Selling to Overconfident Consumers

By Michael D. Grubb

American Economic Review, December 2009

Consumers may overestimate the precision of their demand forecasts. This overconfidence creates an incentive for both monopolists and competitive firms to offer tariffs with included quantities at zero marginal cost, followed by steep marginal charges....

Discounting and Growth

By Christian Gollier

American Economic Review, May 2014

In a growing economy, the discount rate to evaluate a long-term investment is the minimum rate of expected return that compensates for the increased intergenerational inequalities. Because the growth rate is uncertain, there is a precautionary argument in...

Credit Market Speculation and the Cost of Capital

By Yeon-Koo Che and Rajiv Sethi

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2014

We examine the effect of speculation using credit derivatives on the cost of debt and the likelihood of default. The availability of credit default swaps induces investors who are optimistic about borrower revenues to sell protection instead of buying b...

Introduction to the Symposium on Business Cycles

[Symposium: Business Cycles]

By J. Bradford De Long

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1999

The Global Capital Market: Benefactor or Menace?

[Symposium: Globalization in Perspective]

By Maurice Obstfeld

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1998

This paper reviews the theoretical functions, history, and policy problems raised by the international capital market. The goal is to offer a perspective on both the considerable advantages the market offers and on the genuine hazards it poses, as well as...

Not So Demanding: Demand Structure and Firm Behavior

By Monika Mrázová and J. Peter Neary

American Economic Review, December 2017

We show that any well-behaved demand function can be represented by its "demand manifold," a smooth curve that relates the elasticity and convexity of demand. This manifold is a sufficient statistic for many comparative statics questions; leads naturally ...

Becoming the Neighbor Bidder: Endogenous Winner's Curse in Dynamic Mechanisms

By Alejandro Francetich

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, May 2015

This paper addresses the problem of sequentially allocating time sensitive goods, or one-period leases on a durable good, among agents who compete through time and learn about the common component of their valuation privately through experience. I show th...

Sale Rates and Price Movements in Art Auctions

By Orley Ashenfelter and Kathryn Graddy

American Economic Review, May 2011

This paper examines the relationship between sale rates and price shocks in art auctions. Using data on contemporary and impressionist art, we show that while sale rates appear to have little relationship to current prices, there exists a strong negative ...

Semiparametric Censored Regression Models

[Symposium: Econometric Tools]

By Kenneth Y. Chay and James L. Powell

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2001

When data are censored, ordinary least squares regression can provide biased coefficient estimates. Maximum likelihood approaches to this problem are valid only if the error distribution is correctly specified, which can be problematic in practice. We rev...

Robert E. Lucas Jr.'s Collected Papers on Monetary Theory

By Thomas J. Sargent

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2015

This paper is a critical review of and a reader's guide to a collection of papers by Robert E. Lucas, Jr. about fruitful ways of using general equilibrium theories to understand measured economic aggregates. These beautifully written and wisely argued pap...

Doctoral Dissertations in Economics One-Hundred-Fifth Annual List

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2008

Earnings, Disposable Income, and Consumption of Allowed and Rejected Disability Insurance Applicants

By Andreas Ravndal Kostøl and Magne Mogstad

American Economic Review, May 2015

Two key questions in thinking about the size and growth of the disability insurance program are to what extent it discourages work, and how valuable the insurance is to individuals and families. These questions motivate our paper. We begin by describing t...

The Making of an Economist

By David Colander and Arjo Klamer

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1987

As economists, we have an interest in and individual knowledge of the initiation process that turns students into professional economists. However, other than anecdotal evidence, very little in the way of data exists. This paper is a step toward providing...

The Test of Understanding of College Economics

By William B. Walstad and Ken Rebeck

American Economic Review, May 2008

Disability Screening and Labor Supply: Evidence from South Africa

By Sophie Mitra

American Economic Review, May 2009

Privacy and Data-Based Research

[Symposium: Big Data]

By Ori Heffetz and Katrina Ligett

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2014

What can we, as users of microdata, formally guarantee to the individuals (or firms) in our dataset, regarding their privacy? We retell a few stories, well-known in data-privacy circles, of failed anonymization attempts in publicly released datasets. We t...

From Inflation to More Inflation, Disinflation, and Low Inflation

By Allan H. Meltzer

American Economic Review, May 2006

Equity Effects of the Tax Reform Act of 1986

[Symposium: Tax Reform Act of 1986]

By Jane G. Gravelle

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1992

The major goals of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 included an increase in the equity of the tax system. We will consider the effects of the tax reform on vertical equity, horizontal equity, and intergenerational equity.

Using Tax Expenditures to Achieve Energy Policy Goals

By Gilbert E. Metcalf

American Economic Review, May 2008

Consumption Insurance: An Evaluation of Risk-Bearing Systems in Low-Income Economies

[Symposium: Consumption Smoothing in Developing Countries]

By Robert M. Townsend

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1995

The hypothesis of full risk sharing can be taken to data from low-income countries and evaluate formal and informal financial systems. In many contexts, idiosyncratic risks are high, so credit/insurance arrangements could be beneficial. Statistical tests ...