We estimate the effect of increasing the supply of housing vouchers on rents using a panel of housing units in the American Housing Survey. We do not find that an increase in vouchers affected the overall price of rental housing, but do estimate differences in effects based on an individual...

We show that an otherwise standard one-sector real business cycle model with variable capital utilization and mild increasing returns-to-scale is able to generate qualitatively as well as quantitatively realistic aggregate fluctuations driven by news shocks to future consumption demand. In sharp...

This paper replicates and analyses a study by Hoover and Pecorino (2005) on federal spending in US states. H&P followed on path-breaking research by Atlas et al. (1995) in which evidence was claimed in favour of the "small state effect;" namely, that since every state is represented by two...

This paper documents and explains previously unrecognized post-crash dynamics following the collapse of a housing bubble. A simple model predicts that speculative developers ensure stable pre-crash relative prices between small and large homes while their post-crash exit allows small-home...

We analyze a contest with stochastic participation and a prize externality. A unique symmetric equilibrium exists in the contest. We demonstrate that the presence of a prize externality affects individual equilibrium spending but active participants always face the same expected payoff as in a...

We revisit the relationship between informal institutions and income levels. The empirical literature on institutions finds that indices of "informal institutions" such as trust, respect, respect, self-determination, and obedience are more important than "formal institutions" such as...

The accurate estimation of real estate indices is important for many purposes. A common method to estimate these indices is to use a repeatâ€sales procedure. Although this does not require property attributes, this method discards a large amount of sales. This paper proposes a method that can...

This paper examines the effects of trade frictions, including tariffs and a variety of factors that raise trade costs, on export market access at the product level and, in particular, the role these frictions have on the ability of developing countries to access world markets. We find that a...

We examine a balanced panel of globalization indices for 129 countries over the years 1991-2010. We report evidence of cross-country sigma convergence in the overall globalization index. Sigma convergence also holds for each of the economic, political, and social globalization indices, as well...

We measure the effect of resource sector dependence on long run income growth using the natural experiment of variation in coal endowments in a set of 409 relatively U.S. counties selected for homogeneity. Using a panel data set that extends over two separate boom and bust cycles (1970-2010), we...