This paper uses daily hotel occupancy data to examine the effects of a wide variety of political and sporting events on the hotel room market of Charlotte, North Carolina from 2005 to 2014. Two political conventions and NASCAR auto races are associated with large increases in hotel occupancy, prices, and revenue, but many other events have no discernable effect on Charlotte's hotel market. The results also indicate that occupancy effects before or after most events are modest at best. Back‐of‐the‐envelope calculations show incremental hotel‐tax receipts fall short of the debt service incurred in constructing and maintaining the city's sports venues. (JEL H71, Z23, Z28)

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Data quality in the Penn World Tables varies systematically across countries that have different growth rates and are at different stages of economic development, thus introducing measurement error correlated with variables of economic interest. We explore this problem with three examples from the literature, showing that the problem appears to be minor in growth convergence regressions but serious in estimating the effect of income volatility on growth and in a cross-country test of the Permanent Income Hypothesis. The results suggest, at the least, a need for performing appropriate sensitivity tests before drawing conclusions from analyses based on these data. JEL Classification: E21, O47Information économique versus variation de qualité dans les données transversales pour plusieurs pays. La qualité des données dans les Penn World Tables varie systématiquement d'un pays à l'autre selon les taux de croissance et les stages de développement. Cela injecte des erreurs de mesure qui sont reliées aux variables économiques. Les auteurs examinent ce genre de problème à l'aide de trois exemples tirés de la littérature spécialisée. Ces exemples montrent que le problème semble mineur dans les études de convergence de la croissance, mais qu'ils paraîssent sérieux quand on calibre l'effet de la volatilité du revenu sur la croissance et dans les tests transversaux pour plusieurs pays de l'hypothèse du revenu permanent. Les resultats de ces analyses montrent qu'il faut faire les tests de sensitivité appropriés avant de tirer des conclusions à partir des analyses utilisant ces données.

Using 1981-2009 data for the 50 states, this article examines the relationship between economic freedom and the unemployment rate, the labor force participation rate, and the employment-population ratio. After controlling for a variety of state-level characteristics, the results from most specifications indicate that economic freedom is associated with lower unemployment and with higher labor force participation and employment-population ratios. (JEL J68, K31, O43)

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