This paper examines the relationship between income equality and crime using U.S. statewide panel data for the years 1981 to 1999. After controlling for demographics and the rates of poverty and unemployment, I find a robust negative relationship between income inequality and the violent and property crime rates. I conclude that rising income inequality during those two decades did not lead to ...

This paper investigates the effects of human capital on productivity using micro panel data of rural households in the North­West Frontier Province, Pakistan, where a substantial job stratification is observed in terms of income and education. To clarify the mechanism underlying this stratification, the human capital effects are estimated for wages (individual level) and for self­employed activ...

This paper examines whether minimum competency school accountability systems, such as those created under No Child Left Behind, influence the distribution of student achievement. Because school ratings in these systems only incorporate students’ test scores via pass rates, this type of system increases incentives for schools to improve the performance of students who are on the margin of passin...

In recent years there has been a growing stream of literature in marketing and economics that models consumers as Bayesian learners. Such learning behavior is often embedded within a discrete choice framework which is then calibrated on scanner panel data. At the same time it is now accepted wisdom that disentangling preference heterogeneity and state dependence is critical in any attempt to un...

In this study we examine the impact of lottery sales and the introduction of new lottery games on the retail activity using panel data on all West Virginia counties over the 1987-2001 period. We find that the introduction of video lottery spurred retail activity in those counties that have been granted the authority to offer video lottery. Empirical analysis also suggests that there is a positi...

The East German Wage Structure after Transition We extend the literature on transition economies’ wage structures by investigating the returns to tenure and experience. This study applies recent panel data and estimation approaches that control for hitherto neglected biases. We compare the life cycle structure in East and West German wages for fulltime employed men in the private sector. The pa...

Land reforms in developing countries provide a good experiment for study on development economics, and in the case Taiwan the land reform provides specific historical context for us to closely examine the relationship between redistribution and growth. In this paper, we use panel data on the fifteen counties of Taiwan around 1950s and 1960s to empirically evaluate whether redistributive land re...

What is a fiscal consequence of legislative term limits? We develop a legislative bargaining model that predicts a u-shaped relationship between the level of seniority within a legislature and government spending. The size of government spending decreases as the level of seniority increases from low tomoderate, while it increases as the level of seniority increases from moderate to high. The mo...

Most empirical studies of individual migration choice analyse factors associated with out-migration from an origin location. In contrast, we model the migration decision within the context of potential destinations, combining British panel data over the period 1992–2007 with other data sources. Contrary to earlier micro studies we show that differences in house prices levels (but not growth) ar...

We present evidence on the duration of firm-bank relationships using a unique panel data set of connections between Oslo Stock Exchange-listed firms and their banks for the period 1979-1994. We focus on the determinants of the duration of a relationship and the causes for ending an existing bank relationship. We find that duration itself does not greatly influence the likelihood of ending a rel...