Indirect Effects of a Policy Altering Criminal Behavior: Evidence from the Italian Prison Experiment

By Francesco Drago and Roberto Galbiati

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2012

We exploit the 2006 Italian prison pardon to evaluate peer effects in criminal behavior. The pardon randomly commutes actual sentences to expected sentences for 40 percent of the Italian prison population. Using prison and geographical origin to construct...

Learning Outcomes for Economists

By Sam Allgood and Amanda Bayer

American Economic Review, May 2017

Articulating thoughtful learning outcome statements for courses and majors improves teaching and learning and satisfies accreditation requirements. After reading this paper, economists will be able to construct learning outcome statements that guide and e...

The Utilitarian Relevance of the Aggregation Theorem

By Marc Fleurbaey and Philippe Mongin

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2016

Harsanyi (1955) invested his Aggregation Theorem and Impartial Observer Theorem with utilitarian sense, but Sen (1986) described them as "representation theorems" with little ethical import. This critical view has never been subjected to full analytical s...

Mobile Phones and Economic Development in Africa

By Jenny C. Aker and Isaac M. Mbiti

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2010

Access to and use of mobile telephony in sub-Saharan Africa has increased dramatically over the past decade. Mobile telephony has brought new possibilities to the continent. Across urban-rural and rich-poor divides, mobile phones connect individuals to in...

Optimal Tax Design and Enforcement with an Informal Sector

By Robin Boadway and Motohiro Sato

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2009

An optimal commodity tax approach is taken to compare trade taxes and VATs when some commodities are produced informally. Trade taxes apply to all imports and exports, including intermediate goods, while the VAT applies only to sales by the formal sect...

Creating Modern Art: The Changing Careers of Painters in France from Impressionism to Cubism

By David W. Galenson and Bruce A. Weinberg

American Economic Review, September 2001

The Effect of a Universal Child Benefit on Conceptions, Abortions, and Early Maternal Labor Supply

By Libertad González

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2013

I study the impact of a universal child benefit on fertility and maternal labor supply. I exploit the unanticipated introduction of a sizable child benefit in Spain in 2007. Following a regression discontinuity-type design, I find that the benefit signifi...

Finance and Misallocation: Evidence from Plant-Level Data

By Virgiliu Midrigan and Daniel Yi Xu

American Economic Review, February 2014

We use producer-level data to evaluate the role of financial frictions in determining total factor productivity (TFP). We study a model of establishment dynamics in which financial frictions reduce TFP through two channels. First, finance frictions dis...

Postsecondary Education and Increasing Wage Inequality

By Thomas Lemieux

American Economic Review, May 2006

The Micro-geography of Tax Avoidance: Evidence from Littered Cigarette Packs in Chicago

By David Merriman

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2010

The large tax differentials between Chicago and neighboring jurisdictions provide an incentive for cigarette tax avoidance. Data from a random sample of cigarette packs littered in Chicago reveals a startling degree of tax avoidance: three-quarters did no...

Land and Stock Prices in Japan

By Douglas Stone and William T. Ziemba

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1993

This paper discusses the rise of Japanese stock and land prices in the past four decades and their dramatic decline in the early 1990s. To what extent can fundamental factors explain both the price levels and the returns from land and stock in Japan? Are ...

Demand for Value Added and Value-Added Exchange Rates

By Rudolfs Bems and Robert C. Johnson

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, October 2017

We examine how cross-border input linkages shape the response of demand for value added to international relative price changes. We define a novel value-added real effective exchange rate (REER), which aggregates bilateral value-added price changes. Spill...

Groupy versus Non-Groupy Social Preferences: Personality, Region, and Political Party

By Rachel E. Kranton and Seth G. Sanders

American Economic Review, May 2017

This paper replicates results that some people, when allocating income, are "groupy" and discriminate between in and out groups, but many show no such bias. The paper explores psychometric, demographic, and political correlates. In an M-Turk experiment, n...

Correspondence: Rent-Seeking and the Costs of Protectionism

By Willem Thorbecke

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1993

Illegal Immigration, State Law, and Deterrence

By Mark Hoekstra and Sandra Orozco-Aleman

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2017

A critical immigration policy question is whether state and federal policy can deter undocumented workers from entering the United States. We examine whether Arizona SB 1070, arguably the most restrictive and controversial state immigration law ever passe...

Debt Portfolios and Homestead Exemptions

By Thomas Hintermaier and Winfried Koeniger

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, October 2016

This paper investigates the economic relevance of the large differences in homestead exemptions across US states. We build a structural model for an equilibrium analysis of debt-portfolio choices over the life cycle. Our analysis captures key patterns fro...

Simultaneous Search and Efficiency of Entry and Search Intensity

By Pieter A. Gautier and Christian L. Holzner

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2017

We consider a model where firms open vacancies and post and commit to a wage mechanism. Search is costly and workers simultaneously apply to multiple jobs. Firms can be connected to multiple workers and workers to multiple firms. We use a new method to de...

The Impact of Women's Health Clinic Closures on Preventive Care

By Yao Lu and David J. G. Slusky

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2016

We examine the impact of women's health clinic closures on women's preventive care use in Texas and Wisconsin using a unique policy context, data on clinic street addresses, and confidential respondent ZIP codes from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillanc...

How Progressive is the U.S. Federal Tax System? A Historical and International Perspective

[Symposium: U.S. Tax Policy in International Perspective]

By Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2007

This paper provides estimates of federal tax rates by income groups in the United States since 1960, with special emphasis on very top income groups. We include individual and corporate income taxes, payroll taxes, and estate and gift taxes. The progressi...

Optimal Life Cycle Unemployment Insurance

By Claudio Michelacci and Hernán Ruffo

American Economic Review, February 2015

We argue that US welfare would rise if unemployment insurance were increased for younger and decreased for older workers. This is because the young tend to lack the means to smooth consumption during unemployment and want jobs to accumulate high-return...