Field Experiment Tests for Discrimination against Hispanics in the U.S. Rental Housing Market

This article tests for discrimination against Hispanics in the U.S. rental housing market using e‐mail correspondence with landlords advertising units online. We divide Hispanics into two groups: those that appear assimilated into American culture and recent immigrants. We find little difference in the treatment of assimilated Hispanics and whites; however, Hispanics we portray as recent immigrants receive less favorable treatment with margins of net discrimination as large as 6.89% of landlords. We also find discrimination varies significantly at the region level and by the ethnic composition of neighborhoods.     

The Depreciation of Human Capital Over Time: The Case of Economic Knowledge Revisited

In this note, the authors point out what is learned in principles lasts longer with students of high ability and if the first course is followed by additional courses in economics or mathematics. This lends support to the practice of advising majors not to delay the intermediate theory course after completing principles.     

The effects of mid-career military enlistment on civilian career prospects: evidence from the Australian banking industry during World War II

This paper uses personnel records of employees from an Australian bank to analyse the labour market consequences of career interruptions due to voluntary military service during the Second World War. The records contain the employees’ career position and pay histories, and pre-war outcomes are used to control for selection bias caused by non-random enlistment. It is shown that, despite losing human capital during the War, upon their return veterans did not face a wage penalty relative to non-volunteers. Finally, evidence from non-wage outcomes suggests that the absence of a wage penalty was a form of positive discrimination by the Bank.

Richard Abel. Americanizing the Movies and "Movie-Mad" Audiences, 1910-1914

Richard Abel argues that in the period from 1910, when the motionpicture "revolution" succeeded and the American film marketwas emancipated from French domination, to 1914, when foreignfilms were nearly eliminated from the U.S. market, the Americanfilm industry was characterized by widespread experimentationand innovation, especially in the areas of promotion practices,distribution strategies, content refinement, and audience development.Six chapters of Abel's Americanizing the Movies bring to theforeground the battle of     

Does the Delphi process lead to increased accuracy in group-based judgmental forecasts or does it simply induce consensus amongst judgmental forecasters?

We investigate the relative impact of internal Delphi process factors - including panelists' degree of confidence, expertise, majority/minority positioning - and an external factor, richness of feedback - on opinion change and subsequent accuracy of judgmental forecasts. We found that panelists who had low confidence in their judgmental forecast and/or who were in a minority were more likely to change their opinion than those who were more confident and/or in a majority. The addition of rationales, or reasons, to the numeric feedback had little impact upon panelists' final forecasts, despite the quality of panelists' rationales being significantly positively correlated with accurate forecasts and thus of potential use to aid forecast improvement over Delphi rounds. Rather, the effect of rationales was similar to that of confidence: to pull panelists towards the majority opinion regardless of its correctness. We conclude that majority opinion is the strongest influence on panelists' opinion change in both the ‘standard’ Delphi, and Delphi-with-reasons. We make some suggestions for improved variants of the Delphi-with-reasons technique that should help reduce majority influence and thereby permit reasoned arguments to exert their proper pull on opinion change, resulting in forecast accuracy improvements over Delphi rounds.     

Procyclical government spending: Patterns of pressure and prudence in the OECD

This paper tests for differences in the cyclicality of government spending across functional categories. Evidence from 20 OECD countries suggests that procyclicality is more likely in smaller functional budgets, but capital spending is more likely to be procyclical for the larger spending categories.     

Can national infrastructure spending reduce local unemployment? Evidence from an Australian roads program

We examine the effect of a federally-funded local infrastructure spending program on local unemployment rates. To address the likely funding endogeneity problem, we exploit variation in spending due to pork-barreling, and find that higher government expenditure on roads substantially reduces local unemployment.     

Allocative efficiency measurement with endogenous prices

In the nonparametric measurement of allocative efficiency, output prices are fixed. If prices are endogenous, the overall output in the market determines the allocative efficient point. We develop an alternative semi-nonparametric model that allows prices to be endogenously determined.     

Illustrating the importance of Austrian business cycle theory: A reply to Murphy,Barnett, and Block; A call for quantitative study

Murphy et al. (2009) criticize Young’s (2005) test of Austrian business cycle theory (ABCT) using US industry-level quarterly job reallocation data and the federal funds rate as a monetary policy indicator. I argue that not only are Murphy et al.’s specific criticisms misguided; more importantly, they all but completely rule out the type of empirical study that Young (2005) advocates: specifically, one that (1) is quantitative and distinguishes between statistical and economic significance and (2) attempts to exploit a hypothesis that is both a prediction of ABCT and not a prediction of competing monetary theories of the cycle. I argue that empirical studies embodying (1) and (2) are critical to ABCT as a research program. Furthermore, I review the existing econometric studies of ABCT from the last 10 years and conclude that there is much room for improvement along these lines.