV estimation method, we find that all statistically significant...

We use US county level data (3,058 observations) from 1970 to 1998 to explore the relationship between economic growth and the extent of government employment at three levels: federal, state and local. We find that increases in federal, state and local government employments are all negatively...

This research advances the hypothesis that cross-country variation in the historical incidence of eye disease has influenced the current global distribution of per capita income. The theory is that pervasive eye disease diminished the incentive to accumulate skills, thereby delaying the...