International Financial Crises: Causes, Prevention, and Cures

By Lawrence H. Summers

American Economic Review, May 2000

Risk Sharing and Transactions Costs: Evidence from Kenya's Mobile Money Revolution

By William Jack and Tavneet Suri

American Economic Review, January 2014

We explore the impact of reduced transaction costs on risk sharing by estimating the effects of a mobile money innovation on consumption. In our panel sample, adoption of the innovation increased from 43 to 70 percent. We find that, while shocks reduce...

Using Performance on the Job to Inform Teacher Tenure Decisions

By Dan Goldhaber and Michael Hansen

American Economic Review, May 2010

The Declining Price Anomaly in Dutch Dutch Rose Auctions

By Gerard J. van den Berg, Jan C. van Ours, and Menno P. Pradhan

American Economic Review, September 2001

Decision Making in Committees: Transparency, Reputation, and Voting Rules

By Gilat Levy

American Economic Review, March 2007

In this paper I analyze the effect of transparency on decision making in committees. I focus on committees whose members are motivated by career concerns. The main result is that when the decision-making process is secretive (when individual votes are ...

Consumer Shopping Behavior: How Much Do Consumers Save?

[Symposium: Price Variation for Households]

By Rachel Griffith, Ephraim Leibtag, Andrew Leicester, and Aviv Nevo

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2009

This paper documents the potential and actual savings that consumers realize from four particular types of purchasing behavior: purchasing on sale; buying in bulk (at a lower per unit price); buying generic brands; and choosing outlets. How much can and d...

The Government's Valuation of Military Life-Saving in War: A Cost Minimization Approach

By Chris Rohlfs

American Economic Review, May 2006

Toward a New Conception of the Environment-Competitiveness Relationship

[Symposium: Might Environmental Regulation Promote Growth?]

By Michael E. Porter and Claas van der Linde

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1995

Accepting a fixed trade-off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress. Studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts, ignor...

Gender Differences in the Labor-Market Effects of the Dollar

By Linda Goldberg and Joseph Tracy

American Economic Review, May 2001

Employee Initiative and Managerial Control

By Heikki Rantakari

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2012

I analyze the impact of managerial involvement and the allocation of authority on employee initiative in a setting where both a manager and an employee can originate new ideas for implementation. I show that employee initiative is maximized through the co...

A Female Style in Corporate Leadership? Evidence from Quotas

By David A. Matsa and Amalia R. Miller

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2013

This paper studies the impact of gender quotas for corporate board seats on corporate decisions. We examine the introduction of Norway's 2006 quota, comparing affected firms to other Nordic companies, public and private, that are unaffected by the rule...

The Effects of Tobacco Control Policies on Tobacco Products, Tar, and Nicotine Purchases among Adults: Evidence from Household Panel Data

By Chad Cotti, Erik Nesson, and Nathan Tefft

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2016

We analyze the Nielsen Household Consumer Panel to estimate the effects of tobacco policies on tobacco-related purchases using within-household variation. We also match purchases to cigarette contents from NHANES. Higher cigarette taxes reduce cigarette p...

Lemons Markets and the Transmission of Aggregate Shocks

By Pablo Kurlat

American Economic Review, June 2013

I study a dynamic economy featuring adverse selection in asset markets. Borrowing-constrained entrepreneurs sell past projects to finance new investment, but asymmetric information creates a lemons problem. I show that this friction is equivalent to a tax...

Short-Run Impacts of Accountability on School Quality

By Jonah Rockoff and Lesley J. Turner

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2010

In the fall of 2007, New York City began using student tests and other measures to assign each school a grade (A to F), and linked grades to rewards and consequences, including possible school closure. These grades were released in late September, arguabl...

Widening and Deepening: Reforming the European Union

By Erik Berglof, Mike Burkart, Guido Friebel, and Elena Paltseva

American Economic Review, May 2008

Retrospectives: Challenges to Free Trade

By Douglas A. Irwin

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1991

The recent theoretical literature on strategic trade policy suggests that government intervention in international trade has the potential to be welfare improving. Government promotion of exports from imperfectly competitive industries, for example, may e...

Limited Life Expectancy, Human Capital and Health Investments

By Emily Oster, Ira Shoulson, and E. Ray Dorsey

American Economic Review, August 2013

Human capital theory predicts that life expectancy will impact human capital attainment. We estimate this relationship using variation in life expectancy driven by Huntington disease, an inherited neurological disorder. We compare investments for individu...

Two Generalizations of a Deposit-Refund Systems

By Don Fullerton and Ann Wolverton

American Economic Review, May 2000

Activist Fiscal Policy

By Alan J. Auerbach, William G. Gale, and Benjamin H. Harris

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2010

During and after the "Great Recession" that began in December 2007, the U.S. federal government enacted several rounds of activist fiscal policy. In this paper, we review the recent evolution of thinking and evidence regarding the effectiveness of activis...

Entrepreneurial Innovation: Killer Apps in the iPhone Ecosystem

By Pai-Ling Yin, Jason P. Davis, and Yulia Muzyrya

American Economic Review, May 2014

The mobile applications (apps) industry has exhibited rapid entry and growth in the midst of a recession. Using unique data from the iPhone application ecosystem, we examine how the development of "killer apps" (apps appearing in the top grossing rank) va...