Purchasing power adjusted incomes applied in cross-country comparisons are measured with bias. In this paper, we estimate the purchasing power parity (PPP) bias in Penn World Table incomes and provide corrected incomes. The bias is substantial and systematic: the poorer a country, the more its...

Inflation has been well contained over the last decades in most industrialized countries. This implies, however, that memories of high inflation are likely to fade, because over time larger parts of the population have never experienced high inflation, whereas those who have might forget. This...

The term world class is used in some broadband plans, as a target. Comparisons with other countries are beneficial, though not straightforward, in measuring progress. Claims about improvements to national competitiveness and economic growth are difficult to determine, given that economic rivals...

The study assesses the factors underlying commodity price volatility, its impact on households welfare, and the implications for macroeconomic and fiscal policy. It finds that: (i) low-income countries are highly vulnerable to fluctuations in commodity prices; (ii) financial speculation has...

The climate system is indifferent as to the location of voluntary mitigation activities. Are people? Our artifactual online field experiment varies, for residents of a European Union member state, (1) whether the location of a real CO2 mitigation measure is made salient or not or (2) whether the...

Obesity rates have risen dramatically in the US since the 1980s, but well-identified studies have struggled to explain the magnitude of the observed changes. In this paper, we estimate the causal impact of economic insecurity on obesity rates. Specifically, we construct a synthetic panel of...

The policy of sustainable development requires reductions in growth of human populations to promote environmental sustainability and economic development. The objective is to control environmental catastrophism and advance financial growth with population policies on a global scale to foster...

As the usage of bicycles increases, cities are transforming their planning processes to incorporate this sustainable mode of transportation. In spite of bicycling's importance to communities, there is a gender gap. Data indicates that only a small number of cyclists are women. This paper...

We examine the effect of personal, two-way communication on the behavior of borrowers, who have fallen behind on their consumer loan payments. While the lender has informed all borrowers about the delinquency through an automatically generated letter, some borrowers also receive a phone call...

Speculative economic, financial, and cryptocurrency bubbles are not arcane anymore; nonetheless, they are still misunderstood. For this exact reason, they continue to form even centuries after the famous first speculative bubbles of 17th and 18th centuries. Bubbles do not form instantaneously;...