Payment Size, Negative Equity, and Mortgage Default

By Andreas Fuster and Paul S. Willen

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2017

This paper studies the treatment effect of monthly payment size on mortgage default, using a sample of adjustable-rate loans that experienced large payment reductions thanks to the recent low interest rate environment. Payment size has an economically lar...

Sequential Markets, Market Power, and Arbitrage

By Koichiro Ito and Mar Reguant

American Economic Review, July 2016

We develop a framework to characterize strategic behavior in sequential markets under imperfect competition and restricted entry in arbitrage. Our theory predicts that these two elements can generate a systematic price premium. We test the model predictio...

On the Potential of Neuroeconomics: A Critical (but Hopeful) Appraisal

By B. Douglas Bernheim

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2009

This paper attempts to identify and articulate the specific ways in which the emerging field of neuroeconomics might shed light on traditional positive and normative questions in economics, as well as the likely limitations of its potential contributio...

One Laptop per Child at Home: Short-Term Impacts from a Randomized Experiment in Peru

By Diether W. Beuermann, Julian Cristia, Santiago Cueto, Ofer Malamud, and Yyannu Cruz-Aguayo

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2015

This paper presents results from a randomized controlled trial whereby approximately 1,000 OLPC XO laptops were provided for home use to children attending primary schools in Lima, Peru. The intervention increased access and use of home computers, with so...

Does Studying Economics Discourage Cooperation? Watch What We Do, Not What We Say or How We Play

By Anthony M. Yezer, Robert S. Goldfarb, and Paul J. Poppen

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1996

Based on what economics students say and how they play games, economics students appear less cooperative than other students. But appearances can be deceiving: the evidence in this paper indicates that the actual behavior of economics students is more coo...

Harsanyi's Aggregation Theorem with Incomplete Preferences

By Eric Danan, Thibault Gajdos, and Jean-Marc Tallon

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2015

We provide a generalization of Harsanyi's (1955) aggregation theorem to the case of incomplete preferences at the individual and social level. Individuals and society have possibly incomplete expected utility preferences that are represented by sets of ex...

Iron Deficiency and Schooling Attainment in Peru

By Alberto Chong, Isabelle Cohen, Erica Field, Eduardo Nakasone, and Maximo Torero

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2016

Do nutritional deficiencies contribute to the intergenerational persistence of poverty by reducing the earnings potential of future generations? To address this question, we made available supplemental iron pills at a health center in rural Peru and encou...

Thirty Years of Prospect Theory in Economics: A Review and Assessment

By Nicholas C. Barberis

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2013

In 1979, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, published a paper in Econometrica titled "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk." The paper presented a new model of risk attitudes called "prospect theory," which elegantly captured the e...

Pass-Through in Retail and Wholesale

By Emi Nakamura

American Economic Review, May 2008

Sacred Cars? Cost-Effective Regulation of Stationary and Nonstationary Pollution Sources

By Meredith Fowlie, Christopher R. Knittel, and Catherine Wolfram

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2012

For political and practical reasons, environmental regulations sometimes treat point-source polluters, such as power plants, differently from mobile-source polluters, such as vehicles. This paper measures the extent of this regulatory asymmetry in the cas...

Federalism as a Commitment to Reserving Market Incentives

[Symposium: Fiscal Federalism]

By Yingyi Qian and Barry R. Weingast

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1997

The authors advance a new perspective in the study of federalism. Their approach views federalism as a governance solution of the state to credibly preserving market incentives. Market incentives are preserved if the state is credibly prevented from compr...

Managerial Attention and Worker Performance

By Marina Halac and Andrea Prat

American Economic Review, October 2016

We present a novel theory of the employment relationship. A manager can invest in attention technology to recognize good worker performance. The technology may break and is costly to replace. We show that as time passes without recognition, the worker's b...

Nonparametric Evidence on the Effects of Financial Incentives on Retirement Decisions

By Day Manoli and Andrea Weber

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2016

This paper presents new evidence on the effects of retirement benefits on labor force participation decisions. The analysis is based on a mandated rule for employer-provided retirement benefits in Austria that creates discontinuities in the incentives for...

How Do You Measure a "Technological Revolution"?

By Carol A. Corrado and Charles R. Hulten

American Economic Review, May 2010

Gender Differences in Accepting and Receiving Requests for Tasks with Low Promotability

By Linda Babcock, Maria P. Recalde, Lise Vesterlund, and Laurie Weingart

American Economic Review, March 2017

Gender differences in task allocations may sustain vertical gender segregation in labor markets. We examine the allocation of a task that everyone prefers be completed by someone else (writing a report, serving on a committee, etc.) and find evidence that...

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2014

Group Strategy-Proofness in Private Good Economies

By Salvador Barberà, Dolors Berga, and Bernardo Moreno

American Economic Review, April 2016

Many salient rules to allocate private goods are not only strategy-proof, but also group strategy-proof, in appropriate domains of definition, hence diminishing the traditional conflict between incentives and efficiency. That is so for solutions to matc...

Input Sourcing and Multinational Production

By Stefania Garetto

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2013

I propose a general equilibrium framework where firms decide whether to outsource or integrate input manufacturing, domestically or abroad. By outsourcing, firms may benefit from suppliers' technologies, but pay mark-up prices. By sourcing intrafirm, th...

How Big a Problem is Too Big to Fail? A Review of Gary Stern and Ron Feldman's Too Big to Fail: The Hazards of Bank Bailouts

By Frederic S. Mishkin

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2006

This review essay examines whether too-big-to-fail is as serious a problem as Gary Stern and Ron Feldman contend. This essay argues that Stern and Feldman overstate the importance of the too-big-to-fail problem and do not give enough credit to the FDIC...

What Does Debt Relief Do for Development? Evidence from India's Bailout for Rural Households

By Martin Kanz

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2016

This paper studies the impact of debt relief, using a natural experiment arising from India's "Agricultural Debt Waiver and Debt Relief Scheme," one of the largest household-level debt relief initiatives in history. I find that debt relief has a substanti...