Distinguished Fellow: Reflections of Thomas Schelling

By Richard Zeckhauser

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1989

Thomas Crombie Schelling thinks about the essence of phenomena. He distills such essences and demonstrates their presence in many important social phenomena. We shall chronicle three stages of his life, designated by the titles of his books: The Strategy ...

Foreign-Born Teaching Assistants and the Academic Performance of Undergraduates

By George J. Borjas

American Economic Review, May 2000

Policy Watch: Income-Contingent College Loans

By Alan B. Krueger and William G. Bowen

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1993

We consider the recently proposed "income-contingent loan" (ICL), in which Congress would establish a national trust fund from which students could borrow money to finance the cost of attending college; students would repay these loans by contributing a f...

Surprised by the Parimutuel Odds?

By Marco Ottaviani and Peter Norman Sørensen

American Economic Review, December 2009

Empirical analyses of parimutuel betting markets have documented that market probabilities of favorites (longshots) tend to underestimate (overestimate) the corresponding empirical probabilities. We argue that this favorite-longshot bias is consistent wit...

Knowledge of Future Job Loss and Implications for Unemployment Insurance

By Nathaniel Hendren

American Economic Review, July 2017

This paper studies the implications of individuals' knowledge of future job loss for the existence of an unemployment insurance (UI) market. Learning about job loss leads to consumption decreases and spousal labor supply increases. This suggests existing ...

The Importance of Being Wanted

By Quy-Toan Do and Tung D. Phung

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2010

We identify birth wantedness as a source of better child outcomes. In Vietnam, the year of birth is widely believed to determine success. As a result, cohorts born in auspicious years are 12 percent larger. Comparing siblings with one another, those of au...

Compensating Differentials for Sexual Harassment

By Joni Hersch

American Economic Review, May 2011

Workplace sexual harassment is illegal, but many workers report that they have been sexually harassed. Exposure to the risk of sexual harassment may decrease productivity, which would reduce wages. Alternatively, workers may receive a compensating differe...

Labor Economics and the Psychology of Organizations

[Symposium: Organizations and Economics]

By Edward P. Lazear

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1991

This essay is a discussion of how economists are attempting to understand institutions within the organizations of the labor market. The institutions and issues discussed include mandatory retirement; discontinuous jumps in wages; pay compression; rights ...

Research in Economic Education: Five New Initiatives

By Michael K. Salemi, John J. Siegfried, Kim Sosin, William B. Walstad, and Michael Watts

American Economic Review, May 2001

Can Affirmative Action Be Cost Effective? An Experimental Examination of Price-Preference Auctions

By Allan Corns and Andrew Schotter

American Economic Review, March 1999

Medicare Reform: Fundamental Problems, Incremental Steps

[Symposium: The Future of Medicare]

By Mark McClellan

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2000

This paper presents an overview of the Medicare reform debate. I begin by reviewing some of the features of Medicare and then turn to a discussion of reforms, both on the benefits side and on the financing side of the program. The reform proposals raise d...

Aggregation Bias in the Factor Content of Trade: Evidence from U.S. Manufacturing

By Robert C. Feenstra and Gordon H. Hanson

American Economic Review, May 2000

Biological Basics and the Economics of the Family

[Symposium: Household Economics]

By Donald Cox

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2007

Many economic models of the family are based on a generic "person 1 - person 2" household or "parent - child" family, rather than their anatomically correct counterparts: sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, and grandfathers and grandmothers. These ec...

Optimal Regional Redistribution under Asymmetric Information

By Massimo Bordignon, Paolo Manasse, and Guido Tabellini

American Economic Review, June 2001

Individual Consumption Risk and the Welfare Cost of Business Cycles

By Massimiliano De Santis

American Economic Review, September 2007

We measure the welfare gain from removing aggregate consumption fluctuations in a model where each individual faces incomplete consumption insurance. We show that, because this welfare gain is a convex function of the overall consumption risk—aggreg...

The Economics Major as Part of a Liberal Education: The Teagle Report: Comment

By George Daly

American Economic Review, May 2009

Puzzles: The Arbitrage Mirage, Wait Watchers, and More

By Barry Nalebuff

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1989

This feature begins with three puzzles motivated by the paradox of the "greener envelope," which was described in detail in the Winter 1989 issue. Following these exchange paradoxes are two longer puzzles, also with answers provided at the end. The longer...

Market Structure and Racial Earnings: Evidence from Job-Changers

By Jacqueline Agesa, Richard U. Agesa, and Gary A. Hoover

American Economic Review, May 2001

How Do Gasoline Prices Affect Fleet Fuel Economy?

By Shanjun Li, Christopher Timmins, and Roger H. von Haefen

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2009

Exploiting a rich dataset of passenger vehicle registrations in 20 US MSAs from 1997 to 2005, we examine the effects of gasoline prices on the automotive fleet's composition. We find that high gasoline prices affect fleet fuel economy through two chann...

Industrial Structure and Capital Flows

By Keyu Jin

American Economic Review, August 2012

This paper provides a new theory of international capital flows. In a framework that integrates factor-proportions-based trade and financial capital flows, a novel force emerges: capital tends to flow toward countries that become more specialized in capi...