It is doubtful whether I shall be able to meet the high standards set by previous speakers. I shall not prove deep theorems. I shall not present astonishing new results. Instead of this I shall try to catch your attention by a fictitious dialogue. I shall employ the help of imaginary discussants like the “Bayesian” or the “experimentalist.” A “chairman” will determine who speaks next, but he sh...

In recent years, a broad academic consensus has arisen around the use of rational expectations sticky-price models to capture inflation dynamics. These models are seen as providing an empirically reasonable characterization of observed inflation behavior once suitable measures of the output gap are chosen; and, moreover, are perceived to be robust to the Lucas critique in a way that earlier eco...

INTRODUCTION Dried blood spots (DBS) are routinely collected from newborns in the United States using a heel stick. The DBS are screened for inborn errors of metabolism and other disorders. More states are keeping residual spots and making them available for research purposes. DNA extraction from the DBS has been widely applied; however, the development of methods to measure a range of environm...

On October 31, 2001, Grantmakers In Health (GIH) convened an Issue Dialogue in Washington, DC, on the problem of obesity and its implications for personal and public health. The purpose of this meeting was to help the staff and trustees of health foundations and corporate giving programs understand the nature of today's epidemic and explore ways in which they could play a role in identifying an...

There are many kinds of networks, each with many types of variables and monitoring goals. Our paper addressed only one of the countless possible combinations of network and monitoring goals. We are grateful to the discussants for expanding our paper by providing insights into other network monitoring problems that present different challenges to statisticians. Denby, Landwehr and Meloche (DLM) ...

This article was an interesting one to investigate, as the topic evoked much lively discussion among the colleagues and acquaintances from whom I sought to gain a broad range of opinions. The groups from which my discussants came were varied, as were their backgrounds and ages. Each individual however was very passionate about their particular point of view. Those asked for their opinions inclu...

In many OECD countries, statutory corporate tax rates are lower than personal income tax rates. The present paper argues that this tax rate differentiation is an optimal tax policy if there are problems of asymmetric information between investors and firms in the capital market. The reduction of the corporate tax rate below the personal tax rate encourages equity financing and thus mitigates th...

National policies take varied approaches to encouraging university-based innovation. This paper studies a natural experiment: the end of the “professor’s privilege” in Norway, where university researchers previously enjoyed full rights to their innovations. Upon the reform, Norway moved toward the typical U.S. model, where the university holds majority rights. Using comprehensive data on Norweg...

This paper quantitatively evaluates the hypothesis that deflation can account for much of the Great Depression (1929-33). We examine two popular explanations of the Depression: (1) The “high wage” story, according to which deflation, combined with imperfectly flexible wages, raised real wages and reduced employment and output. (2) The “bank failure” story, according to which deflationary money ...

The false discovery rate of Benjamini and Hochberg has a great influence in shaping modern statistical theory. Besides its relevance and utility in contemporary statistical applications, there is mathematical elegance in its theory that is fascinating and has motivated me, just as it it did many others, I am sure, toward its further development and meaningful extension. I try to bring out this ...