Tobacco use, the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S., can be reduced through state-level tobacco prevention and cessation programs. In the absence of research about how to communicate the need for these programs to policymakers, this qualitative study aimed to understand the motivations and priorities of policymakers in North Carolina, a state that enacted a strong tobacco control pr...

We analytically characterize optimal monetary policy for an augmented New Keynesian model with a housing sector. With rational private sector expectations about prices and inflation, can be characterized by standard ‘target criterion’ that refers to inflation the output gap, without making reference prices. When policymaker is concerned potential departures of from ones seeks robust against suc...

The sun rose yesterday and with it came a reformed health system. Someone was hired as a policymaker and introduced a fresh idea. A heavily lobbied health Minister changed his mind and gave a new instruction to his permanent head. A government committee altered its stance, and as a consequence, a different policy initiative emerged. New research showed that one type of managerial system was bet...

I generalize a benchmark model of directed technical change in order to reconcile it with the historical experience of energy transitions. I show that the economy becomes increasingly locked-in to the dominant sector when machines and energy resources are substitutes, but a transition away from the dominant sector is possible when machines and energy resources are complements. Consistent with h...

This paper constructs a simple theoretical model to study the implications of globalization for inequality and redistribution. It shows that when globalization increases inequality, a policymaker interested in maximizing the sum of welfares of all agents increases redistribution. Empirically, the paper examines the e¤ects of globalization on inequality and redistribution in a panel data set of ...

This paper investigates the optimal monetary policy response to a shock to collateral when policymakers act under discretion and face model uncertainty. The analysis is based on a New Keynesian model where banks supply loans to transaction constrained consumers. Our results confirm the literature on model uncertainty with respect to a cost-push shock. Insuring against model misspecification lea...

Dengue vaccines are currently in development and policymakers need appropriate economic studies to determine their potential financial and public health impact. We searched five databases (PubMed, EMBASE, LILAC, EconLit, and WHOLIS) to identify health economics studies of dengue. Forty-three manuscripts were identified that provided primary data: 32 report economic burden of dengue and nine are...

The paper models and tests the hypothesis that a self-interested policymaker will pursue projects that create jobs now at the environmental expense of future generations. An optimal-control model shows that jurisdictions are most likely to pursue such a project when they are characterized by low income, high unemployment, politically powerful industry, pollution-intensive industry, poorly funct...

This paper presents a case study of a community technology center (CTC) located in a lower income neighborhood of a high-tech city. Participant observation and interview-based research determined that while the CTC was popular among its targeted constituents, its use was not consistent with what the center’s supporters and policymakers envisioned. The emergent discrepancy between policymaker rh...