Optimal consumption and investment under transaction costs....
In this article we consider the Merton problem in a market with a single risky asset and transaction costs. We give a complete solution of the problem up to the solution of a free-boundary problem for...
View ArticleThe Great Recession and Charitable Giving -- by Jonathan Meer, David H....
We examine the impact of the Great Recession on charitable giving. We find sharp declines in overall donative behavior that is not accounted for by shocks to income or wealth. These results suggest...
View ArticlePrice Regulation, Price Discrimination, and Equality of Opportunity in Higher...
This paper assesses the importance of price regulation and price discrimination to low-income students' access to opportunities in public higher education. Following a policy change in the state of...
View ArticleMaking the One Percent: The Role of Elite Universities and Elite Peers -- by...
This paper estimates the effect of elite college admission on students' chances of attaining top positions in the economy, and explores the importance of peer ties as an underlying mechanism. I combine...
View ArticleThe Long-Run Effects of Childhood Insurance Coverage: Medicaid...
This paper exploits the original introduction of Medicaid (1966-1970) and the federal mandate that states cover all cash welfare recipients to estimate the effect of childhood Medicaid eligibility on...
View ArticleThe Effect of Early Education on Social Preferences -- by Alexander W....
We present results from the first study to examine the causal impact of early childhood education on social preferences of children. We compare children who, at 3-4 years old, were randomized into...
View ArticleInvestment-less Growth: An Empirical Investigation -- by German Gutierrez,...
We analyze private fixed investment in the U.S. over the past 30 years. We show that investment is weak relative to measures of profitability and valuation - particularly Tobin's Q, and that this...
View ArticlePurchasing Power Disparity before 1914 -- by Peter H. Lindert
Economic historians' Divergence debates since 2000 have asked a different question from that asked by Angus Maddison. The issue has become "when did countries' contemporaneous purchasing powers...
View ArticleCharging Ahead: Prepaid Electricity Metering in South Africa -- by B. Kelsey...
The standard approach to recovering the cost of electricity provision is to bill customers monthly for past consumption. If unable to pay, customers face disconnection, the utility loses revenue, and...
View ArticleThe History of the Cross Section of Stock Returns -- by Juhani T. Linnainmaa,...
Using data spanning the 20th century, we show that most accounting-based return anomalies are spurious. When examined out-of-sample by moving either backward or forward in time, anomalies' average...
View ArticleActivism, Strategic Trading, and Liquidity -- by Kerry Back, Pierre...
We analyze dynamic trading in an anonymous market by an activist investor who can expend costly effort to affect firm value. We obtain the equilibrium in closed form for a general activism technology,...
View ArticleBounds on Treatment Effects in Regression Discontinuity Designs under...
A key assumption in regression discontinuity analysis is that units cannot affect the value of their running variable through strategic behavior, or manipulation, in a way that leads to sorting on...
View ArticleRelationship Lending and the Great Depression: Measurement and New...
The Great Depression remains ground zero for studying the non-monetary effects of financial crises. Despite the abundant scholarship on the period, lack of disaggregated data on lending activities has...
View ArticleClimate Risks and Market Efficiency -- by Harrison Hong, Frank Weikai Li,...
We investigate whether stock markets efficiently price risks brought on or exacerbated by climate change. We focus on drought, the most damaging natural disaster for crops and food-company cash flows....
View ArticleAccounting for Business Income in Measuring Top Income Shares: Integrated...
Business income is important in the upper tail of the personal income distribution, but the extent to which it is captured by measures of personal income varies substantially across tax regimes. Using...
View ArticleHealth, Human Capital and Domestic Violence -- by Nicholas W. Papageorge,...
We study the impact of health shocks on domestic violence and illicit drug use. We argue that health is a form of human capital that shifts incentives for risky behaviors, such as drug use, and also...
View ArticleThe Behavioralist as Policy Designer: The Need to Test Multiple Treatments to...
We explore Tinbergen's fundamental insight that policymakers need at least as many policy instruments as targets. We extend this idea using a large natural field experiment in water resource...
View ArticleThe Entrepreneur: The Economic Function of Free Enterprise
This book presents the economic theories with regards to the entrepreneur of yesterday and those of more recent years, on which issue research has been developing exponentially since the last third of...
View ArticleThe Hermeneutic Side of Responsible Research and Innovation
The book investigates the meaning of RRI if little or no valid knowledge about consequences of innovation and technology is available. It proposes a hermeneutical turn to investigate narratives about...
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