A Random Reference Model

By Özgür Kibris, Yusufcan Masatlioglu, and Elchin Suleymanov

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2024

We provide two nested models of random reference-dependent choice in which the reference point is endogenously determined by random processes. Random choice behavior is due to random reference points, even though, from the decision-maker's viewpoint, choi...

Constructive versus Toxic Argumentation in Debates

By Tymofiy Mylovanov and Andriy Zapechelnyuk

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2024

Two debaters address an audience by sequentially choosing their information strategies. We compare the setting where the second mover reveals additional information (constructive argumentation) with the setting where the second mover obfuscates the first ...

Innovation in Decentralized Markets: Technology versus Synthetic Products

By Marzena Rostek and Ji Hee Yoon

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2024

Advances in market-clearing technology for multiple assets and synthetic products present alternative ways to leverage complementarities and substitutabilities in asset payoffs. This paper compares their equilibrium and welfare effects. In competitive mar...

Predicting Cooperation with Learning Models

By Drew Fudenberg and Gustav Karreskog Rehbinder

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2024

We use simulations of a simple learning model to predict cooperation rates in the experimental play of the indefinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma. We suppose that learning and the game parameters only influence play in the initial round of each supergam...

Coordination in the Fight against Collusion

By Elisabetta Iossa, Simon Loertscher, Leslie M. Marx, and Patrick Rey

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2024

While antitrust authorities strive to detect, prosecute, and thereby deter collusive conduct, entities harmed by that conduct are also advised to pursue their own strategies to deter collusion. The implications of such delegation of deterrence have largel...

Weighted Utility and Optimism/Pessimism: A Decision-Theoretic Foundation of Various Stochastic Dominance Orders

By Tao Wang and Ehud Lehrer

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2024

We show that a probability distribution likelihood ratio dominates another distribution if and only if, for every weighted utility function, the former is preferred over the latter. Likewise, a probability distribution hazard rate (or reverse hazard rate)...

Anticompetitive Bundling When Buyers Compete

By Alexandre de Cornière and Greg Taylor

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2024

We study the profitability of bundling by an upstream firm that licenses technologies to downstream competitors and that faces competition for one of its technologies. In an otherwise standard "Chicago-style" model, the existence of downstream competition...

Intertemporal Altruism

By Felix Chopra, Armin Falk, and Thomas Graeber

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2024

Most prosocial decisions involve intertemporal trade-offs. Yet, the timing of prosocial utility flows is ambiguous and bypassed by most models of other-regarding preferences. We study the behavioral implications of the time structure of prosocial utility,...

Autocracies in the information age

[Research Highlight]

July 07, 2020

UCLA professor Daniel Treisman discusses how today’s dictators retain their power and how to fight back.

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2024

Behavioral Responses to State Income Taxation of High Earners: Evidence from California

By Joshua Rauh and Ryan Shyu

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2024

Using administrative data, we analyze the response to Proposition 30, a 2012 measure that increased California marginal tax rates by up to 3 percentage points for high-income households. Relative to baseline departure rates, an additional 0.8 percent of t...

Hassle Costs versus Information: How Do Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs Reduce Opioid Prescribing?

By Abby Alpert, Sarah Dykstra, and Mireille Jacobson

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2024

We study hassle costs versus information provision in explaining how prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) decrease opioid prescribing. PDMPs aim to reduce opioid prescribing through information provision but may also unintentionally affect prescr...

Fighting Crime in Lawless Areas: Evidence from Slums in Rio de Janeiro

By Christophe Bellégo and Joeffrey Drouard

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2024

We use Rio de Janeiro's slum pacification program initiated in 2008 to analyze the effect of policies targeting crime in lawless areas. We correct the bias from the unobserved rise in crime reporting via the use of a proxy variable and bounded variation a...

Does Health Care Consolidation Harm Patients? Evidence from Maternity Ward Closures

By Daniel Avdic, Petter Lundborg, and Johan Vikström

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2024

We study how closures of maternity wards affect maternal and neonatal health. Using data on all hospital births in Sweden between 1990 and 2004, we compare changes in birth-related outcomes across hospital catchment areas that were differently exposed to ...

Attendance Boundary Policies and the Limits to Combating School Segregation

By Andreas Bjerre-Nielsen and Mikkel Høst Gandil

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2024

What is the efficacy of redrawing school attendance boundaries as a desegregation policy? To provide causal evidence on this question, we employ novel data with unprecedented detail on the universe of Danish children and exploit changes in attendance boun...

Labor Supply Responses to Income Taxation among Older Couples: Evidence from a Canadian Reform

By Derek Messacar

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2024

I assess whether the tax code is a viable policy lever for influencing labor supply among older workers. Specifically, using administrative data from Canada, I estimate the earnings responses to a unique reform that lowered tax burdens for couples with a ...

Increasing the Retirement Age: Policy Effects and Underlying Mechanisms

By Simon Rabaté, Egbert Jongen, and Tilbe Atav

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2024

We study the effects of increasing the statutory retirement age (SRA) in the Netherlands, using regression discontinuity design and administrative data on the universe of the population. We find clear and large employment effects of the reform. A simple m...

The Impact of Improving Access to Support Services for Victims of Domestic Violence on Demand for Services and Victim Outcomes

By Martin Foureaux Koppensteiner, Jesse Matheson, and Réka Plugor

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2024

We conducted a randomized controlled trial of an intervention designed to assist victims of domestic violence in accessing nonpolice support services. The intervention led to a 22 percent decrease in the fraction of victims providing a witness statement t...

Regulating Privacy Online: An Economic Evaluation of the GDPR

By Samuel G. Goldberg, Garrett A. Johnson, and Scott K. Shriver

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2024

Modern websites rely on personal data to design better content and to market themselves. The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was intended to make access to such personal data more difficult, with the goal of protecting user priv...

The Introduction of the Income Tax, Fiscal Capacity, and Migration: Evidence from US States

By Traviss Cassidy, Mark Dincecco, and Ugo Antonio Troiano

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2024

We evaluate how fiscal capacity and migration respond to the introduction of the individual income tax, drawing on new panel data on US states from 1900 to 2010. We find that the introduction of the income tax increased revenue per capita by 12 percent in...