Working Papers
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Working Paper Series
Firm-Level Political Risk: Measurement and Effects
Jul 2019
We adapt simple tools from computational linguistics to construct a new measure of political risk faced by individual US firms: the share of their quarterly earnings conference calls that they devote to political risks.
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Working Paper Series
Expansionary Austerity and Reverse Causality: A Critique of the Conventional Approach
Jul 2019
It was too good to be true: Another effort to vindicate austerity falls victim to flawed methodology.
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Working Paper Series
State Capacity and Demand for Identity: Evidence from Political Instability in Mali
Jun 2019
Frequent civil conflicts in African countries may erode national identity, thus highlighting a reason why civil conflict is costly for growth and development
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Working Paper Series
Demand-determined potential output: a revision and update of Okun’s original method
May 2019
Everyone is waking up to the fact that estimates of what is possible in the economy are way off: this paper explains why
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Working Paper Series
Antitrust and Economic History: The Historic Failure of the Chicago School of Antitrust
May 2019
This paper presents an historical analysis of the antitrust laws.
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Working Paper Series
Lost in Deflation
Apr 2019
Why Italy’s woes are a warning to the whole Eurozone
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Working Paper Series
Economic Consequences of the U.S. Convict Labor System
Mar 2019
Prisoners employed in manufacturing constitute 4.2% of total U.S. manufacturing employment in 2005; they produce cheap goods, creating labor demand shock.
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Working Paper Series
The Knightian Uncertainty Hypothesis: Unforeseeable Change and Muth’s Consistency Constraint in Modeling Aggregate Outcomes
Mar 2019
This paper introduces the Knightian Uncertainty Hypothesis (KUH), a new approach to macroeconomics and finance theory.
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Working Paper Series
New Evidence on the Portfolio Balance Approach to Currency Returns
Feb 2019
Asset markets are indispensable in harnessing society’s diverse views and insights about future business performance. But those views are shaped as much by emotion and crowd mentality as by rational expectations.
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Working Paper Series
The Contributions of Socioeconomic and Opioid Supply Factors to Geographic Variation in U.S. Drug Mortality Rates
Feb 2019
Economic distress in rural areas and opioid exposure in cities are key indicators of overdose deaths
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Working Paper Series
Labor Laws and Manufacturing Performance in India: How Priors Trump Evidence and Progress Gets Stalled
Feb 2019
For years, governments in India and much of the developing world have followed the advice of a paper arguing that labor regulations actually hurt workers. The problem? The research was wrong.
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Working Paper Series
Estimates of the Natural Rate of Interest and the Stance of Monetary Policies: A Critical Assessment
Jan 2019
Starting with the literature on the estimates of the natural rate of interest, this paper critically analyzes the modern practice of identifying the benchmark rate of monetary policy with an equilibrium or neutral interest rate reflecting “fundamental forces” unaffected by monetary factors.
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Working Paper Series
Finance in Economic Growth: Eating the Family Cow
Jan 2019
The American economy changed rapidly in the last half-century. The National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) were designed before these changes started. They have stretched to accommodate new and growing service activities, but they are still organized for an industrial economy.
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Working Paper Series
Economic Growth and Carbon Emissions: The Road to ‘Hothouse Earth’ is Paved with Good Intentions
Dec 2018
Wishful thinking and tinkering won’t cut it. Nothing short of a mass mobilization for deep de-carbonization across the global economy can avert the looming climate catastrophe.
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Working Paper Series
Citation Patterns in Economics and Beyond
Nov 2018
Assessing the Peculiarities of Economics from Two Scientometric Perspectives