Preferences for Truthfulness: Heterogeneity among and within Individuals

By Rajna Gibson, Carmen Tanner, and Alexander F. Wagner

American Economic Review, February 2013

We conduct an experiment assessing the extent to which people trade off the economic costs of truthfulness against the intrinsic costs of lying. The results allow us to reject a type-based model. People's preferences for truthfulness do not identify them ...

School Inputs, Household Substitution, and Test Scores

By Jishnu Das, Stefan Dercon, James Habyarimana, Pramila Krishnan, Karthik Muralidharan, and Venkatesh Sundararaman

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2013

Empirical studies of the relationship between school inputs and test scores typically do not account for household responses to changes in school inputs. Evidence from India and Zambia shows that student test scores are higher when schools receive unan...

Making Yourself Attractive: Pre-marital Investments and the Returns to Education in the Marriage Market

By Jeanne Lafortune

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2013

I explore how a gender's scarcity may impact educational investments using exogenous variation in the marriage market of second generation Americans in early twentieth century. I find that worse marriage market conditions spur higher pre-marital investme...

Texting Bans and Fatal Accidents on Roadways: Do They Work? Or Do Drivers Just React to Announcements of Bans?

By Rahi Abouk and Scott Adams

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2013

Since 2007, many states passed laws prohibiting text messaging while driving. Using vehicular fatality data from across the United States and standard difference-in-differences techniques, bans appear moderately successful at reducing single-vehicle, si...

Is There a Trade-Off between Inflation and Output Stabilization?

By Alejandro Justiniano, Giorgio E. Primiceri, and Andrea Tambalotti

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2013

We find that the answer is no in an estimated DSGE model of the US economy in which exogenous movements in workers' market power are not a major driver of observed economic fluctuations. If they are, the tension between the conflicting stabilization ob...

Intermediary Asset Pricing

By Zhiguo He and Arvind Krishnamurthy

American Economic Review, April 2013

We model the dynamics of risk premia during crises in asset markets where the marginal investor is a financial intermediary. Intermediaries face an equity capital constraint. Risk premia rise when the constraint binds, reflecting the capital scarcity. T...

Public Monopoly and Economic Efficiency: Evidence from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board's Entry Decisions

By Katja Seim and Joel Waldfogel

American Economic Review, April 2013

We estimate a spatial model of liquor demand to analyze the impact of government-controlled retailing on entry patterns. In the absence of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, the state would have roughly 2.5 times the current number of stores, highe...

Self-Enforcing Trade Agreements: Evidence from Time-Varying Trade Policy

By Chad P. Bown and Meredith A. Crowley

American Economic Review, April 2013

The Bagwell and Staiger (1990) theory of cooperative trade agreements predicts new tariffs (i) increase with imports, (ii) increase with the inverse of the sum of the import demand and export supply elasticities, and (iii) decrease with the variance of im...

The Transmission of Democracy: From the Village to the Nation-State

By Paola Giuliano and Nathan Nunn

American Economic Review, May 2013

We provide evidence that a tradition of village democracy is associated with the presence of national democracy today. We also show that a tradition of local democracy is associated with attitudes which are more supportive of democracy, with better qualit...

The Life-Cycle Profile of Time Spent on Job Search

By Mark Aguiar, Erik Hurst, and Loukas Karabarbounis

American Economic Review, May 2013

Using time use survey data we document a hump-shaped profile of job search time in the United States across the life-cycle. The middle-aged unemployed spend roughly three times as much time in job search as the youngest group of unemployed. The hump-shape...

Fuel Economy and Safety: The Influences of Vehicle Class and Driver Behavior

By Mark R. Jacobsen

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2013

Fuel economy standards change the composition of the vehicle fleet, influencing accident safety. The direction and size of the effect depend on the combination of vehicles in the fleet. I provide empirical estimates of vehicle safety across classes, ac...

The Welfare Effects of Misperceived Product Costs: Data and Calibrations from the Automobile Market

By Hunt Allcott

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2013

This analysis exploits new data from the Vehicle Ownership and Alternatives Survey, which elicits beliefs over the financial benefits of owning higher fuel economy vehicles. The data are used to test for underestimation and to document evidence of "MPG Il...

Beyond Work Ethic: Religion, Individual, and Political Preferences

By Christoph Basten and Frank Betz

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2013

We investigate the effect of Reformed Protestantism, relative to Catholicism, on preferences for leisure, and for redistribution and intervention in the economy. We use a Fuzzy Spatial Regression Discontinuity Design to exploit a historical quasi-experime...

Trade, Tastes, and Nutrition in India

By David Atkin

American Economic Review, August 2013

This paper explores the causes and consequences of regional taste differences. I introduce habit formation into a standard general equilibrium model. Household tastes evolve over time to favor foods consumed as a child. Thus, locally abundant foods are...

Consumer Spending and the Economic Stimulus Payments of 2008

By Jonathan A. Parker, Nicholas S. Souleles, David S. Johnson, and Robert McClelland

American Economic Review, October 2013

We measure the change in household spending caused by receipt of the economic stimulus payments of 2008, using questions added to the Consumer Expenditure Survey and variation from the randomized timing of disbursement. Households spent 12-30 percent (dep...

Demand Estimation under Incomplete Product Availability

By Christopher T. Conlon and Julie Holland Mortimer

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2013

Incomplete product availability is an important feature of many markets, and ignoring changes in availability may bias demand estimates. We study a new dataset from a wireless inventory system on vending machines to track product availability every fou...

Intertemporal Price Discrimination in Storable Goods Markets

By Igal Hendel and Aviv Nevo

American Economic Review, December 2013

We study intertemporal price discrimination when consumers can store for future consumption needs. We offer a simple model of demand dynamics, which we estimate using market-level data. Optimal pricing involves temporary price reductions that enable sell...

Vertical Integration and Exclusivity in Platform and Two-Sided Markets

By Robin S. Lee

American Economic Review, December 2013

This paper measures the impact of vertically integrated and exclusive software on industry structure and welfare in the sixth-generation of the US video game industry (2000-2005). I specify and estimate a dynamic model of both consumer demand for hardw...

A Review Essay about Foundations of Neuroeconomic Analysis by Paul Glimcher

By Colin F. Camerer

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2013

Neuroeconomics aims to discover mechanisms of economic decision, and express them mathematically, to predict observed choice. While the contents of neuroeconomic models and evidence are obviously different than in traditional economics, (some of the) go...

Violence and Risk Preference: Experimental Evidence from Afghanistan

By Michael Callen, Mohammad Isaqzadeh, James D. Long, and Charles Sprenger

American Economic Review, January 2014

We investigate the relationship between violence and economic risk preferences in Afghanistan combining: (i) a two-part experimental procedure identifying risk preferences, violations of Expected Utility, and specific preferences for certainty; (ii) co...