In this paper I discuss economic processes that may give rise to spatial patterns in data, and explore the relative merits of alternative modeling approaches when data are spatially correlated. Specifically, I present an estimation scheme that allows for spatial random effects, and focus attention on cases in which such a framework may be preferred to the more general fixed effects framework that nests it. I use the models presented, together with information on the location of households in an Indonesian socio-economic survey, to test spatial relationships in Indonesian demand for rice.

This paper develops a model of the political economy of tax-setting in a multijurisdictional world, where voters' choices and incumbent behavior are determined simultaneously. Voters are assumed to make comparisons between jurisdictions to overcome political agency problems. This forces incumbents into a (yardstick) competition in which they care about what other incumbents are doing. We provide a theoretical framework and empirical evidence using U.S. state data from 1960 to 1988. The results are encouraging to the view that vote-seeking and tax-setting are tied together through the nexus of yardstick competition.

A rich array of institutional diversity makes the United States an excellent place to study the relationship between political institutions and public policy outcomes. This essay has three main aims. First, it reviews existing empirical evidence on the relationship between institutional rules, political representation and policy outcomes. It aims to place the literature into a broader context of theoretical and empirical work in the field of political economy. Second, it develops a parallel empirical analysis that updates studies in the literature and re-examines some of the claims made, in a setting unified both in terms of policy outcomes and the period under study. Third, the paper develops some new directions for research, presenting a small number of novel exploratory results.

A rich array of institutional diversity makes the United States an excellent place to study the relationship between political institutions and public policy outcomes.This essay has three main aims.First, it reviews existing empirical evidence on the relationship between institutional rules, political representation and policy outcomes.It aims to place the literature into a broader context of theoretical and empirical work in the field of political economy.Second, it develops a parallel empirical analysis that updates studies in the literature and re-examines some of the claims made, in a setting unified both in terms of policy outcomes and the period under study.Third, the paper develops some new directions for research, presenting a small number of novel exploratory results.

A rich array of institutional diversity makes the United States an excellent place to study the relationship between political institutions and public policy outcomes. This essay has three main aims. First, it reviews existing empirical evidence on the relationship between institutional rules, political representation and policy outcomes. It aims to place the literature into a broader context of theoretical and empirical work in the field of political economy. Second, it develops a parallel empirical analysis that updates studies in the literature and re-examines some of the claims made, in a setting unified both in terms of policy outcomes and the period under study. Third, the paper develops some new directions for research, presenting a small number of novel exploratory results.

We investigate the relationship between HIV, marriage and nonmarital sexual activity, with a focus on adolescent behaviors. We use data from 45 Demographic and Health Surveys to examine how adolescent behavior among women born from 1958 to 1965 are related to the subsequent spread of HIV over time. These women were adolescents during the early 1980s, a time when HIV had started to spread but the cause was still unknown. We find that areas with currently high HIV rates had greater female education and more premarital sexual activity in the cohorts that came of age before HIV was understood.

Child health in the United States improved dramatically over the twentieth century. Data from the National Center for Health Statistics indicate the infant mortality rate was 23 times greater in 1900 than in 2004. The mortality rate of one-to four-year-old children, although lower in absolute terms, had a larger proportionate decline: the value in 1900 was 66 times that in 2004. The proximate cause of the mortality decline was a reduction in infectious disease. Between 1900 and 1998, the percentage of deaths of children age 1 to 19 due to infectious disease is estimated to have declined from 61.6 percent to 2 percent (Bernard Guyer et al. 2000). Major causes of child death included diarrhea, pneumonia and other respiratory infections, diphtheria, typhoid, measles, scarlet fever, whooping cough, and tuberculosis (Guyer et al. 2000). The mortality decline was accompanied by reductions in morbidity among surviving children. There were also declines in the prevalence of a host of illnesses, such as hookworm and trachoma, which were not deadly but which impaired children’s quality of life (C. Hoyt Bleakley 2007; Shannen K. Allen and Richard D. Semba 2002). Early life exposures to infectious disease may also have adverse effects on health and well-being into old age. If true, then the benefits of the twentieth century decline in infectious disease in the United States are still being realized. We examine whether the disease environments experienced by American children in the first half of the twentieth century are associated with their cognitive abilities at older ages. We match region-level historical data on mortality from a variety of infectious diseases, as well as total infant mortality, with information on the cognitive function of older Americans followed by the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We find evidence that the burden of disease in early life—measured using either mortality rates by cause or the overall infant mortality rate—is significantly associated with performance on cognitive tests in old age.

Research across a number of disciplines has highlighted the role of early life health and circumstance in determining health and economic outcomes at older ages. Nutrition in utero and in infancy may set the stage for the chronic disease burden that an individual will face in middle age (David J. Barker, 1998; Barker et al. 1989; Johann Eriksson et al. 2001). Childhood health may also have significant effects on economic outcomes in adulthood. Collectively, a set of childhood health measures can account for a large fraction of the explained variance in employment and social status observed among a British cohort followed from birth into adulthood (Anne Case, Angela Fertig and Christina Paxson 2005).