Browsing Working Papers by Title

Now showing items 120-139 of 319

    • Identification and Estimation with Contaminated Data: When Does Covariate Data Sharpen Inference? 
      Mullin, Charles H. (Vanderbilt University, 2001)
      When data contain errors, parameters of interest typically are not identified without imposing strong assumptions. However, in many cases, bounds on these parameters can be constructed under relatively weak assumptions. ...
    • Ideology, Government, and the American Dilemma 
      Margo, Robert A. (Vanderbilt University. Dept. of Economics, 2004-05)
      This essay, written in honor of the economic historian Robert Higgs, surveys the economic history of African Americans from the end of slavery to the present day. This history, I argue, was largely one of convergence. ...
    • Impact of Cash Transfers on Child Labor and School Attendance in Brazil, The 
      Portela Souza, Andre; Cardoso, Eliana (Vanderbilt University. Dept. of Economics, 2004-04)
      The paper estimates the impact on school attendance and child labor of conditional cash payments to poor families in Brazil. It describes Brazil's transfer programs and presents statistics on school attendance and child ...
    • Imperfect Competition and Quality Signaling 
      Daughety, Andrew F.; Reinganum, Jennifer F. (Vanderbilt University, 2005)
      We examine the interplay of imperfect competition and incomplete information in the context of price competition among firms producing horizontally- and vertically-differentiated substitute products. We find that incomplete ...
    • Implementing the Friedman Rule by a Government Loan Program: An Overlapping Generations Model 
      Eden, Benjamin (Vanderbilt University, 2008)
      The welfare gains from adopting a zero nominal interest policy depend on the implementation details. Here I argue that implementing the Friedman rule by a government loan program may be better than implementing it by ...
    • Incentives and the Effects of Publication Lags on Life Cycle Research Productivity in Economics 
      Conley, John P.; Crucini, Mario J.; Driskill, Robert A.; Onder, Ali Sina (Vanderbilt University, 2011)
      We investigate how increases in publication delays have affected the life-cycle of publications of recent Ph.D. graduates in economics. We construct a panel dataset of 14,271 individuals who were awarded Ph.D.s between ...
    • Incentives in Merchant Empires: Portuguese and Dutch Compensation Schemes 
      Rei, Claudia (Vanderbilt University, 2011)
      The Portuguese and Dutch merchant empires had a similar geographic distribution with outposts all around the Indian Ocean, which they controlled and manned. Both empires faced the same problem of monitoring their agents ...
    • Income Distribution and the Demand Constraint 
      Mani, Anandi (Vanderbilt University, 2000)
      This paper argues that the interaction between inequality and the demand patterns for goods is a potential source of persistent inequality. Income distribution, in the presence of non-homothetic preferences, affect the ...
    • Increasing Returns and Unsynchronized Wage Adjustment in Sunspot Models of the Business Cycle 
      Huang, Kevin X.D.; Meng, Qinglai (Vanderbilt University, 2010)
      Abstract: A challenge facing the literature of equilibrium indeterminacy and sunspot-driven business cycle fluctuations based on increasing returns to scale in production is that the required degree of increasing returns ...
    • Independence Before Conservatism: Transparency, Politics, and Central Bank Design 
      Hallett, Andrew Hughes; Weymark, Diana N. (Vanderbilt University, 2002)
      The problem of monetary policy delegation is formulated as a two-stage game between the government and the central bank. In the first stage the government chooses the institutional design of the central bank. Monetary and ...
    • Independent Monetary Policies and Social Equality 
      Hallett, Andrew Hughes; Weymark, Diana N. (Vanderbilt University, 2003)
      The problem of monetary policy delegation is formulated as a two-stage game between the government and the central bank. In the first stage the government chooses the institutional design of the central bank. Monetary and ...
    • Inefficient Trade Patterns: Excessive Trade, Cross-Hauling, and Dumping 
      Eden, Benjamin (Vanderbilt University, 2005)
      I study an example of a competitive environment in which trade occurs in a sequential manner. In this example, a country with a stable demand may suffer from trade with a country with unstable demand, there may be too much ...
    • Inequality in Child Academic Achievement in Single Parent Households: Evidence from Brazil 
      Horowitz, Andrew W.; Souza, Andre Portela (Vanderbilt University, 2004)
      In this paper we compare the intra-household dispersion of children's education achievement in single female-parent households with two-parent households. We find significantly more dispersion across children in households' ...
    • Inflation Income Redistribution and Optimal Central Bank Independence 
      Weymark, Diana N.; Reeves, Daniel (Vanderbilt University, 2001)
      The problem of monetary policy delegation is formulated as a two-stage non-cooperative game between the government and the central bank. The solution to this policy game determines the optimal combination of central bank ...
    • Inflation Targeting in Canada: An Expected Loss Analysis in a DSGE Model with Trade Costs 
      Yilmazkuday, Hakan (Vanderbilt University, 2008)
      This paper develops an open economy DSGE model with an emphasis on trade costs to evaluate the performance of the Bank of Canada in the Canadian inflation targeting experience. For model parametrization, the New-Keynesian ...
    • Inflation Targeting, Announcements, and Imperfect Credibility 
      Weymark, Diana N. (Vanderbilt University, 2001)
      In virtually all theoretical studies of inflation targeting, the announced inflation target is treated as being fully credible. However, inflation targeting policies have typically been implemented after protracted periods ...
    • Inflation, Finance, and Growth: A Trilateral Analysis 
      Rousseau, Peter L.; Yilmazkuday, Hakan (Vanderbilt University, 2009)
      A large body of evidence links financial development to economic growth, yet the channels through which inflation affects this relationship and its stability have been less thoroughly explored. We take an econometric and ...
    • Inflation, Government Transfers, and Optimal Central Bank Independence 
      Weymark, Diana N. (Vanderbilt University, 2005)
      The problem of monetary policy delegation is formulated as a two-stage non-cooperative game between the government and the central bank. The solution to this policy game determines the optimal combination of central bank ...
    • Information Spillover and Economic Development 
      Jiang, Nien-Huei (Vanderbilt University, 2000)
      This paper explores a new aspect of the relationship between backwardness and growth, "information spillover". If solving problems is a source of economic growth, then knowing which problems have been solved is per se ...
    • Intergenerational Intermediation and Altruistic Preferences 
      Eden, Benjamin (Vanderbilt University, 2011)
      The paper analyzes the intermediation role of government under the assumption that it has an advantage over the private sector in collecting uncollateralized loan payments. It isshown that a government loan program may ...