The Economic Theory of Public Enforcement of Law

By A. Mitchell Polinsky and Steven Shavell

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2000

This article surveys the theory of the public enforcement of law--the use of public agents (inspectors, tax auditors, police, prosecutors) to detect and to sanction violators of legal rules. We first present the basic elements of the theory, focusing on t...

Editor's Introduction

By William R. Johnson and Samantha Bennett

American Economic Review, May 2013

Agriculture and the Transition to the Market

[Symposium: Economic Transition in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe]

By Karen Brooks, J. Luis Guasch, Avishay Braverman, and Csaba Csaki

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1991

Agricultural sectors in Eastern and Central Europe are large, and a substantial number of people are directly affected by changes in producer prices, farm employment, and land ownership. Retail food markets are among the most distorted in the pre-transiti...

Country Solidarity in Sovereign Crises

By Jean Tirole

American Economic Review, August 2015

When will solidarity, which emerges spontaneously from the fear of spillovers, be reinforced through contracting? The optimal pact between countries that differ substantially in their probability of distress is a simple debt contract with market financing...

The Coevolution of Segregation, Polarized Beliefs, and Discrimination: The Case of Private versus State Education

By Gilat Levy and Ronny Razin

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2017

In this paper we analyze the coevolution of segregation into private and state schools, beliefs about the educational merits of different schools, and labor market discrimination. In a dynamic model, we characterize a necessary and sufficient condition on...

Behavioral Implementation

By Geoffroy de Clippel

American Economic Review, October 2014

Implementation theory assumes that participants' choices are rational, in the sense of being consistent with the maximization of a context- independent preference. The paper investigates implementation under complete information when individuals' choi...

Estimating Average Treatment Effects with Continuous and Discrete Covariates: The Case of Swan-Ganz Catheterization

By Qi Li, Jeffrey S. Racine, and Jeffrey M. Wooldridge

American Economic Review, May 2008

Texting Bans and Fatal Accidents on Roadways: Do They Work? Or Do Drivers Just React to Announcements of Bans?

By Rahi Abouk and Scott Adams

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2013

Since 2007, many states passed laws prohibiting text messaging while driving. Using vehicular fatality data from across the United States and standard difference-in-differences techniques, bans appear moderately successful at reducing single-vehicle, si...

Investment and Usage of New Technologies: Evidence from a Shared ATM Network

By Stijn Ferrari, Frank Verboven, and Hans Degryse

American Economic Review, June 2010

The success of new technologies depends on both the firms' investment and consumers' usage decisions. We study this problem in a shared ATM network. Inefficiencies may arise because banks coordinate investment, and consumers may not make proper use of t...

An Empirical Investigation of the Option Value of College Enrollment

By Kevin M. Stange

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2012

This paper quantifies the option value arising from sequential schooling decisions made in the presence of uncertainty and learning about academic ability. College attendance has option value since enrolled students have the option, but not obligation, to...

Egalitarianism and Competitiveness

By Bjorn Bartling, Ernst Fehr, Michel Andre Marechal, and Daniel Schunk

American Economic Review, May 2009

Generalizing the Taylor Principle: Reply

By Troy Davig and Eric M. Leeper

American Economic Review, March 2010

Farmer, Waggoner, and Zha (2009) (FWZ) show that a new Keynesian model with regime-switching monetary policy can support multiple solutions, appearing to contradict findings in Davig and Leeper (2007) (DL). The explanation is straightforward: FWZ derive s...

Defending the One Percent

[Symposium: The Top 1 Percent]

By N. Gregory Mankiw

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2013

Imagine a society with perfect economic equality. Then, one day, this egalitarian utopia is disturbed by an entrepreneur with an idea for a new product. Think of the entrepreneur as Steve Jobs as he develops the iPod, J. K. Rowling as she writes her Har...

Phased-In Tax Cuts and Economic Activity

By Christopher L. House and Matthew D. Shapiro

American Economic Review, December 2006

This paper uses a dynamic general equilibrium model to analyze and quantify the aggregate effects of the timing of tax rate changes enacted in 2001 (which called for successive rate reductions through 2006) and 2003 (which made immediate tax rate cuts sch...

The Evolution of China's One-Child Policy and Its Effects on Family Outcomes

[Symposium: China]

By Junsen Zhang

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2017

In 1979, China introduced its unprecedented one-child policy, under which households exceeding the birth quota were penalized. However, estimating the effect of this policy on family outcomes turns out to be complicated. China had already enacted an agg...

Vocational Training for Disadvantaged Youth in Colombia: A Long-Term Follow-Up

By Orazio Attanasio, Arlen Guarín, Carlos Medina, and Costas Meghir

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2017

We evaluate the long-term impacts of a randomized Colombian training and job placement program. Following the large short-term effects, we now find that the program effects persist, increasing formal participation and earnings contributions to social secu...

Intertemporal Price Discrimination in Storable Goods Markets

By Igal Hendel and Aviv Nevo

American Economic Review, December 2013

We study intertemporal price discrimination when consumers can store for future consumption needs. We offer a simple model of demand dynamics, which we estimate using market-level data. Optimal pricing involves temporary price reductions that enable sell...

Precommitment, Cash Transfers, and Timely Arrival for Birth: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial in Nairobi Kenya

By Jessica Cohen, Katherine Lofgren, and Margaret McConnell

American Economic Review, May 2017

Maternal and neonatal mortality rates in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya are among the highest in the world. Mounting evidence suggests that delivering in a facility is not enough to ensure mortality reductions: women must deliver in high-quality facilities a...

American Government Finance in the Long Run: 1790 to 1990

[Symposium: Looking Backward at Economics and the Economy]

By John Joseph Wallis

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2000

Government in America has gone through three distinct fiscal systems in the last two hundred years. Each system utilized a dominant revenue source, and had a distinctly active level of government. The changing structure of government by level seems to be ...

How Elastic Are Preferences for Redistribution? Evidence from Randomized Survey Experiments

By Ilyana Kuziemko, Michael I. Norton, Emmanuel Saez, and Stefanie Stantcheva

American Economic Review, April 2015

We analyze randomized online survey experiments providing interactive, customized information on US income inequality, the link between top income tax rates and economic growth, and the estate tax. The treatment has large effects on views about inequality...