N. J. Ireland, G. Briscoe, D. J. Smyth, Specification Bias and Short-Run Returns to Labour: Some Evidence for the United Kingdom, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 55, No. 1 (Feb., 1973), pp. 23-27

We provide evidence that similar price effects occur from new multifamily rental housing on surrounding owner-occupied property values regardless of whether the development was subsidized. These effects were on average negative in higherincome communities, but became either non-distinguishable from zero or positive in higher-income communities with sufficient population density. These results imply that previous opposition to all new rental housing by homeowners is misguided as developments could raise property values in some higher-income neighborhoods.

We study how a market uses temporary workers to accommodate extraordinary demand shocks. When COVID-19 surges, hospitals need additional nurses—especially in specialties central to COVID-19 care. By comparing markets for COVID-relevant and other specialties, we show that the market for travel nurses expands dramatically and estimate travel nurse labor supply across space. Supply is quite elastic, as workers can choose to travel where they are needed. Workers travel longer distances to temporary jobs when payment increases, suggesting that an integrated national market facilitates reallocation when demand spikes. But when national cases peak, travel distance is less responsive to local demand.

The preferences assumed to govern intertemporal trade-offs are generally considered to be stable economic primitives, though evidence on this stability is notably lacking. We present evidence from a large field study conducted over two years, with around 1,400 individuals using incentivized intertemporal choice experiments. Aggregate choice profiles and corresponding estimates of discount parameters are unchanged over the two years and individual correlations through time are high by existing standards. However, some individuals show signs of instability. By linking experimental measures to administrative tax records, we showthat identified instability is uncorrelated with both levels and changes in sociodemographic variables.

Anderson and van Wincoop (2003) showed the importance of multilateral resistance general equilibrium effects in estimating the response of trade flows to trade costs. We integrate this into Helpman, Melitz, and Rubinstein's (2008) extension of Anderson and van Wincoop's framework, which allows for firm heterogeneity, in order to quantify the different margins of adjustment. For bilateral trade cost changes, the general equilibrium effects are small. Surprisingly, most country pairs reduce their trade after a multilateral fall in trade costs. The global trade response to lower costs is positive, amplified by firm entry, but significantly dampened by multilateral resistance.

We investigate inflation predictability in the United States across the monetary regimes of the twentieth century. The forecasts based on money growth and output growth were significantly more accurate than the forecasts based on past inflation only during the regimes associated with neither a clear nominal anchor nor a credible commitment to fight inflation. These include the years from the outbreak of World War II in 1939 to the implementation of the Bretton Woods Agreements in 1951 and from Nixon's closure of the gold window in 1971 to the end of Volcker's disinflation in 1983.

Agents are often better informed than the clients who hire them and may exploit this informational advantage. Real estate agents have an incentive to convince clients to sell their houses too cheaply and too quickly. We test these predictions by comparing home sales in which real estate agents are hired to when an agent sells his own home. Consistent with the theory, we find homes owned by real estate agents sell for 3.7% more than other houses and stay on the market 9.5 days longer, controlling for observables. Greater information asymmetry leads to larger distortions.

Because data are collected for only fatal crashes, it is difficult to accurately measure seat belt and air bag effectiveness. The use of safety devices influences survival rates which in turn determine whether a crash is included in the sample, leading to sample selection bias. We propose a simple solution to the selection problem: limiting the sample to crashes in which someone in a different vehicle dies. Empirically, we find seat belts more effective and air bags to be less effective than previously found. The cost per life saved through seat belts is approximately $30,000, compared to $1.8 million for air bags.

Economic models of politics typically use the expected value of a candidate's vote share to proxy electoral probability. In this paper, the authors introduce a risk calculation to augment the evaluation of a candidate's (or party's) expected vote share and they divide this risk element into its systematic and unsystematic components. For the same reason that systematic risk is a primary focus of portfolio management, the authors discover that an analogous systematic risk component is central to presidential elections. Their approach accounts for correlations in vote swings among states, piercing the fiction of a state-by-state or 'local' campaign strategy.