Commanding Nature by Obeying Her: A Review Essay on Joel Mokyr's A Culture of Growth

By Enrico Spolaore

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2020

Why is modern society capable of cumulative innovation? In A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy, Joel Mokyr persuasively argues that sustained technological progress stemmed from a change in cultural beliefs. The change occu...

Explaining the Decline in the US Employment-to-Population Ratio: A Review of the Evidence

By Katharine G. Abraham and Melissa S. Kearney

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2020

This paper first documents trends in employment rates and then reviews what is known about the various factors that have been proposed to explain the decline in the overall employment-to-population ratio between 1999 and 2018. Population aging has had...

Where Economics Went Wrong: A Review Essay

By Marianne Johnson

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2020

In their recent book, Where Economics Went Wrong, David Colander and Craig Freedman (2019) argue that economics went wrong when it abandoned the Classical liberal firewall that demanded separation of scientific theory from the art of policy m...

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2020

Book Reviews

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2020

Annotated Listing of New Books

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2020

JEL Classification System

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2020

Policy and Protocol on Third-Party Verifications

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The Road to Serfdom after 75 Years

By Bruce Caldwell

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2020

This paper revisits Friedrich Hayek's book, The Road to Serfdom, on the seventy-fifth anniversary of its publication. Though the book is well-known, its arguments are often mischaracterized. The paper traces the origins of the book, noting the va...

Policy Language and Information Effects in the Early Days of Federal Reserve Forward Guidance

By Kurt G. Lunsford

American Economic Review, September 2020

I show that the nature of the Federal Open Market Committee's (FOMC's) forward guidance language shapes the private sector's responses to monetary policy statements. From February 2000 to June 2003, the FOMC only gave forward guidance about economic outlo...

You don’t have to put on the red-light cameras

[Research Highlight]

September 10, 2020

Does monitoring traffic intersections make them safer?

Criminal Deterrence When There Are Offsetting Risks: Traffic Cameras, Vehicular Accidents, and Public Safety

By Justin Gallagher and Paul J. Fisher

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2020

Numerous cities have enacted electronic monitoring programs at traffic intersections in an effort to reduce the high number of vehicle accidents. The rationale is that the higher expected fines for running a red light will induce drivers to stop and lead ...

EconTrack: The AEA's Job Market Information Board

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Learning to insure against bad weather

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Why don't poor farmers take advantage of coverage for natural disasters?

Reviving distressed communities

[Research Highlight]

September 09, 2020

Tim Bartik of the Upjohn Institute on how economic development policy is shortchanging poor regions.

The DNA of New Exporters: Spin-offs and FDI at the Extensive Margin of Trade

By Bernardo S. Blum, Sebastian Claro, Ignatius Horstmann, and Trevor Tombe

American Economic Review: Insights, September 2020

Other than that new exporters account for a large part of aggregate export growth, we know little else. We document that aggregate export growth in Chile is driven by only a few new exporters. These exporters are new business entities, operate new plants,...

The DNA of new exporters

[Research Highlight]

September 20, 2020

Which companies are successful at selling abroad?

The next big thing

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A lot of cities want to be the next Silicon Valley, but transforming into a high-tech hub is not that easy.

Nonrivalry and the Economics of Data

By Charles I. Jones and Christopher Tonetti

American Economic Review, September 2020

Data is nonrival: a person's location history, medical records, and driving data can be used by many firms simultaneously. Nonrivalry leads to increasing returns. As a result, there may be social gains to data being used broadly across firms, even in the ...