International Impacts of protection: model structure and results for FC agricultural policy

A dynamic international commodity trade model is introduced that combines stochastic production with three features: multimarket dynamics, endogenous trade policy behavior, and endogenous stock-holding behavior. The significance of these features is illustrated using versions of the model with each excluded in turn. Their role in policy analysis is examined by using each version to measure the impacts of the grain-meat components of the European Community's Common Agricultural Policy. The absence of each is found to alter significantly the estimated terms of trade, trade volume, and welfare effects. Endogenous stock holding is found to be especially important when insulating trade policies are reprented in the model.     

The interaction of co-occurring mental disorders and recovery management checkups on substance abuse treatment participation and recovery

This article examines the effectiveness of quarterly Recovery Management Checkups (RMCs) for people with substance disorders by level of co-occurring mental disorders (34% none, 27% internalizing disorders, and 39% internalizing and externalizing) across two randomized experiments with 92% to 97% follow-up. The 865 participants are 82% African American, 53% female, and age 37 on average. RMC involves identification of those in need of treatment, motivational interviews, and treatment linkage assistance. It is effective in linking participants in need to treatment, with equal or better outcomes among those with more mental disorders. The data support the utility of monitoring and re-intervention for clients with co-occurring disorders.     

Let Them Eat Prozac: The Unhealthy Relationship Between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression by David Healy

This article examines the activities of Jane Addams and the Progressive party campaign for President of the United States in 1912. Using primary and secondary data, the article addresses the many decisions and challenges faced by Addams and supporters of Progressive party candidate, Theodore Roosevelt. In particular, I focus on the ways in which issues associated with race, class, and gender shaped the election and Addams' experience within it and the ways in which, despite their apparent differences, Addams was able to support and actively campaign for Roosevelt. Moreover, I examine the struggles of Progressives to define themselves outside the parameters of Socialism in 1912 and the role by played by red-baiting in that effort. In sum, this article seeks to develop a deeper understanding of Addams, the settlement-house movement, and Progressivism and to elevate in importance the 1912 election for President in that larger history.     

National television coverage and the behavioural bias of bettors: the American college football totals market

The market for totals, over/under bets, is examined for American college football. The sample is separated into nationally televised games on major networks, those games televised regionally or on smaller networks, and games not televised. A slight non-significant bias toward the over is observed for the sample as a whole. The bias is only statistically significant for nationally televised games on major networks. This bias to bet the over is likely due to a preference for scoring in games that bettors can watch on television. Explanations for this bias and the rejection of the efficient markets hypothesis found in this market are discussed from the point of view of the traditional sportsbook model and from the sportsbook model proposed by Levitt [Levitt, S.D. (2004). The Economic Journal, 114, 223–246]. These results demonstrate how bettor preferences can influence markets, and offer a possible avenue of research to those seeking to understand the satisfaction sought by gamblers.     

Quantitative sources for studying urban industrial slavery in the antebellum US South

The composition of antebellum Southern urban industrial labour forces is an area requiring careful quantitative analysis. Southern elites worried about slaves in urban industry (especially hired slaves) because they experienced wage‐labour freedoms and so had greater opportunites to resist slavery. The distribution of late antebellum Richmond tobacco factory workers between hired slaves and owned slaves is studied by examining property tax records and census of manufacturing records. Tax records are shown to understate by 11–12 per cent the number of slaves used in factories. This error is due to tax evasion, assessment inefficiency, and seasonal variations between census and tax record collection dates. Furthermore, tax records cannot be used to distinguish between owned and hired slaves in factories, as previous researchers allege. Only the 1860 census of manufacturers explicitly divides the slave force between hired and owned slaves. This record shows that 58 per cent of Richmond tobacco workers were hired slaves, lending credence to the fears of southern elites that urban industry would erode the master‐slave relation they preferred.     

Stochastic Model Specification Search for Time-Varying Parameter VARs

This article develops a new econometric methodology for performing stochastic model specification search (SMSS) in the vast model space of time-varying parameter vector autoregressions (VARs) with stochastic volatility and correlated state transitions. This is motivated by the concern of overfitting and the typically imprecise inference in these highly parameterized models. For each VAR coefficient, this new method automatically decides whether it is constant or time-varying. Moreover, it can be used to shrink an otherwise unrestricted time-varying parameter VAR to a stationary VAR, thus providing an easy way to (probabilistically) impose stationarity in time-varying parameter models. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach with a topical application, where we investigate the dynamic effects of structural shocks in government spending on U.S. taxes and gross domestic product (GDP) during a period of very low interest rates.     

Local linear kernel estimation for discontinuous nonparametric regression functions

In this paper, we consider using a local linear (LL) smoothing method to estimate a class of discontinuous regression functions. We establish the asymptotic normality of the integrated square error (ISE) of a LL-type estimator and show that the ISE has an asymptotic rate of convergence as good as for smooth functions, and the asymptotic rate of convergence of the ISE of the LL estimator is better than that of the Nadaraya-Watson (NW) and the Gasser-Miiller (GM) estimators.     

Efficient Posterior Simulation for Cointegrated Models with Priors on the Cointegration Space

A message coming out of the recent Bayesian literature on cointegration is that it is important to elicit a prior on the space spanned by the cointegrating vectors (as opposed to a particular identified choice for these vectors). In previous work, such priors have been found to greatly complicate computation. In this article, we develop algorithms to carry out efficient posterior simulation in cointegration models. In particular, we develop a collapsed Gibbs sampling algorithm which can be used with just-identifed models and demonstrate that it has very large computational advantages relative to existing approaches. For over-identifed models, we develop a parameter-augmented Gibbs sampling algorithm and demonstrate that it also has attractive computational properties.