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We present a vision for improving household financial surveys by integrating responses from questionnaires more completely with financial statements and combining them with payments data from diaries. Integrated household financial accounts-balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows-are used to assess the degree of integration in leading U.S. household surveys, focusing on inconsistencies in measures of the change in cash. Diaries of consumer payment choice can improve dynamic integration. Using payments data, we construct a statement of liquidity flows: a detailed analysis of currency, checking accounts, prepaid cards, credit cards, and other payment instruments, consistent with conventional cash flow measures and the other financial accounts. ( JEL D12, D14, E41, E42) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses recent examples of natural disasters from Southeast Asia to illustrate some important arguments discussed in the literature on natural disasters and the economy. First, the severity of the consequences of disasters depends not only on the natural hazards, but also on societal factors. Second, the effects of the disasters on physical and human capital could go far beyond the directly observable loss of properties and lives. Third, disasters could have positive long-term consequences if they lead to a change in the total factor productivity of the economy. Fourth, the effects of disasters could spread beyond the country of origin, naturally and economically. Finally, assistance from the government provides implicit insurance that could crowd out private insurance, but the failures of the government in dealing with recent catastrophic disasters may help reduce the extent of this effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lobbying dominates corporate political spending, but comprehensive studies of the benefits accrued are scarce. Using a dataset of all U.S. firms with publicly available financial statements, we delve into the tax benefits obtained from lobbying. Firms that spend more on lobbying in a given year pay lower effective tax rates in the next year. Increasing registered lobbying expenditures by 1% appears to lower effective tax rates by somewhere in the range of 0.5 to 1.6 percentage points for the average firm that lobbies. While individual firms amass considerable benefits, the costs of lobbying-induced tax breaks appear modest for the government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]