Traffic Congestion and Infant Health: Evidence from E-ZPass

By Janet Currie and Reed Walker

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2011

We exploit the introduction of electronic toll collection, (E-ZPass), which greatly reduced both traffic congestion and vehicle emissions near highway toll plazas. We show that the introduction of E-ZPass reduced prematurity and low birth weight among mo...

The Empirical Implications of the Interest-Rate Lower Bound

By Christopher Gust, Edward Herbst, David López-Salido, and Matthew E. Smith

American Economic Review, July 2017

Using Bayesian methods, we estimate a nonlinear DSGE model in which the interest-rate lower bound is occasionally binding. We quantify the size and nature of disturbances that pushed the US economy to the lower bound in late 2008 as well as the contributi...

The Role of Boards of Directors in Corporate Governance: A Conceptual Framework and Survey

By Renee B. Adams, Benjamin E. Hermalin, and Michael S. Weisbach

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2010

This paper is a survey of the literature on boards of directors, with an emphasis on research done subsequent to the Benjamin E. Hermalin and Michael S. Weisbach (2003) survey. The two questions most asked about boards are what determines their makeup ...

Entry, Exit, Firm Dynamics, and Aggregate Fluctuations

By Gian Luca Clementi and Berardino Palazzo

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, July 2016

Firm entry and exit amplify and propagate the effects of aggregate shocks, leading to greater persistence and unconditional variation of aggregate quantities. Following a positive aggregate shock, entry rises. As in the data, entrants are small and their ...

Caballero Meets Bewley: The Permanent-Income Hypothesis in General Equilibrium

By Neng Wang

American Economic Review, June 2003

The Economics of Spam

By Justin M. Rao and David H. Reiley

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2012

We estimate that American firms and consumers experience costs of almost $20 billion annually due to spam. Our figure is more conservative than the $50 billion figure often cited by other authors, and we also note that the figure would be much higher if i...

Strategic Policy Choice in State-Level Regulation: The EPA's Clean Power Plan

By James B. Bushnell, Stephen P. Holland, Jonathan E. Hughes, and Christopher R. Knittel

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2017

The EPA's Clean Power Plan sets goals for CO2 emissions rate reductions by 2030 that vary substantially across states. States can choose the regulatory mechanism they use and whether or not to join with other states in implementing their goals....

Changes in Labor Force Participation in the United States

[Symposium: American Employment]

By Chinhui Juhn and Simon Potter

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2006

The labor force participation rate in the United States increased almost continuously for two-and-a-half decades after the mid-1960s, pausing only briefly during economic downturns. The pace of growth slowed considerably during the 1990s, however, and aft...

Effects of Mergers in Two-Sided Markets: The US Radio Industry

By PrzemysŁaw Jeziorski

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2014

This study examines mergers in two-sided markets using a structural supply-and-demand model that employs data from the 1996-2006 merger wave in the U.S. radio industry. In particular, it identities the conflicting incentives for merged firms to exercise m...

Exchange-Rate Regimes and International Trade: Evidence from the Classical Gold Standard Era

By J. Ernesto López-Córdova and Christopher M. Meissner

American Economic Review, March 2003

Estimating a War of Attrition: The Case of the US Movie Theater Industry

By Yuya Takahashi

American Economic Review, July 2015

This paper empirically studies firm's strategic exit decisions in an environment where demand is declining. Specifically, I quantify the extent to which the exit process generated by firms' strategic interactions deviates from the outcome that maximizes i...

Beyond BA Blinders: Lessons from Occupational Colleges and Certificate Programs for Nontraditional Students

[Symposium: Early and Later Interventions]

By James E. Rosenbaum and Janet Rosenbaum

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2013

Postsecondary education mostly focuses on the four-year BA degree. Community colleges are often promoted as the first step toward the ultimate goal of a four-year degree. However, community colleges have extremely poor degree completion rates. There is ev...

The Degradation of Reported Corporate Profits

By Mihir A. Desai

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2005

Recent corporate scandals have highlighted abuses by firms overstating profits to capital markets. In a related but less noticed vein, the reporting of profits to tax authorities has come under increased scrutiny with heightened concerns over the spread o...

Development Accounting

By Chang-Tai Hsieh and Peter J. Klenow

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2010

Researchers have made much progress in the past 25 years in accounting for the proximate determinants of income levels: physical capital, human capital, and Total Factor Productivity (TFP). But we still know little about why these factors vary. We argue ...

Incomplete Contracts and Control

By Oliver Hart

American Economic Review, July 2017

The Econometrics and Some Properties of Separable Matching Models

By Alfred Galichon and Bernard Salanié

American Economic Review, May 2017

We present a class of one-to-one matching models with perfectly transferable utility. We discuss identification and inference in these separable models, and we show how their comparative statics are readily analyzed.

Dissecting Trade: Firms, Industries, and Export Destinations

By Jonathan Eaton, Samuel Kortum, and Francis Kramarz

American Economic Review, May 2004

Statistical Default Models and Incentives

By Uday Rajan, Amit Seru, and Vikrant Vig

American Economic Review, May 2010

Trade Finance and the Great Trade Collapse

By JaeBin Ahn, Mary Amiti, and David E. Weinstein

American Economic Review, May 2011

Economic models that do not incorporate financial frictions only explain about 70 to 80 percent of the decline in world trade that occurred in the 2008-2009 crisis. We review evidence that shows financial factors also contributed to the great trade collap...

The Role of Trading Frictions in Real Asset Markets

By Alessandro Gavazza

American Economic Review, June 2011

This paper investigates how trading frictions vary with the thickness of the asset market by examining patterns of asset allocations and prices in commercial aircraft markets. The empirical analysis indicates that assets with a thinner market are less ...