Carbon Markets 15 Years after Kyoto: Lessons Learned, New Challenges

[Symposium: Trading Pollution Permits]

By Richard G. Newell, William A. Pizer, and Daniel Raimi

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2013

Carbon markets are substantial and they are expanding. There are many lessons from market experiences over the past eight years: there should be fewer free allowances, better management of market-sensitive information, and a recognition that trading syste...

What Matters (and What Does Not) in Households' Decision to Invest in Malaria Prevention?

By Pascaline Dupas

American Economic Review, May 2009

Retrospectives: Adam Smith's Invisible Hands

By Joseph Persky

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1989

After more than two centuries, Adam Smith's famous simile comparing the market system to an invisible hand continues to convey the essential message of Anglo-American political economy. In fact, Smith's buoyant optimism in the efficacy of his system of "n...

Acquisitions, Productivity, and Profitability: Evidence from the Japanese Cotton Spinning Industry

By Serguey Braguinsky, Atsushi Ohyama, Tetsuji Okazaki, and Chad Syverson

American Economic Review, July 2015

We explore how changes in ownership affect the productivity and profitability of producers. Using detailed data from the Japanese cotton spinning industry at the turn of the last century, we find that acquired firms' production facilities were not on aver...

Economics of the Endangered Species Act

[Symposium: Endangered Species Act]

By Gardner M. Brown and Jason F. Shogren

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1998

The Endangered Species Act of 1973 is one of our most far-reaching and controversial environmental laws. While the benefits of protecting endangered species accrue to the entire nation, a significant fraction of the costs are borne by the private landowne...

Welfare Consequences of Information Aggregation and Optimal Market Size

By Kei Kawakami

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2017

We analyze the welfare implications of information aggregation in a trading model where traders have both idiosyncratic endowment risk and asymmetric information about security payoffs. The optimal market size balances two forces: (i) the risk-sharing rol...

Corrigendum: Women, Wealth, and Mobility

By Lena Edlund and Wojciech Kopczuk

American Economic Review, June 2009

Growth Forecast Errors and Fiscal Multipliers

By Olivier J. Blanchard and Daniel Leigh

American Economic Review, May 2013

This paper investigates the relation between growth forecast errors and planned fiscal consolidation during the crisis. We find that, in advanced economies, stronger planned fiscal consolidation has been associated with lower growth than expected. The re...

From Exxon to BP: Has Some Number Become Better Than No Number?

[Symposium: Contingent Valuation]

By Catherine L. Kling, Daniel J. Phaneuf, and Jinhua Zhao

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2012

On March 23, 1989, the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska's Prince William Sound and released over 250,000 barrels of crude oil, resulting in 1300 miles of oiled shoreline. The Exxon spill ignited a debate about the appropriate compensation for damages su...

Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity and the Case for Temporary Inflation in the Eurozone

[Symposium: The Euro]

By Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé and Martin Uribe

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2013

Since the onset of the Great Recession in peripheral Europe, nominal hourly wages have not fallen from the high levels they had reached during the boom years -- this in spite of widespread increases in unemployment. This observation evokes a well-known ...

Cognition and Incomplete Contracts

By Jean Tirole

American Economic Review, March 2009

Thinking about contingencies, designing covenants, and seeing through their implications is costly. Parties to a contract accordingly use heuristics and leave it incomplete. The paper develops a model of limited cognition and examines its consequences ...

Retirement and Home Production: A Regression Discontinuity Approach

By Elena Stancanelli and Arthur Van Soest

American Economic Review, May 2012

Existing studies show that individuals who retire replace some private consumption with home production, but do not consider joint behavior of couples. Here we analyze the causal effect of retirement of each partner on hours of home production for both pa...

Monetary Policy Rules Based on Real-Time Data

By Athanasios Orphanides

American Economic Review, September 2001

This paper examines the magnitude of informational problems associated with the implementation and interpretation of simple monetary policy rules. Using Taylor's rule as an example, I demonstrate that real-time policy recommendations differ considerably f...

Housing Market Spillovers: Evidence from an Estimated DSGE Model

By Matteo Iacoviello and Stefano Neri

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2010

We study sources and consequences of fluctuations in the US housing market. Slow technological progress in the housing sector explains the upward trend in real housing prices of the last 40 years. Over the business cycle, housing demand and housing tec...

International Productivity Comparisons Built from the Firm Level

By Martin Neil Baily and Robert M. Solow

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2001

International productivity comparisons can be built up with micro and macro data. Studies of firms or groups of firms producing similar outputs reveal the deeper causes of differences in productivity across countries. The studies find that such difference...

Report of the Editor: American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics

By Richard Rogerson

American Economic Review, May 2016

Social Security

By Peter Diamond

American Economic Review, March 2004

The Impact of Temporary Protected Status on Immigrants' Labor Market Outcomes

By Pia M. Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny

American Economic Review, May 2015

The United States currently provides Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to more than 300,000 immigrants. TPS is typically granted if dangerous conditions prevail in migrants' home countries. Individuals with TPS are allowed to stay and work in the United St...

The Demand for Medical Male Circumcision

By Jobiba Chinkhumba, Susan Godlonton, and Rebecca Thornton

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2014

This paper measures the demand for adult medical male circumcision using an experiment that randomly offered varying-priced subsidies and comprehensive information to 1,600 uncircumcised men in urban Malawi. We find low demand for male circumcision: on...

Dynamic Implications of Subjective Expectations: Evidence from Adult Smokers

By Yang Wang

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2014

We set up a dynamic discrete choice model with subjective expectations data to explain adult smokers' find important differences between subjective survival probabilities and those estimated using observed mortality data. Subjectively, individuals att...