The paper examines the impact of county-level alcohol availability on heavy drinking, as measured by liver cirrhosis mortality, employing data on the 254 Texas counties. In particular, reducing the number of licensed alcohol vendors raises the travel-cost component of the price of alcohol and,...

Variations in the availability of abortion providers may impact the demand for abortions since greater provider availability reduces the travel cost associated with obtaining an abortion. This paper applies a fertility-control model to estimate the responsiveness of abortion demand to...

This paper demonstrates that states’ decisions on limiting congressional terms are empirically determined by measures of relative political influence in Congress. States’ choices on term limits are quantified as a multiple-categorical variable that reflects variation in the stringency of...

Recent theoretical research suggests that a firm's salary structure can affect the firm's productivity. We investigate the relationship between payroll inequality and production using US Major League Baseball data. Employing panel data methods, this study finds that salary inequality has a...

This paper examines the effects of race on player induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, concentrating on a player's first ballot. Past research has found some evidence of discrimination in voting against retired Major League Baseball players who were born in a Latin American country...

This study attempts to isolate the potential sources of grade inflation and to measure their relative importance. We incorporate existing models of grade inflation into a model of grade inflation at the department level. Our data comprise 1683 separate courses taught in 28 different academic...

Lifeline is a unique nationwide public assistance program created by the Federal Communications Commission to provide price discounts to low-income telephone subscribers. Recently there has been concern that program participation rates are low and that there is great variation in participation...

Using data from U.S. Major League Baseball, this article compares parametric and nonparametric Gini coefficients for each team and year. We employ a panel-data model to investigate the time-series and cross-sectional factors affecting the Gini coefficients and the parameters of the preselected...