Economic Logic

Conspiracy theorists have a field day whenever official statistics look conveniently better just before elections. Whether statistics are re...

You may think that accounting practices are straightforward and have been in place for a long time. Actually, good practices are actually fa...

The elasticity of intertemporal substitution is one of the most estimated parameters in Economics. Why is it estimated over and over again? ...

I have always found the empirical monetary policy literature rather frustrating. It is entirely based on the premise that one can identify m...

In macroeconomics, one distinguishes between non-durable and durable consumption goods. This distinction is important, as the cyclical natur...

In any survey, we must consider the issue of imperfect recall or misrepresentation in self-reported assessments. People do not remember prec...

The border effect describes a striking feature of the data on trade volumes. Volumes typically decrease with distance traveled, with a jump ...

Theory tells us the law of one price should hold: the same good should have the same price throughout the world after taking into account ex...

Anytime you apply a distortionary tax, it bring well-being losses from the distortion (although the revenue can be used for well-being enhan...

It is well known that the underground economy in Italy is substantial, and that an important share of this is due to illegal activity. Hence...

The rise of obesity rates is now being called an epidemic, in particular in Anglo-Saxon countries. The fact that such a large portion of the...

It is quite obvious that journals will only publish results that are significant in the statistical sense. If it turns out that X does not i...

Randomized experiments are all the rage in some circles, for example labor economics and especially development economics. The principle is ...

When economic historians will look back at the global economy of last decade or two, they will likely summarize them as marked by a big rece...

If you divide the amount of US dollars in circulation by the number of people living in the United States, you get an amount in the order of...

Why is the size of the informal sector larger in some countries than others? While it is easy to think what can drive off formal activities ...

One of the hot areas for econometric research in recent years has been spatial econometrics. Think of it, at least initially as time series ...

In any international economic model I can think of, or any study comparing countries using economic models with utility maximizing utility, ...

We use national account data without realizing the efforts that lie behind the construction of these account. And frankly, it is sometimes l...

As mentioned before , tax authorities are now especially eager to catch tax evaders . But how many of those are actually out there? One woul...