Family Labor Supply Responses to Severe Health Shocks: Evidence from Danish Administrative Records

By Itzik Fadlon and Torben Heien Nielsen

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2021

We provide new evidence on households' labor supply responses to fatal and severe nonfatal health shocks in the short run and medium run. To identify causal effects, we leverage administrative data on Danish families and construct counterfactuals using ho...

Information Redundancy Neglect versus Overconfidence: A Social Learning Experiment

By Marco Angrisani, Antonio Guarino, Philippe Jehiel, and Toru Kitagawa

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2021

We study social learning in a continuous action space experiment. Subjects, acting in sequence, state their beliefs about the value of a good after observing their predecessors' statements and a private signal. We compare the behavior in the laboratory wi...

Unit Sales and Price Effects of Preannounced Consumption Tax Reforms: Micro-level Evidence from European VAT

By Thiess Buettner and Boryana Madzharova

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2021

We study the effects of consumption tax changes on prices and unit sales of durables utilizing micro-level product data. The results show that tax rate changes are fully shifted into prices. An anticipated tax rate change causes a temporary shift in unit ...

Consumer Myopia in Vehicle Purchases: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

By Kenneth T. Gillingham, Sébastien Houde, and Arthur A. van Benthem

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2021

A central question in the analysis of fuel economy policy is whether consumers are myopic with regards to future fuel costs. We provide the first evidence on the consumer valuation of fuel economy from a natural experiment that provides exogenous variatio...

The Effect of SNAP on the Composition of Purchased Foods: Evidence and Implications

By Justine Hastings, Ryan Kessler, and Jesse M. Shapiro

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2021

We use detailed data from a large retail panel to study the effect of participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on the composition and nutrient content of foods purchased for at-home consumption. We find that the effect of SNAP...

Inattention and Switching Costs as Sources of Inertia in Medicare Part D

By Florian Heiss, Daniel McFadden, Joachim Winter, Amelie Wuppermann, and Bo Zhou

American Economic Review, September 2021

Consumers' health plan choices are highly persistent even though optimal plans change over time. This paper separates two sources of inertia, inattention to plan choice and switching costs. We develop a panel data model with separate attention and choice ...

The Economics of Technology Sharing: Open Source and Beyond

[Symposium: Intellectual Property Rights]

By Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2005

This paper reviews our understanding of the growing open source movement. We highlight how many aspects of open source software appear initially puzzling to an economist. As we have acknowledged, our ability to answer confidently many of the issues raised...

Gender Identity, Coworking Spouses, and Relative Income within Households

By Natalia Zinovyeva and Maryna Tverdostup

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2021

Bertrand, Kamenica, and Pan (2015) document that in the United States there is a discontinuity to the right of 0.5 in the distribution of households according to the female share of total earnings, which they attribute to the existence of a gender identit...

MPC Heterogeneity and Household Balance Sheets

By Andreas Fagereng, Martin B. Holm, and Gisle J. Natvik

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, October 2021

We use sizable lottery prizes in Norwegian administrative panel data to explore how transitory income shocks are spent and saved over time and how households' marginal propensities to consume (MPCs) vary with household characteristics and shock size. We...

Consumption Inequality and the Frequency of Purchases

By Olivier Coibion, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, and Dmitri Koustas

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, October 2021

We document a decline in the frequency of shopping trips in the United States since 1980 and consider its implications for the measurement of consumption inequality. A decline in shopping frequency as households stock up on storable goods (i.e., inventory...

Voter Turnout and Preference Aggregation

By Kei Kawai, Yuta Toyama, and Yasutora Watanabe

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2021

We study how voter turnout affects the aggregation of preferences in elections. Under voluntary voting, election outcomes disproportionately aggregate the preferences of voters with low voting cost and high preference intensity. We show identification of ...

Subsidizing Fuel-Efficient Cars: Evidence from China's Automobile Industry

By Chia-Wen Chen, Wei-Min Hu, and Christopher R. Knittel

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2021

This paper examines the response of vehicle purchase behavior to China's largest national subsidy program for fuel-efficient vehicles during 2010 and 2011. Using variation from the program's eligibility cutoffs and the rollout of the subsidy program, the ...

Why Are Relatively Poor People Not More Supportive of Redistribution? Evidence from a Randomized Survey Experiment across Ten Countries

By Christopher Hoy and Franziska Mager

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2021

We test a key assumption underlying seminal theories about preferences for redistribution, which is that relatively poor people should be the most in favor of redistribution. We conduct a randomized survey experiment with over 30,000 participants across 1...

Network Externality and Subsidy Structure in Two-Sided Markets: Evidence from Electric Vehicle Incentives

By Katalin Springel

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2021

This paper uses new, large-scale vehicle registry data from Norway and a two-sided market framework to show nonneutrality of different subsidies and estimate their impact on electric vehicle adoption when network externalities are present. Estimates sugge...

Rational Habit Formation: Experimental Evidence from Handwashing in India

By Reshmaan Hussam, Atonu Rabbani, Giovanni Reggiani, and Natalia Rigol

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2022

We test the predictions of the rational addiction model, reconceptualized as rational habit formation, in the context of handwashing in rural India. To track handwashing, we design soap dispensers with timed sensors. We test for rational habit formation b...

Issuance and Incidence: SNAP Benefit Cycles and Grocery Prices

By Jacob Goldin, Tatiana Homonoff, and Katherine Meckel

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

Many safety net programs issue benefits as monthly lump-sum payments. We investigate how the timing of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit issuance affects food purchases and the incidence of the transfer. Using scanner data from a la...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2005

Comments

By Lawrence H. Goulder, Ian W.H. Parry, and Roberton C. Williams III

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2005

Risk Exposure and Acquisition of Macroeconomic Information

By Christopher Roth, Sonja Settele, and Johannes Wohlfart

American Economic Review: Insights, March 2022

We conduct an experiment with a representative sample from the United States to study households' demand for macroeconomic information. Respondents who learn of a higher personal exposure to unemployment risk during recessions increase their demand for an...

Formative Experiences and the Price of Gasoline

By Christopher Severen and Arthur A. van Benthem

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2022

Formative experiences shape behavior for decades. We document a striking feature about those who came of driving age during the oil crises of the 1970s⁠—they drive less in the year 2000. The effect is not specific to these cohorts; price variation ove...