Institutions

By Douglass C. North

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1991

Institutions are the humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic, and social interaction. They consist of both informal constraints (sanctions, taboos, customs, traditions, and codes of conduct), and formal rules (constitutions, laws, p...

Evolving Choice Inconsistencies in Choice of Prescription Drug Insurance

By Jason Abaluck and Jonathan Gruber

American Economic Review, August 2016

We study choice over prescription insurance plans by the elderly using government administrative data to evaluate how these choices evolve over time. We find large "foregone savings" from not choosing the lowest cost plan that has grown over time. We deve...

Assessing Financial Education: Evidence from Boot Camp

By William Skimmyhorn

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2016

This study estimates the effects of Personal Financial Management Course attendance and enrollment assistance using a natural experiment in the US Army. New enlistees' course attendance reduces the probability of having credit account balances, average...

Speculative Growth: Hints from the U.S. Economy

By Ricardo J. Caballero, Emmanuel Farhi, and Mohamad L. Hammour

American Economic Review, September 2006

We propose a framework for understanding episodes of vigorous economic expansion and extreme asset valuations. We interpret this phenomenon as a highvaluation equilibrium with a low cost of capital based on optimism about future funding. The key ingred...

Firm-Level Heterogeneous Productivity and Demand Shocks: Evidence from Bangladesh

By Hiau Looi Kee and Kala Krishna

American Economic Review, May 2008

A Review of Geoffrey M. Hodgson, Conceptualizing Capitalism: Institutions, Evolution, Future

By Susan Rose-Ackerman

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2017

Capitalism and law go together in Geoffrey M. Hodgson's comprehensive analysis of the intellectual history and practical development of the capitalist system in Western Europe and North America. Given the breadth and depth of Professor Hodgson's reading i...

Strategic Information Acquisition and Transmission

By Rossella Argenziano, Sergei Severinov, and Francesco Squintani

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2016

This paper explores the implications of costly information acquisition in a strategic communication setting. We show that equilibrium decisions based on a biased expert's advice may be more precise than when information is directly acquired by the decisio...

Floating, Fixed, or Super-Fixed? Dollarization Joins the Menu of Exchange-Rate Options

By Blake LeBaron and Rachel McCulloch

American Economic Review, May 2000

Report of the Director: Job Openings for Economists

By John J. Siegfried

American Economic Review, May 2010

Identity, Supervision, and Work Groups

By George A. Akerlof and Rachel E. Kranton

American Economic Review, May 2008

Illegal Migration from Mexico to the United States

By Gordon H. Hanson

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2006

In this paper, I selectively review recent literature on illegal migration from Mexico to the United States. I begin by discussing methods for estimating stocks and flows of illegal migrants. While there is uncertainty about the size of the unauthorized...

Buy the Book? Evidence on the Effect of Textbook Funding on School-Level Achievement

By Kristian L. Holden

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2016

This paper considers the effect of textbook funding on school-level test performance by using a quasi-experimental setting in the United States. I consider a lawsuit in California that provided a one-time payment of $96.90 per student for textbooks if sch...

Dodging the Taxman: Firm Misreporting and Limits to Tax Enforcement

By Paul Carrillo, Dina Pomeranz, and Monica Singhal

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2017

Reducing tax evasion is a priority for many governments. A growing literature argues that verifying taxpayer reports against third-party information is critical for tax collection. However, effectiveness can be limited when tax authorities face constraint...

Cash for Corollas: When Stimulus Reduces Spending

By Mark Hoekstra, Steven L. Puller, and Jeremy West

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2017

The 2009 Cash for Clunkers program aimed to stimulate consumer spending in the new automobile industry, which experienced disproportionate reductions in demand and employment during the Great Recession. Exploiting program eligibility criteria in a regress...

Robert Solow: An Affectionate Portrait

By Paul A. Samuelson

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1989

Solow is the consummate economist's economist. He does everything well and with apparent ease. What Ty Cobb was to baseball, Solow has been to our generation of economists. But with this difference: Cobb had a will to win that never let up. Solow acts as ...

Hot and Cold Seasons in the Housing Market

By L. Rachel Ngai and Silvana Tenreyro

American Economic Review, December 2014

Every year housing markets in the United Kingdom and the United States experience systematic above-trend increases in prices and transactions during the spring and summer ("hot season") and below-trend falls during the autumn and winter ("cold season")...

Editors' Introduction

By William R. Johnson and Samantha Bennett

American Economic Review, May 2012

Repugnance Management and Transactions in the Body

By Kieran Healy and Kimberly D. Krawiec

American Economic Review, May 2017

Researchers have made progress in understanding the role of repugnance in transactions involving the human body. Yet, often, the focus remains on exchange between individuals and how they mentally cope (or not) with repugnance. But these exchanges also en...

Perspectives on Growth Theory

[Symposium: New Growth Theory]

By Robert M. Solow

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1994

This essay relates recent developments in growth theory to problems and ideas that first engaged R. F. Harrod, E. Domar, and their neoclassical successors. The body of 'new growth theory' began by finding special ways to assume that there are constant ret...

Will Aging Baby Boomers Bust the Federal Budget?

By Ronald Lee and Jonathan Skinner

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1999

The authors analyze in three steps the influence of the projected mortality decline on the long-run finances of the Social Security System. First, mortality decline adds person years of life which are distributed across the life cycle. The interaction of ...