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Economics Department

Integrity, shame and self-rationalization

Publication Date
2004-February-01
Document Type
Authors
Department or Program
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Abstract

In orthodox economics, honesty or integrity is treated as either part of the constraint function or the objective function. This is at the origin of the statement, "every man has his price." However, if integrity has a price, why do...

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Intergenerational strategic behavior and crowding out in a general equilibrium model

Publication Date
2005-October-01
Document Type
Department or Program
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Abstract

The return of large government budget deficits should encourage us to resume analysis of their effects. Two topics deserving further attention are the importance of correctly modeling the form of intergenerational relationships and clarification of the extent to which deficits...

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Is it really the Fisher effect?

Publication Date
2006-March-01
Document Type
Department or Program
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Abstract

Many researchers have used a cointegration approach to test for the Fisher effect. This note argues that the cointegration of the nominal interest rate and the inflation rate is consistent with any theory implying a stationary real interest rate and...

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Kelo, Cuno, and the broken window

Publication Date
2006-November-26
Document Type
Department or Program
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Abstract

In June 2005, the Supreme Court made one of its least popular decisions in recent history. In Kelo v. New London, the Court missed a simple point: that local decision makers make local decisions.

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Labor market informalization and social policy: distributional links and the case of homebased workers

Publication Date
2004-August-01
Document Type
Department or Program
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Abstract

This paper is based on the notion that the nature of current labor market informalization requires rethinking in order to guide action and formulate social policies for eliminating poverty and reducing economic inequality and job insecurity. It explores conceptually and...

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Land Use Restrictions and Segregation: The Effect of Single-Family Zoning in Austin

Publication Date
2023-May-02
Authors
Department or Program
Document Type
Access Level
Abstract

I study the effect of zoning on segregation in Austin, Texas. I use municipal data on zoning for each address in Austin, and census data on demographics. I find that a one standard deviation increase in single-family zoning in a...

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Learning by suing: structural estimates of court errors in patent litigation

Publication Date
2006-November-07
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Authors
Department or Program
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Abstract

This paper presents structural estimates of the probability of validity, and the probability of Type I and Type II errors by courts in patent litigation. Patents are modeled as uncertain property rights, and implications of the model are tested using...

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Limited arbitrage, segmentation, and investor heterogeneity: Why the law of one price so often fails

Publication Date
2003-August-28
Document Type
Department or Program
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Abstract

There are numerous examples of assets with identical payout streams being priced differently. These violations of the law of one price result from two factors. First, investors have heterogeneous asset valuations so that if two groups of investors trade in...

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Limited arbitrage, segmentation, and investor heterogeneity: Why the law of one price so often fails

Publication Date
2003-August-28
Document Type
Authors
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

There are numerous examples of assets with identical payout streams being priced differently. These violations of the law of one price result from two factors. First, investors have heterogeneous asset valuations so that if two groups of investors trade in...

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Marginal Revenue Products of Collegiate Basketball Players: What's March Madness Worth to Your Team?

Publication Date
2017-January-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

Basketball is considered a revenue sport within the context of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The annual March Madness tournament brings in over a billion dollars in advertising revenue alone. This is just one illustration of the influx of...

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Mixture models and convergence clubs

Publication Date
2008-January-01
Document Type
Department or Program
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Abstract

In this paper we argue that modeling the cross-country distribution of per capita income as a mixture distribution provides a natural framework for the detection of convergence clubs. The framework yields tests for the number of component distributions that are...

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Noise-trader risk: does it deter arbitrage, and is it priced?

Publication Date
2005-September-12
Document Type
Authors
Department or Program
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Abstract

Arbitrage positions that benefit from the reversion of closed-end fund discounts to rational levels show excess returns that increase in magnitude the more funds are mispriced. At the same time, fund trading volumes and bid-ask spreads more than double as...

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Noise-trading, costly arbitrage, and asset prices: evidence from US closed-end funds

Publication Date
2005-August-30
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Authors
Department or Program
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Abstract

The behavior of US closed-end funds is very different from that of the UK funds studied by Gemmill and Thomas (2002). There is no evidence that their discounts are constrained by arbitrage barriers, no evidence that higher expenses increase discounts...

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On the geometry of constant returns

Publication Date
2000-August-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

Constant returns to scale, always a simplifying assumption, is often also much more: many important results depend critically on the very special properties of this class of production function. This paper provides a unified set of simple proofs for most...

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Optimal implicit contracts and the choice between layoffs and work sharing

Publication Date
1989-October-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

Implicit contract models of labor market equilibrium under work sharing and layoffs are constructed to examine several common explanations for the observed market bias in favor of layoffs. We first establish the optimality of work sharing in the absence of...

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Parents or teachers: who play a more important role in influencing children's academic gains in early childhood education?

Publication Date
2020-January-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

Finding ways to increase the effectiveness of early childhood education has been a big concern for many educators and policymakers. In an attempt to solve this problem, they are faced with a dilemma of whether to concentrate on parent or...

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