#2009-027A "Casino Revenue and the Illinois Smoking Ban"
by Thomas A. Garrett, and Michael R. Pakko
June 2009

Smoking was banned in all Illinois casinos in January 2008. We explore the effects that the smoking ban has had on Illinois casino revenue and attendance. More...

#2009-013A "The Propagation of Regional Recessions"
by James D. Hamilton, and Michael T. Owyang
April 2009

This paper develops a framework for inferring common Markov-switching components in a panel data set with large cross-section and time-series dimensions. We apply the framework to studying similarities and differences across U.S. states in the timing of business cycles. More...

#2009-007A "Is Housing the Business Cycle? Evidence from U.S. Cities"
by Andra C. Ghent, and Michael T. Owyang
March 2009

We analyze the relationship between housing and the business cycle in a set of 36 US cities. More...

#2009-006A "Who Benefits from Increased Government Spending? A State-Level Analysis"
by Michael T. Owyang, and Sarah Zubairy
March 2009

We simultaneously identify two government spending shocks: military spending shocks as defined by Ramey (2008) and federal spending shocks as defined by Perotti (2008). We analyze the effect of these shocks on state-level personal income and employment. More...

#2008-026A "City Business Cycles and Crime"
by Thomas A. Garrett, and Lesli S. Ott
August 2008

We explore the influence of city-level business cycle fluctuations on crime in 20 large cities in the United States. Our monthly time series analysis considers seven crimes over an approximately 20-year period: murder, rape, assault, robbery, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft. More...

#2008-002C "Income Convergence in the United States: A Tale of Migration and Urbanization"
by Riccardo DiCecio, and Charles S. Gascon
January 2008
Revised December 2008

We use non-parametric distribution dynamics techniques to reassess the convergence of per capita personal income (PCPI) across U.S. states and across metropolitan and nonmetropolitan portions of states for the period 1969-2005. More...

FORTHCOMING: Annals of Regional Science

#2007-050B "States and the Business Cycle"
by Michael T. Owyang, David E. Rapach, and Howard J. Wall
November 2007
Revised October 2008

We model the U.S. business cycle using a dynamic factor model that identifies common factors underlying fluctuations in state-level income and employment growth. More...

PUBLISHED: Journal of Urban Economics, March 2009, 65(2), pp. 181-94

#2007-046B "Urban Crime and Labor Mobility"
by Subhayu Bandyopadhyay, Santiago Pinto, and Christopher H. Wheeler
October 2007
Revised March 2008

We present a model of crime where two municipalities exist within a metropolitan statistical area (MSA). More...

#2007-045C "Human Capital Externalities and Adult Mortality in the U.S."
by Christopher H. Wheeler
October 2007
Revised January 2008

Human capital is now widely recognized to confer numerous benefits, including higher incomes, lower incidence of unemployment, and better health, to those who invest in it. More...

#2007-043D "Why Do So Few Women Work in New York (and So Many in Minneapolis)? Labor Supply of Married Women Across U.S. Cities"
by Dan Black, Natalia Kolesnikova, and Lowell J. Taylor
October 2007
Revised October 2008

This paper documents a little-noticed features of U.S. labor markets – that there is very large variation in the labor market participation rates and annual work hours of married women across cities. We focus on cross-city differences in commuting times as a potential explanation for this variation in women's labor supply. More...