How Do Voters Respond to Information? Evidence from a Randomized Campaign

By Chad Kendall, Tommaso Nannicini, and Francesco Trebbi

American Economic Review, January 2015

In a large-scale controlled trial in collaboration with the reelection campaign of an Italian incumbent mayor, we administered (randomized) messages about the candidate's valence or ideology. Informational treatments affected both actual votes in the prec...

Inflation Expectations and Readiness to Spend: Cross-Sectional Evidence

By Rüdiger Bachmann, Tim O. Berg, and Eric R. Sims

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2015

There have been suggestions for monetary policy to engineer higher inflation expectations to stimulate spending. We examine the relationship between expected inflation and spending attitudes using the microdata from the Michigan Survey of Consumers. The i...

The Impact of Including, Adding, and Subtracting a Tax on Demand

By Naomi E. Feldman and Bradley J. Ruffle

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2015

We test the equivalence of tax-inclusive, tax-exclusive and tax-rebate prices through a series of experiments differing only in their handling of the tax. Subjects receive a cash budget and decide how much to keep and how much to spend on various attracti...

Would People Behave Differently If They Better Understood Social Security? Evidence from a Field Experiment

By Jeffrey B. Liebman and Erzo F. P. Luttmer

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2015

This paper presents the results of a randomized field experiment that provided information about key Social Security features to older workers. The experiment was designed to examine whether it is possible to affect individual behavior using a relatively ...

New Estimates of the Value of a Statistical Life Using Air Bag Regulations as a Quasi-experiment

By Chris Rohlfs, Ryan Sullivan, and Thomas Kniesner

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2015

Due to federal regulations, automobile air bag availability was a model-specific discontinuous function of model year for used vehicles in the 1990s and early 2000s. We use the discontinuities and the gradual increase in the supply of air bags to trace ou...

Price Subsidies, Diagnostic Tests, and Targeting of Malaria Treatment: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial

By Jessica Cohen, Pascaline Dupas, and Simone Schaner

American Economic Review, February 2015

Both under- and over-treatment of communicable diseases are public bads. But efforts to decrease one run the risk of increasing the other. Using rich experimental data on household treatment- seeking behavior in Kenya, we study the implications of this...

The Cyclicality of Sales, Regular and Effective Prices: Business Cycle and Policy Implications

By Olivier Coibion, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, and Gee Hee Hong

American Economic Review, March 2015

We study the cyclical properties of sales, regular price changes, and average prices paid by consumers ("effective" prices) using data on prices and quantities sold for numerous retailers across many US metropolitan areas. Inflation in the effective price...

Demographic Patterns and Household Saving in China

By Chadwick C. Curtis, Steven Lugauer, and Nelson C. Mark

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2015

This paper studies how demographic variation affects the aggregate household saving rate. We focus on China because it is experiencing an historic demographic transition and has had a massive increase in household saving. We conduct a quantitative investi...

Consumption Volatility, Marketization, and Expenditure in an Emerging Market Economy

By Daniel L. Hicks

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2015

In response to income fluctuations, households smooth consumption by substituting between market expenditure and time inputs. This paper provides evidence of this substitution in the context of food consumption over transitory and permanent income fluctua...

Loss Aversion and Consumption Choice: Theory and Experimental Evidence

By Heiko Karle, Georg Kirchsteiger, and Martin Peitz

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, May 2015

We analyze a consumer-choice model with price uncertainty, loss aversion, and expectation-based reference points. The implications of this model are tested in an experiment in which participants have to make a consumption choice between two sandwiches. Pa...

Open Skies: Estimating Travelers' Benefits from Free Trade in Airline Services

By Clifford Winston and Jia Yan

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2015

The United States has negotiated bilateral open skies agreements to deregulate airline competition on US international routes, but little is known about their effects on travelers' welfare and the gains from the US negotiating agreements with more countri...

Messaging and the Mandate: The Impact of Consumer Experience on Health Insurance Enrollment through Exchanges

By Natalie Cox, Benjamin Handel, Jonathan Kolstad, and Neale Mahoney

American Economic Review, May 2015

The ability of web-based retailers to learn about and provide targeted consumer experiences is touted as an important distinction from traditional retailers. In principal, web-based insurance exchanges could benefit from these advantages. Using data from ...

Measuring Consumer Valuation of Limited Provider Networks

By Keith Marzilli Ericson and Amanda Starc

American Economic Review, May 2015

We measure the breadth of insurance networks in the Massachusetts health insurance exchange. Using our measures, we estimate consumer willingness-to-pay for broad and narrow networks. We find that consumers have a wide range of plans available with dramat...

Earnings, Disposable Income, and Consumption of Allowed and Rejected Disability Insurance Applicants

By Andreas Ravndal Kostøl and Magne Mogstad

American Economic Review, May 2015

Two key questions in thinking about the size and growth of the disability insurance program are to what extent it discourages work, and how valuable the insurance is to individuals and families. These questions motivate our paper. We begin by describing t...

Limited Attention and the Residential Energy Efficiency Gap

By Karen Palmer and Margaret Walls

American Economic Review, May 2015

Inattention may be an important contributor to the energy efficiency gap and may be particularly acute in residential buildings where many different features will determine a home's energy use. Energy audits can provide information on how to reduce energy...

Individual Time Preferences and Energy Efficiency

By Richard G. Newell and Juha Siikamäki

American Economic Review, May 2015

We examine the role of individual discount rates in energy efficiency decisions using evidence from an extensive survey of US homeowners to elicit preferences for energy efficiency and cash flows over time. We find considerable heterogeneity in individual...

Are the Non-monetary Costs of Energy Efficiency Investments Large? Understanding Low Take-Up of a Free Energy Efficiency Program

By Meredith Fowlie, Michael Greenstone, and Catherine Wolfram

American Economic Review, May 2015

We document very low take-up of an energy efficiency program that is widely believed to be privately beneficial. Program participants receive a substantial home "weatherization" retrofit; all installation and equipment costs are covered by the program. Le...

Moving Up the Energy Ladder: The Effect of an Increase in Economic Well-Being on the Fuel Consumption Choices of the Poor in India

By Rema Hanna and Paulina Oliva

American Economic Review, May 2015

Rising household wealth may potentially impact both total fuel consumption and fuel-type composition, resulting in significant health and environmental implications. Using data from a field experiment in India, we explore the effects of a transfer program...

Understanding Ethnic Identity in Africa: Evidence from the Implicit Association Test (IAT)

By Sara Lowes, Nathan Nunn, James A. Robinson, and Jonathan Weigel

American Economic Review, May 2015

We use a variant of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to examine individuals' implicit attitudes towards various ethnic groups. Using a population from the Democratic Republic of Congo, we find that the IAT measures show evidence of an implicit bias ...

More Money, More Problems? Can High Pay Be Coercive and Repugnant?

By Sandro Ambuehl, Muriel Niederle, and Alvin E. Roth

American Economic Review, May 2015

IRBs can disallow high incentives they deem coercive. A vignette study on MTurk concerning participation in medical trials shows that a substantial minority of subjects concurs. They think high incentives cause more regret, and that more people would be b...