Over the past thirty years, the use of child safety seats in motor vehicles has increased dramatically. There is, however, relatively little empirical evidence regarding the efficacy of child safety seats relative to the much cheaper alternative of traditional seat belts. Using data on all fatal crashes in the United States from 1975 to 2003, I find that child safety seats, in actual practice, do not provide any discernible improvement over adult lap and shoulder belts in reducing fatalities among children aged two to six. Lap-only belts are somewhat less effective, but still far superior to riding unrestrained.

We study the consequences of an exogenous upsurge in coca prices and cultivation in Colombia, where most coca leaf is now harvested. This shift generated only modest economic gains in rural areas, primarily in the form of increased self-employment earnings and increased labor supply by teenage boys. The rural areas that saw accelerated coca production subsequently became considerably more violent, while urban areas were affected little. These findings are consistent with the view that the Colombian civil conflict is fueled by the financial opportunities that coca provides and that rent-seeking by combatants limits the economic gains from coca.

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.

This paper brings historical evidence to bear on the stylized fact that the yield curve predicts future growth. The spread between corporate bonds and commercial paper reliably predicts future growth over the period 1875–1997. This predictability varies over time, however, and has been strongest in the post–World War II period.