Although computers are universal in the classroom, nearly twenty million children in the United States do not have computers in their homes. Surprisingly, only a few previous studies explore the role of home computers in the educational process. Home computers might be very useful for completing school assignments, but they might also represent a distraction for teenagers. We use several identi...

The paper considers panel data methods for estimating ordered logit models with individual-specific correlated unobserved heterogeneity. We show that a popular approach is inconsistent, whereas some consistent and efficient estimators are available, including minimum distance and generalized method-of-moment estimators. A Monte Carlo study reveals the good properties of an alternative estimator...

We use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel to investigate how individual happiness is affected by unemployment. Unemployment has a large and negative effect even after controlling for individual specific fixed effects. Nonparticipation, in contrast, is much less harmful to happiness. Further, we decompose the total well-being costs of unemployment and find that well above three quarters a...

The application of the generalized gravity model in analyzing the Bangladesh’s trade reveals that Bangladesh’s trade is positively determined by the size of the economies, per capita GNP differential of the countries involved and openness of the trading countries. Bangladesh’s exports are positively determined by the exchange rate, partner countries’ total import demand and openness of the Bang...

This paper is the first of its kind to study utility interdependence in marriage using information on subjective well-being of a large sample of people living in the UK over the period 1991-2001. Using " residual " self-rated health to provide instrument for spouse's well-being and allowing controls on individual fixed effects, we find strong evidence of altruism represented by interdependent r...

This paper introduces a method which permits valid inference given a finite number of heterogeneous, correlated clusters. It is common in empirical analysis to use inference methods which assume that each unit is independent. Panel data permit this assumption to be relaxed as it is possible to estimate the correlations across clusters and isolate the independent variation in each cluster for pr...

The rebound effect is the causal impact of an increase in fuel efficiency on the demand for car kilometres. The rebound effect has been studied in several different sectors (for a survey, see Greening et al. (2000)). Some recent studies have extensively focused on passenger transportation using macro data (see, Small and Van Dender (2007); Hymel et al. (2010)). However, the rebound effect is es...

An Econometric Analysis of the Mental-Health Effects of Major Events in the Life of Elderly Individuals Major events in the life of an elderly individual, such as retirement, a significant decrease in income, death of the spouse, disability, and a move to a nursing home, may affect the mental health status of the individual. For example, the individual may enter a prolonged depression. We inves...

Sickness absence tends to be negatively correlated with unemployment. This may suggest disciplining effects of unemployment but may also reflect changes in the composition of the labour force. A panel of Norwegian register data for the years 1990-1995 is used to analyse sickness absences lasting more than two weeks. We estimate fixed effects models of the probability of absence and the number o...

This paper examines how high cost mortgage lending varies by race and ethnicity. It uses a unique panel data that matches a representative sample of mortgages in seven large metropolitan markets between 2004 and 2008 to public records of housing transactions and proprietary credit reporting data. The results reveal a significantly higher incidence of high costs loans for African-American and Hi...