Economic Inequality in Preindustrial Times: Europe and Beyond

By Guido Alfani

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2021

Recent literature has reconstructed estimates of wealth and income inequality for a range of preindustrial, mostly European, societies covering medieval and early modern times, occasionally reaching back to antiquity and even prehistory. These estimates...

Capital Controls: Theory and Evidence

By Bilge Erten, Anton Korinek, and José Antonio Ocampo

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2021

This paper synthesizes recent advances in the theoretical and empirical literature on capital controls. We start by observing that international capital flows have both benefits and costs, but some of these are not internalized by individual actors and ...

Directed Search and Competitive Search Equilibrium: A Guided Tour

By Randall Wright, Philipp Kircher, Benoît Julien, and Veronica Guerrieri

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2021

This essay surveys the literature on directed search and competitive search equilibrium, covering theory and a variety of applications. These models share features with traditional search theory, but also differ in important ways. They share features with...

Notes

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2004

Behavioral and Experimental Macroeconomics and Policy Analysis: A Complex Systems Approach

By Cars Hommes

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2021

This survey discusses behavioral and experimental macroeconomics, emphasizing a complex systems perspective. The economy consists of boundedly rational heterogeneous agents who do not fully understand their complex environment and use simple decision he...

Review of Russia's Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy by Anders Åslund

By Michael Alexeev

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2021

Anders Åslund provides a comprehensive description of the main political and economic events of Vladimir Putin's 20 years at the helm of the country. In politics, Åslund shows how Putin skillfully maneuvered to destroy democracy in Russia. I argue that ...

Planning on the Potomac: A Review Essay on Jason E. Taylor's Deconstructing the Monolith: The Microeconomics of the National Industrial Recovery Act

By Joshua K. Hausman

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2021

Taylor (2019) details heterogeneity in the effects of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) across industries and across time. Through first the President's Reemployment Act (PRA) and then industry-specific "codes of fair competition," the NIRA rais...

Back to the Good—or Were They the Bad—Old Days of Antitrust? A Review Essay of Jonathan B. Baker's The Antitrust Paradigm: Restoring a Competitive Economy

By Clifford Winston

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2021

This essay reviews Jonathan Baker's important book, The Antitrust Paradigm: Restoring a Competitive Economy, to frame the debate over appropriate antitrust policy and enforcement. Baker argues that competition is inadequate in many US markets and...

Distinguished Lecture on Economics in Government: Lessons from Past Productivity Booms

By Roger W. Ferguson and William L. Wascher

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2004

Book Reviews

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2021

Annotated Listing of New Books

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2021

JEL Classification System

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2021

Consumer Confidence and Consumer Spending

[Symposium: Consumer Confidence]

By Sydney C. Ludvigson

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2004

Despite the widespread attention given to surveys of consumer confidence, the mechanisms by which household attitudes influence the real economy are less well understood. This paper begins with an overview of how consumer confidence is measured and report...

How Should We Measure Consumer Confidence?

[Symposium: Consumer Confidence]

By Jeff Dominitz and Charles F. Manski

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2004

Research on consumer confidence has mainly sought to evaluate the power of available data to predict economic outcomes. In contrast, this article considers how best to measure consumer confidence. We analyze the responses to eight questions that have appe...

Latin America's Growth and Equity Frustrations During Structural Reforms

[Symposium: Latin America's Growth Record]

By José Antonio Ocampo

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2004

This paper argues that Latin America's market-oriented reforms, together with increased monetary and fiscal discipline, were successful in bringing down inflation, inducing export growth and diversification, and attracting foreign direct investment. Nonet...

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2021

Cell Phone Access and Election Fraud: Evidence from a Spatial Regression Discontinuity Design in Afghanistan

By Robert M. Gonzalez

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2021

This paper examines the impact of cell phone access on election fraud. I combine cell phone coverage maps with the location of polling centers during the 2009 Afghan presidential election to pinpoint which centers were exposed to coverage. Results from a ...

Improving Last-Mile Service Delivery Using Phone-Based Monitoring

By Karthik Muralidharan, Paul Niehaus, Sandip Sukhtankar, and Jeffrey Weaver

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2021

Improving "last-mile" public service delivery is a recurring challenge in developing countries. Could the widespread adoption of mobile phones provide a scalable, cost-effective means for improvement? We use a large-scale experiment to evaluate the impact...

Subways and Road Congestion

By Yizhen Gu, Chang Jiang, Junfu Zhang, and Ben Zou

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2021

We study whether subways alleviate road congestion by examining 45 subway line launches in China and by using detailed data on road speed. Our difference-in-differences estimation finds that in the first year after a subway line is launched, rush hour spe...

Latin America since the 1990s: Rising from the Sickbed?

[Symposium: Latin America's Growth Record]

By Arminio Fraga

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2004