Three vote-share equations are estimated and analyzed in this paper, one for presidential elections, one for on-term House elections, and one for mid-term House elections. The sample period is 1916-2006. Considering the three equations together allows one to test whether the same economic...

This paper provides an interpretation of the uncertainty that exists at the beginning of the day of an election as to who will win. It is based on the theory that there are a number of possible conditions of nature that can exist on election day, of which one is drawn. Political betting markets...

This paper examines the performances of the past five Federal Reserve chairmen using optimal control techniques and a macroeconometric model. Each chairman is evaluated in two ways. The first way is comparing the actual performance of the economy under his term relative to what the performance...

This paper uses a structurally estimated macroeconometric model, denoted the MC model, to evaluate inflation targeting in the United States. Various interest rate rules are tried with differing weights on inflation and output, and various optimal control problems are solved using differing...

This paper reviews recent developments in methods for dealing with weak instruments (IVs) in IV regression models. The focus is more on tests (and confidence intervals derived from tests) than estimators.The paper also presents new testing results under quot;many weak IV asymptotics,quot; which...

Rates of decline are estimated using record bests by age for chess and for various track and field, road running, and swimming events. Using a fairly flexible functional form, the estimates show linear percent decline between age 35 and about age 70 and then quadratic decline after that. Chess...

This paper examines how much structural change there was in the U.S. economy in the last half of the 1990s. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that there was only one major structural change, namely the huge increase in stock prices relative to earnings. All other large changes can...

This paper uses data on companies that have been in the Samp;P 500 index since 1957 to examine whether risk aversion has decreased since 1995. The evidence suggests that it has not. There is no evidence that more risky companies have had larger increases in their price-earnings ratios since 1995...

This paper outlines a bootstrapping approach to the estimation and analysis of macroeconometric models. It integrates for dynamic, nonlinear, simultaneous equation models the bootstrapping approach to evaluating estimators initiated by Efron (1979) and the stochastic simulation approach to...

This paper examines various interest rate rules, as well as policies derived by solving optimal control problems, for their ability to dampen economic fluctuations caused by random shocks. A tax rate rule is also considered. A multicountry econometric model is used for the experiments. The...