Competition in Japan

[Symposium: Japan's Economy]

By Michael E. Porter and Mariko Sakakibara

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2004

This article examines competition in Japan and its link to postwar economic prosperity. While Japan's industrial structure and competition policy seem to indicate that competition in Japan has been less intense, the empirical evidence does not support thi...

A Leverage Theory of Tying in Two-Sided Markets with Nonnegative Price Constraints

By Jay Pil Choi and Doh-Shin Jeon

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2021

Motivated by recent antitrust cases in markets with zero-pricing, we develop a leverage theory of tying in two-sided markets. In the presence of the nonnegative price constraint, the Chicago school critique of tie-ins fails to hold. In the independent pro...

Organizing Time Exchanges: Lessons from Matching Markets

By Tommy Andersson, Ágnes Cseh, Lars Ehlers, and Albin Erlanson

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2021

This paper considers time exchanges via a common platform (e.g., markets for exchanging time units, positions at education institutions, and tuition waivers). There are several problems associated with such markets, e.g., imbalanced outcomes, coordination...

Prediction: The Long and the Short of It

By Antony Millner and Daniel Heyen

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2021

Commentators often lament forecasters' inability to provide precise predictions of the long-run behavior of complex economic and physical systems. Yet their concerns often conflate the presence of substantial long-run uncertainty with the need for long-ru...

Wait-and-See or Step In? Dynamics of Interventions

By Dana Foarta and Takuo Sugaya

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2021

We study the optimal intervention policy to stop projects in a relational contract between a principal and a policymaker. The policymaker is privately informed about his ability and privately chooses how much effort to exert. Before a project is completed...

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

Climate Change and Agriculture: Subsistence Farmers' Response to Extreme Heat

By Fernando M. Aragón, Francisco Oteiza, and Juan Pablo Rud

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

This paper examines how subsistence farmers respond to extreme heat. Using microdata from Peruvian households, we find that high temperatures reduce agricultural productivity, increase area planted, and change crop mix. These findings are consistent with ...

Improving Police Performance in Rajasthan, India: Experimental Evidence on Incentives, Managerial Autonomy, and Training

By Abhijit Banerjee, Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, Esther Duflo, Daniel Keniston, and Nina Singh

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

Management matters for firms, but what practices are optimal in hierarchical government organizations? And can skilled managers identify them? A large-scale randomized trial conducted with the police of Rajasthan, India, tested four interventions recommen...

The Impact of Paid Maternity Leave on Maternal Health

By Aline Bütikofer, Julie Riise, and Meghan M. Skira

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

We examine the impact of the introduction of paid maternity leave in Norway in 1977 on maternal health in the medium and long term. Using administrative data combined with survey data on the health of women around age 40, we find the reform improved a ran...

Influence and Information in Team Decisions: Evidence from Medical Residency

By David C. Chan

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

I study team decisions among physician trainees. Exploiting a discontinuity in team roles across trainee tenure, I find evidence that teams alter decision-making, concentrating influence in the hands of senior trainees. I also demonstrate little convergen...

Can Successful Schools Replicate? Scaling Up Boston's Charter School Sector

By Sarah R. Cohodes, Elizabeth M. Setren, and Christopher R. Walters

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

Can schools that boost student outcomes reproduce their success at new campuses? We study a policy reform that allowed effective charter schools in Boston, Massachusetts to replicate their school models at new locations. Estimates based on randomized admi...

Do Democracies Have Different Public Policies than Nondemocracies?

[Symposium: Political Economy]

By Casey B. Mulligan, Ricard Gil, and Xavier Sala-i-Martin

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2004

Estimates of democracy's effect on the public sector are obtained from comparisons of 142 countries over the years 1960-90. Based on three tenets of voting theory--that voting mutes policy preference intensity, political power is equally distributed in de...

Relative Prices and Climate Policy: How the Scarcity of Nonmarket Goods Drives Policy Evaluation

By Moritz A. Drupp and Martin C. Hänsel

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

Climate change not only impacts production and market consumption but also the relative scarcity of nonmarket goods, such as environmental amenities. We study fundamental drivers of the resulting relative price changes, their potential magnitude, and thei...

Rising Intergenerational Income Persistence in China

By Yi Fan, Junjian Yi, and Junsen Zhang

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

This paper documents an increasing intergenerational income persistence in China since economic reforms were introduced in 1979. The intergenerational income elasticity increases from 0.390 for the 1970–1980 birth cohort to 0.442 for the 1981–1988 bir...

The Sensitivity of Housing Demand to Financing Conditions: Evidence from a Survey

By Andreas Fuster and Basit Zafar

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

Measuring the sensitivity of housing demand to mortgage rates and available leverage is challenging because there is generally no exogenous variation in these variables. This paper circumvents this issue by designing a strategic survey in which respondent...

Unemployment Insurance Taxes and Labor Demand: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Administrative Data

By Andrew C. Johnston

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

To finance unemployment insurance, states raise payroll tax rates on employers who engage in layoffs. Tax rates are, therefore, highest for firms after downturns, potentially hampering labor-market recovery. Using full-population, administrative records f...

The Long-Run Effects of a Public Policy on Alcohol Tastes and Mortality

By Lorenz Kueng and Evgeny Yakovlev

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

We study the long-run effects of Russia's anti-alcohol campaign, which dramatically altered the relative supply of hard and light alcohol in the late 1980s. We find that this policy shifted young men's long-run preferences from hard to light alcohol dec...

Parental Support, Savings, and Student Loan Repayment

By Lance Lochner, Todd Stinebrickner, and Utku Suleymanoglu

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

Using unique survey and administrative data from Canada, we document that parental support and personal savings substantially reduce student loan repayment problems. Developing a model of student borrowing and repayment, we show that nonmonetary costs of ...

Who Benefits When Firms Game Corrective Policies?

By Mathias Reynaert and James M. Sallee

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

Firms sometimes comply with externality-correcting policies by gaming the measure that determines policy. This harms buyers by eroding information, but it benefits them when cost savings are passed through into prices. We develop a model that highlights t...

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2021