Researchers in economics and other disciplines are often interested in the causal effect of a binary treatment on outcomes. Econometric methods used to estimate such effects are divided into one of two strands depending on whether they require the conditional independence assumption (i.e.,...

Environmental federalism refers to the debate over the "optimal" level of government at which to delegate environmental policymaking. Although this issue receives widespread attention across the globe, opinions run the gamut. The diversity of views plays out in practice as well as different...

It is increasingly common in empirical research to merge data sets containing different units of observation. When the units are not nested, a crosswalk specifying how the units from one data source are allocated to the units of the other is needed. Unfortunately, most crosswalks are ad hoc, a...

Food insecurity is one of the most, if not the most, significant, nutrition-related public health issue confronted in the US. Unfortunately, we know very little about the determinants of food security except that it is not synonymous with poverty. Many households above the poverty line are food...

Recent studies suggest a considerable amount of horizontal strategic interaction amongst governments exists. The empirical approach in these studies typically relies on estimating reaction functions in a uni-dimensional policy framework, where a nonzero slope estimate suggests strategic...

Rates of childhood obesity have increased dramatically in the last few decades. Non-causal evidence suggests that childhood obesity is highly persistent over the life cycle. However little is known about the origins of this persistence. In this paper we attempt to answer three questions. First,...