The Safe-Asset Share

By Gary Gorton, Stefan Lewellen, and Andrew Metrick

American Economic Review, May 2012

We document that the percentage of all U.S. assets that are "safe" has remained stable at about 33 percent since 1952. This stable ratio is a rare example of calm in a rapidly changing financial world. Over the same time period, the ratio of U.S. assets...

JEL Classification System

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2012

Complex Tax Incentives

By Johannes Abeler and Simon Jäger

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2015

How does complexity affect people's reaction to tax changes? To answer this question, we conduct an experiment in which subjects work for a piece rate and face taxes. One treatment features a simple tax system, the other a complex one. Subjects' economic ...

Of Smart Phone Wars and Software Patents

[Symposium: Patents]

By Stuart Graham and Saurabh Vishnubhakat

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2013

Among the main criticisms currently confronting the US Patent and Trademark Office are concerns about software patents and what role they play in the web of litigation now proceeding in the smart phone industry. We will examine the evidence on the litigat...

Intrinsic Motivation and Incentives

By Canice Prendergast

American Economic Review, May 2008

Recent Trends in the Size Distribution of Household Wealth

By Edward N. Wolff

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1998

Based on the Survey of Consumer Finances, the distribution of wealth in the United States became much more unequal in the 1980s and that trend continued, albeit at a slower pace, in the 1990s. The only households that saw their mean net worth rise in abso...

Does Federal Student Aid Raise Tuition? New Evidence on For-Profit Colleges

By Stephanie Riegg Cellini and Claudia Goldin

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2014

We provide the first comprehensive estimates of the size of the for-profit higher education sector and evaluate whether for-profits increase tuition in response to federal subsidies. By using state administrative data we include institutions that do not p...

Population, Food, and Knowledge

By D. Gale Johnson

American Economic Review, March 2000

The Short- and Long-Term Career Effects of Graduating in a Recession

By Philip Oreopoulos, Till von Wachter, and Andrew Heisz

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2012

This paper analyzes the magnitude and sources of long-term earnings declines associated with graduating from college during a recession. Using a large longitudinal university-employer-employee dataset, we find that the cost of recessions for new graduates...

Retrospectives: The Origins of Neoclassical Microeconomics

By Robert B. Ekelund Jr and Robert F. Hébert

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2002

Until recently, the standard story line in history of thought textbooks was that a triumvirate of British and Continental writers established demarcation between classical economics and neoclassical economics in the early 1870s. The authors raise two obje...

Shocks and Frictions in US Business Cycles: A Bayesian DSGE Approach

By Frank Smets and Rafael Wouters

American Economic Review, June 2007

Using a Bayesian likelihood approach, we estimate a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model for the US economy using seven macroeconomic time series. The model incorporates many types of real and nominal frictions and seven types of structural sho...

Evolution and Game Theory

[Symposium: Evolutionary Economics]

By Larry Samuelson

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2002

Research in noncooperative game theory has focused attention on two questions: Should we expect equilibrium play? If so, which of the multiple equilibria that arise in many games should we expect? This paper summarizes recent approaches to these questions...

Organizational Capabilities and the Economic History of the Industrial Enterprise

By Alfred D. Chandler

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1992

In my book Scale and Scope (1990), I focused on the history of the modern industrial firm from the 1880s, when such firms first appeared, through World War II. I did so by comparing the fortunes of more than 600 enterprises—the 200 largest industria...

Neuroeconomic Foundations of Economic Choice--Recent Advances

[Symposium: Neuroeconomics]

By Ernst Fehr and Antonio Rangel

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2011

Neuroeconomics combines methods and theories from neuroscience psychology, economics, and computer science in an effort to produce detailed computational and neurobiological accounts of the decision-making process that can serve as a common foundation for...

Data Watch: Research Data from Transition Economies

By Randall K. Filer and Jan Hanousek

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2002

Ten years into the transition from communism in the countries of the former Soviet Union and central and eastern Europe, a cursory search of the EconLit database turns up hundreds of empirical studies published in refereed journals that deal with various ...

The Informational Role of Voluntary Certification: Evidence from the Mexican Clean Industry Program

By Andrew D. Foster and Emilio Gutierrez

American Economic Review, May 2013

In the presence of imperfect information, voluntary certification can provide an important complement to mandatory inspections as a basis for environmental regulation in low income countries. Using data from Mexico's Clean Industry Program, we show that p...

A Labor Supply Elasticity Accord?

By Lars Ljungqvist and Thomas J. Sargent

American Economic Review, May 2011

A dispute about the size of the aggregate labor supply elasticity has been fortified by a contentious aggregation theory used by real business cycle theorists. The replacement of that aggregation theory with one more congenial to microeconomic observation...

Insurgent Compensation: Evidence from Iraq

By Benjamin W. Bahney, Radha K. Iyengar, Patrick B. Johnston, Danielle F. Jung, Jacob N. Shapiro, and Howard J. Shatz

American Economic Review, May 2013

Participating in insurgency is physically risky. Why do people do so? Using new data on 3,799 payments to insurgent fighters by Al Qa'ida Iraq, we find that: (i) wages were extremely low relative to outside options, even compared to unskilled labor; (ii) ...

Social Capital and Political Accountability

By Tommaso Nannicini, Andrea Stella, Guido Tabellini, and Ugo Troiano

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2013

We investigate a channel through which social capital may improve economic well-being and the functioning of institutions: political accountability. The main idea is that voters who share values and beliefs that foster cooperation are more likely to vo...

Peer Effects in the Workplace: Evidence from Random Groupings in Professional Golf Tournaments

By Jonathan Guryan, Kory Kroft, and Matthew J. Notowidigdo

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2009

This paper uses random assignment in professional golf tournaments to test for peer effects in the workplace. We find no evidence that playing partners' ability affects performance, contrary to recent evidence on peer effects in the workplace from labo...