What Has Mattered to Economics Since 1970

By E. Han Kim, Adair Morse, and Luigi Zingales

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2006

Citations are one way that past research echoes through time. In this paper, we compile a list of articles published in major refereed economics journals in the last 35 years that have received more than 500 citations as of June 2006. We then use this lis...

Household Consumption When the Marriage Is Stable

By Laurens Cherchye, Thomas Demuynck, Bram De Rock, and Frederic Vermeulen

American Economic Review, June 2017

We develop a novel framework to analyze the structural implications of the marriage market for household consumption. We define a revealed preference characterization of efficient household consumption when the marriage is stable. We characterize stable m...

Editorial Note: Correction to Richard S. Tol's "The Economic Effects of Climate Change"

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2015

The European Central Bank, the Euro, and Global Financial Markets

[Symposium: The Euro]

By Kathryn M. E. Dominguez

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2006

The economic case for European monetary union was shaky at best when it was first discussed 35 years ago. Europe's leaders felt that monetary union was the capstone to their efforts to create an integrated Europe, and much to the rest of the world's surpr...

The Economics and Law of Sovereign Debt and Default

By Ugo Panizza, Federico Sturzenegger, and Jeromin Zettelmeyer

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2009

This paper surveys the recent literature on sovereign debt and relates it to the evolution of the legal principles underlying the sovereign debt market and the experience of the most recent debt crises and defaults. It finds limited support for theories...

Completion Rates and Time-to-Degree in Economics PhD Programs (with comments by David Colander, N. Gregory Mankiw, Melissa P. McInerney, James M. Poterba)

By Wendy A. Stock, John J. Siegfried, and T. Aldrich Finegan

American Economic Review, May 2011

This paper describes the progress, eight years after matriculating, of 586 individuals who entered one of 27 economics Ph.D. programs in fall 2002. By October 2010, 59 percent of the fall 2002 entering cohort had earned a Ph.D. in economics at the univers...

Market Microstructure and Intermediation

By Daniel F. Spulber

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1996

This paper emphasizes the important role played by intermediaries in the economy, including wholesalers, retailers, and financial firms. The paper defines an intermediary as an economic agent that purchases from suppliers for resale to buyers or that help...

Did Unilateral Divorce Laws Raise Divorce Rates? A Reconciliation and New Results

By Justin Wolfers

American Economic Review, December 2006

Applying the Coase Theorem to marital bargaining suggests that shifting from consent to unilateral divorce laws will not affect divorce rates. I show that existing evidence suggesting large effects of divorce laws on divorce rates reflect a failure to exp...

Markets: Continuity and Change in the International Diamond Market

By Debora L. Spar

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2006

The international diamond cartel, which presides over the production side of the industry, may be the most successful and longest-lasting cartel in the world. The dominant company in the industry, DeBeers, has been around since 1880 and has been controlle...

Access, Sorting, and Achievement: The Short-Run Effects of Free Primary Education in Kenya

By Adrienne M. Lucas and Isaac M. Mbiti

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2012

We examine the impact of the Kenyan Free Primary Education program on student participation, sorting, and achievement on the primary school exit examination. Exploiting variation in pre-program dropout rates between districts, we find that the program inc...

Optimal Monetary Policy in Open versus Closed Economies: An Integrated Approach

By Richard Clarida, Jordi Gali, and Mark Gertler

American Economic Review, May 2001

The Persistent Effect of Temporary Affirmative Action

By Conrad Miller

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2017

I estimate the dynamic effects of federal affirmative action regulation, exploiting variation in the timing of regulation and deregulation across work establishments. Affirmative action increases the black share of employees over time: in 5 years after an...

The Effects of Social Networks on Employment and Inequality

By Antoni Calvó-Armengol and Matthew O. Jackson

American Economic Review, June 2004

We develop a model where agents obtain information about job opportunities through an explicitly modeled network of social contacts. We show that employment is positively correlated across time and agents. Moreover, unemployment exhibits duration dependen...

Clubs with Entrapment

By Avinash Dixit

American Economic Review, December 2003

The Macroeconomics of Trend Inflation

By Guido Ascari and Argia M. Sbordone

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2014

Most macroeconomic models for monetary policy analysis are approximated around a zero inflation steady state, but most central banks target an inflation rate of about 2 percent. Many economists have recently proposed even higher inflation targets to reduc...

The Effects of Lottery Prizes on Winners and Their Neighbors: Evidence from the Dutch Postcode Lottery

By Peter Kuhn, Peter Kooreman, Adriaan Soetevent, and Arie Kapteyn

American Economic Review, August 2011

Each week, the Dutch Postcode Lottery (PCL) randomly selects a postal code, and distributes cash and a new BMW to lottery participants in that code. We study the effects of these shocks on lottery winners and their neighbors. Consistent with the life-cycl...

Early Childhood Education Programs

By Janet Currie

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2001

This paper discusses early childhood education programs: their goals; effectiveness; optimal timing, targeting, and content; and costs and benefits. Early intervention has significant short- and medium-term benefits: most notably it reduces grade repetiti...

Two Pillars of Asset Pricing

By Eugene F. Fama

American Economic Review, June 2014

Russian Retrospectives on Reforms from Yeltsin to Putin

[Symposium: The Economy of Russia]

By Padma Desai

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2005

The kamikaze crew of liberal reformers, picked by former President Boris Yeltsin in the early 1990s, succeeded in overturning the planned economy and the authoritarian political arrangements of seven decades of Soviet Communism. However, the resulting bre...

Multidimensional Platform Design

By André Veiga, E. Glen Weyl, and Alexander White

American Economic Review, May 2017

Successful platforms attract not just many users, but also those of the right kind. 'The right kind of user' is one who can either be directly monetized or who differentially attracts other valuable users. Bonacich centrality on the network of user sortin...