Recent technological advances have dramatically lowered the cost of transmitting information over large distances. In the late 1990s, the New York Times implemented a national distribution strategy, expanding delivery in over 100 cities. Using cross-sectional and longitudinal data on local...

Real interest rates shifted upwards by four or five percentage points in approximately 1980. The question is why. In this paper we review some of the more popular explanations and point out that they are somewhat inconsistent with the facts. We then present a new explanation which may partially...

A necessary condition for justifying a policy such as publicly provided or subsidized low- income housing is that it has a real effect on recipients’ outcomes. In this paper, we examine one aspect of the real effect of public or subsidized housing -- does it increase the housing stock? If...

The 44 Liquormart decision, eliminating Rhode Island's ban on liquor price advertising, made Rhode Island the subject of a natural experiment for measuring the effect of advertising on prices. Using Massachusetts prices as controls, we find that advertising stores substantially cut only prices...

Political outcomes are well understood to depend on the spatial distribution of citizen preferences. In this paper, we document that the same holds for the individual decision to be politically active. Using both cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence on turnout, we show that citizens are...

Since the dawn of broadcasting, and especially in the past decade, Americans have turned their attention from local to more distant sources of news and entertainment. While the integration of media markets will raise the private welfare of many consumers, a globalized information and...

We analyze the behavior of game-show contestants who play a one-shot game called Friend or Foe. While it is a weakly dominant strategy not to cooperate, almost half the contestants on the show choose to play friend.' Remarkably, the behavior of contestants remains unchanged even when stakes are...

With substantial fixed costs of drug development, more common conditions can support more products. If additional pharmaceutical products are beneficial, they will attract greater consumption and promote better health, e.g. greater longevity. We ask how market size measured by condition...