We exploit daylight saving time (DST) as an exogenous shock to daylight, using both the discontinuous nature of the policy and the 2007 extension of DST, to consider the impact of light on criminal activity. Regression discontinuity estimates show a 7% decrease in robberies following the shift to DST. As expected, effects are largest during the hours directly affected by the shift in daylight. We discuss our findings within the context of criminal decision making and labor supply, and estimate that the 2007 DST extension resulted in $59 million in annual social cost savings from avoided robberies.

Utilizing a utility-maximizing, Roy-type, discrete choice model of worker location in Canadian provinces and U.S. states that incorporates returns to skill, amenities, fixed costs, distance, language, and border effects, we find that individuals with higher skills migrate to areas with higher returns and that the 49th parallel attenuates migration. Simulations indicate that equalizing returns in the two countries has a modest effect on cross-country migration; however, reductions in border effects tend to have large nonlinear effects on it. Our results confirm the qualitative results of previous research emphasizing the importance of returns to skill and border effects in migration decisions.

A model of consumption of residential energy in dwellings is developed, distinguishing between attributes of housing that provide direct benefits to consumers and attributes that serve as inputs in the production of final goods, for example, the thermal comfort of dwellings. Empirical estimates are made of the mode, based upon the Annual Housing Survey, and the results are used to calculate the effects of changes in energy prices on the consumption of housing, residential energy, and other goods. The analysis suggests that the adjustment process within the housing market permits a great deal of substitution in response to energy price changes.

Livelihood measures of foregone and compensating earnings are frequently used as measures of economic losses due to realized or potential damages to the health of labor in-puts. Both measures as they have been used are incomplete, though for quite different reasons. The narrowness of the foregone earnings mea-sure is widely acknowledged. As set forth in Smith (1974), Thaler and Rosen (1976), and Viscusi (1979), the compensating earnings measure, with its emphasis upon the earnings premia workers require to be willing to be exposed to job hazards they perceive, certainly has broader analytical appeal. However, as empirically implemented, these studies too are incomplete: they deal with worker and time aggregates allowing only crude measures of differences in reward structures, mixes of complementary inputs, work-day lengths, risk aversions, worker effort, and other dissimilar factors across individuals, firms, and industries. In this paper, the productivity changes and consequent earnings adjustments that occur under differing work conditions for 17 individual citrus pickers in southern California are assessed. Interest is centered upon the acute effects of two environmental factors, ambient ozone (03) and ambient temperature, upon the daily work performances of these individuals. Since each individual is separately analyzed, the host of plausible confounding influences (e.g., experience, biological endowments, health histories, etc.) to which one must devote attention when dealing with the fictional "representative" individual are relevant here only insofar as they change within the short time periods being considered.

Using sales and leasing data, this paper finds three novel effects of a higher property transaction tax: higher buy-to-rent transactions alongside lower buy-to-own transactions despite both being taxed, a lower sales-to-leases ratio, and a lower price-to-rent ratio. This paper explains these facts by developing a search model with entry of investors and households, households choosing to own or rent in the presence of credit frictions, and homeowners deciding when to move house. A higher transaction tax reduces homeowners’ mobility and increases demand for rental properties, which explains the empirical facts and leads to a lower homeownership rate. The deadweight loss is large at 111% of tax revenue, with more than half of this due to distorting decisions to own or rent.

The issue of dynamic efficiency is central to analyses of capital accumulation and economic growth. Yet the question of what characteristics should be examined to determine whether actual economies are dynamically efficient is unresolved. This paper develops a criterion for determining whether an economy is dynamically efficient. The criterion, which holds for economies in which technological progress and population growth are stochastic, involves a comparison of the cash flows generated by capital with the level of investment. Its application to the United States economy and the economies of other major OECD nations suggests that they are dynamically efficient.

This paper examines how bank taxation affects the financing decisions and investment activities of corporates. Exploiting exogenous tax variation at the bank level, we show that taxing banks' gross profits leads to higher bank leverage, and results in lower risk and credit supply. The contraction in credit supply has implications for corporate debt financing and investment activity. Corporates more exposed to banks subject to gross profit tax exhibit lower leverage and rely less on bank debt. Corporates partly offset lower bank financing by switching to bond financing. The cost of bond financing increases with corporate exposure to the tax. A greater exposure also impacts negatively on corporate investment activity. Overall, our results highlight the importance of bank taxation for corporate financing and investment decisions.

This paper investigates the influence of liquidity in the major developed and major developing economies on commodity prices. Liquidity is taken to be M2. A novel finding is that unanticipated increases in the BRIC countries’ liquidity is associated with significant and persistent increases in commodity prices that are much larger than the effect of unanticipated increases in G3 liquidity, and the difference increases over time. Over 1999–2012 BRIC liquidity is strongly linked with global energy prices and global real activity whereas G3 liquidity is not. The impact of BRIC liquidity on mineral and metal prices is twice as large as that of G3 liquidity. Granger casualty goes from liquidity to commodity prices. BRIC and G3 liquidity and commodity prices are cointegrated. BRIC and G3 liquidity and global output and global prices are cointegrated. We construct a structural factor-augmented error correction (SFAVEC) model.

By using an existing and a new convergence measure, this paper assesses whether bank loan and bond interest rates are converging for the non-financial corporate sector across the euro area. Whilst we find evidence for complete bond market integration, the market for bank loans remains segmented, albeit to various degrees depending on the type and size of the loan. Factor analysis reveals that rates on large loans and small loans with long rate fixation periods have weakly converged in the sense that, up to a fixed effect, their evolution is driven by common factors only. In contrast, the price evolution of small loans with short rate fixation periods is still affected by country-specific dynamic factors. There are few signs that bank loan rates are becoming more uniform with time.

Investment of US firms responds asymmetrically to Tobin’s Q: investment of established firms—“intensive” investment—reacts negatively to Q whereas investment of new firms—“extensive” investment—responds positively and elastically to Q. This asymmetry, we argue, reflects a difference between established and new firms in the cost of adopting new technologies. A fall in the compatibility of new capital with old capital raises measured Q and reduces the incentive of established firms to invest. New firms do not face such compatibility costs and step up their investment in response to the rise in Q.