We examine the effect of malaria on economic development in Africa over the very long run. Using data on the prevalence of the mutation that causes sickle cell disease we measure the impact of malaria on mortality in Africa prior to the period in which formal data were collected. Our estimate is...

This paper analyzes the cyclical effects of bank capital buffers using an international sample of 2,361 banks from 92 countries over the 1990-2007 period. We find that capital buffers reduce the bank credit supply but – through what could be “monitoring or signaling effects” – have also...

Many trip distribution models used in transport systems planning are designed to solve maximum entropy optimization problems. Discrete by nature, they must be transformed into continuous and differentiable problems, typically by applying the first-order Stirling approximation. Although it does a...

This paper studies the effects of land reform on political support for the incumbent party. Using agricultural and housing census data at the county level two major findings are presented. First, using different estimation techniques I found that incumbent support increases in 4-6% in counties...

<title>Abstract</title> A combined travel model incorporating spatial correlation is derived from the optimality conditions of a multi-objective optimization framework, in which the trip generation and distribution steps are expressed as hierarchical logit functions. Different forms of spatial correlation are...

The impact on transportation mode choice of policies implementing metro network expansion, fare subsidies and automobile use and ownership regulation was evaluated econometrically using data for 41 world cities. Controlling socioeconomic and demographic variables, it was found that an increase...

Price elasticities of demand for public transport are a key determinant in evaluating the impact of changes in fares on user flows, yet in many integrated fare transit systems, estimating these indicators is often hampered by two realities: the fare changes for different modes are implemented...

This study presents an alternative method for estimating gravity models by multiple linear regression that is based on proxy variables, thus circumventing the endogeneity problems arising when least-squares estimators are used. The proxy variable approach generates consistent estimators for a...