Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2019

Dynamic Non-monetary Incentives

By Daniel Bird and Alexander Frug

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2019

We study a principal-agent interaction where investments and rewards arrive stochastically over time and are privately observed by the agent. Investments (costly for the agent, beneficial for the principal) can be concealed by the agent. Rewards (benefici...

Predicting and Understanding Initial Play

By Drew Fudenberg and Annie Liang

American Economic Review, December 2019

We use machine learning to uncover regularities in the initial play of matrix games. We first train a prediction algorithm on data from past experiments. Examining the games where our algorithm predicts correctly, but existing economic models don't, leads...

Proposition 13: An Equilibrium Analysis

By Ayşe İmrohoroğlu, Kyle Matoba, and Şelale Tüzel

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2018

There are many federal, state, and local laws that distort housing decisions and prices. However, it is often difficult to tease out the quantitative impact of such policies. In this paper, we examine the implications of one of the most significant tax ch...

Honesty via Choice-Matching

By Jakša Cvitanić, Dražen Prelec, Blake Riley, and Benjamin Tereick

American Economic Review: Insights, September 2019

We introduce choice-matching, a class of mechanisms for eliciting honest responses to a multiple choice question (MCQ), as might appear in a market research study, opinion poll, or economics experiment. Under choice-matching, respondents are compensated t...

Front Matter

American Economic Review, February 2019

Correcting for Misreporting of Government Benefits

By Nikolas Mittag

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2019

Data linkage studies often document, but do not remedy, severe survey errors. To improve survey estimates despite restricted linked data access, this paper develops a convenient and general estimation method that combines public use data with conditional ...

Government Spending Multipliers under the Zero Lower Bound: Evidence from Japan

By Wataru Miyamoto, Thuy Lan Nguyen, and Dmitriy Sergeyev

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, July 2018

Using a rich dataset on government spending forecasts in Japan, we provide new evidence on the effects of unexpected changes in government spending when the nominal interest rate is near the zero lower bound (ZLB). The on-impact output multiplier is 1.5 i...

Neutral Bargaining in Financial Over-The-Counter Markets

By Jin Yeub Kim

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2019

I study bargaining over prices between two investors in financial over-the-counter markets with asymmetric information. I focus on environments in which an asset owner has private information about both her liquidity state and asset quality, and so a buye...

Randomizing Endowments: An Experimental Study of Rational Expectations and Reference-Dependent Preferences

By Annette Cerulli-Harms, Lorenz Goette, and Charles Sprenger

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2019

We test expectations-based reference dependence in market experiments with probabilistic forced exchange. Koszegi and Rabin (2006) predict that when the probability of forced exchange increases, individuals cannot expect to stick with the status quo, an...

Fairness and Frictions: The Impact of Unequal Raises on Quit Behavior

By Arindrajit Dube, Laura Giuliano, and Jonathan Leonard

American Economic Review, February 2019

We analyze how separations responded to arbitrary differences in own and peer wages at a large US retailer. Regression-discontinuity estimates imply large causal effects of own-wages on separations, and on quits in particular. However, this own-wage respo...

Teamwork as a Self-Disciplining Device

By Matthias Fahn and Hendrik Hakenes

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2019

We show that team formation can serve as an implicit commitment device to overcome problems of self-control. If individuals have present-biased preferences, effort that is costly today but rewarded at some later point in time is too low from the perspecti...

Do Credit Market Shocks Affect the Real Economy? Quasi-experimental Evidence from the Great Recession and "Normal" Economic Times

By Michael Greenstone, Alexandre Mas, and Hoai-Luu Nguyen

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2020

Using comprehensive data on bank lending and establishment-level outcomes from 1997–2010, this paper finds that small business lending is an unimportant determinant of small business and overall economic activity. A shift-share style research design is ...

Missing Growth from Creative Destruction

By Philippe Aghion, Antonin Bergeaud, Timo Boppart, Peter J. Klenow, and Huiyu Li

American Economic Review, August 2019

For exiting products, statistical agencies often impute inflation from surviving products. This understates growth if creatively-destroyed products improve more than surviving ones. If so, then the market share of surviving products should systematically ...

Physician Beliefs and Patient Preferences: A New Look at Regional Variation in Health Care Spending

By David Cutler, Jonathan S. Skinner, Ariel Dora Stern, and David Wennberg

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2019

There is considerable controversy about the causes of regional variations in health care expenditures. Using vignettes from patient and physician surveys linked to fee-for-service Medicare expenditures, this study asks whether patient demand-side factors ...

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2018

The Violent Consequences of Trade-Induced Worker Displacement in Mexico

By Melissa Dell, Benjamin Feigenberg, and Kensuke Teshima

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2019

Mexican manufacturing job loss induced by competition with China increases cocaine trafficking and violence, particularly in municipalities with transnational criminal organizations. When it becomes more lucrative to traffic drugs because changes in local...

Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican Bracero Exclusion

By Michael A. Clemens, Ethan G. Lewis, and Hannah M. Postel

American Economic Review, June 2018

An important class of active labor market policy has received little impact evaluation: immigration barriers intended to raise wages and employment by shrinking labor supply. Theories of endogenous technical advance raise the possibility of limited or eve...

Labor Supply and the Value of Non-work Time: Experimental Estimates from the Field

By Alexandre Mas and Amanda Pallais

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2019

We estimate the marginal value of non-work time (MVT) using a field experiment. We offered job applicants randomized wage-hour bundles. Choices over these bundles yield estimates of the MVT as a function of hours, tracing out a labor supply relationship. ...

Leader Selection and Service Delivery in Community Groups: Experimental Evidence from Uganda

By Erika Deserranno, Miri Stryjan, and Munshi Sulaiman

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2019

In developing countries, NGOs and governments often rely on local groups for the delivery of financial and public services. This paper studies how the design of rules used for group leader selection affects leader identity and shapes service delivery. To ...