Subsidizing Creativity through Network Design: Zero-Pricing and Net Neutrality

[Symposium: Internet Economics]

By Robin S. Lee and Tim Wu

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2009

This paper focuses on the pricing aspect of the "net neutrality" debate -- in particular, the de facto ban on fees levied by Internet service providers on content providers to reach users. This "zero-price" rule may prove desirable for several reasons. ...

Racial Integration as an Innovation: Empirical Evidence from Sports Leagues

By Brian L. Goff, Robert E. McCormick, and Robert D. Tollison

American Economic Review, March 2002

This paper treats racial integration as an innovation in economic process in which economic entities find it advantageous to utilize potentially more productive inputs previously unavailable due to law, custom, or managerial discretion. Data on the racial...

Kin Groups and Reciprocity: A Model of Credit Transactions in Ghana

By Eliana La Ferrara

American Economic Review, December 2003

This paper studies kinship band networks as capital market institutions. Membership in a community where individuals are dynastically linked has two effects on informal credit. First, the nonanonymity of the dynastic link allows to sanction the defaulters...

Symposium on the Slowdown in Productivity Growth

[Symposium: The Slowdown in Productivity Growth]

By Stanley Fischer

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1988

The growth slowdown that began in the late 1960s or early 1970s is the most significant macroeconomic development of the last two decades. The four papers in this symposium address the question of the causes of the growth slowdown and, to a lesser extent,...

An Interview with Edmond Malinvaud

By Alan B. Krueger

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2003

This article contains an interview with Edmond Malinvaud. Professor Malinvaud describes the origins of his interest in economics, teachers who had a major influence on his development as an economist, his visit to the Cowles Commission in 1950, the substa...

What Causes Industry Agglomeration? Evidence from Coagglomeration Patterns

By Glenn Ellison, Edward L. Glaeser, and William R. Kerr

American Economic Review, June 2010

Why do firms cluster near one another? We test Marshall's theories of industrial agglomeration by examining which industries locate near one another, or coagglomerate. We construct pairwise coagglomeration indices for US manufacturing industries from the ...

Liquidity and Risk Management

By Nicolae Gârleanu and Lasse Heje Pedersen

American Economic Review, May 2007

The Effect of Alcohol Consumption on Mortality: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from the Minimum Drinking Age

By Christopher Carpenter and Carlos Dobkin

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2009

We estimate the effect of alcohol consumption on mortality using the minimum drinking age in a regression discontinuity design. We find large and immediate increases in drinking at age 21, including a 21 percent increase in recent drinking days. We als...

Team Production in International Labor Markets: Experimental Evidence from the Field

By Elizabeth Lyons

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2017

Coworkers are increasingly diverse in their nationality and skill sets. This paper studies the effect of diversity on how workers are organized using data from a field experiment conducted in an environment where diversity is pervasive. Findings show that...

Behavior under Extreme Conditions: The Titanic Disaster

By Bruno S. Frey, David A. Savage, and Benno Torgler

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2011

During the night of April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg on her maiden voyage. Two hours and 40 minutes later she sank, resulting in the loss of 1,501 lives—more than two-thirds of her 2,207 passengers and crew. This remains one ...

Immigration Economics by George J. Borjas: A Review Essay

By David Card and Giovanni Peri

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2016

We review Immigration Economics by George J. Borjas, published in 2014 by Harvard University Press. The book is written as a graduate-level textbook, and summarizes and updates many of Borjas's important contributions to the field over the past thi...

Culture, Ethnicity, and Diversity

By Klaus Desmet, Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín, and Romain Wacziarg

American Economic Review, September 2017

We investigate the empirical relationship between ethnicity and culture, defined as a vector of traits reflecting norms, values, and attitudes. Using survey data for 76 countries, we find that ethnic identity is a significant predictor of cultural values,...

Unemployment, Vacancies, Wages

By Peter Diamond

American Economic Review, June 2011

Institutional Economics: Then and Now

By Malcolm Rutherford

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2001

This article gives a history of American institutionalism, and a brief comparison with the more recent "new" institutional economics. Institutionalism was a significant element in American economics between the Wars, but declined rapidly thereafter. The a...

Search at the Margin

By José A. Carrasco and Lones Smith

American Economic Review, October 2017

We extend search theory to multiple indivisible units and perfectly divisible assets, solving them respectively with induction and recursion. Buyer demands and prices are random, and the seller can partially exercise orders. With divisible assets, the Bel...

Up in Smoke: The Influence of Household Behavior on the Long-Run Impact of Improved Cooking Stoves

By Rema Hanna, Esther Duflo, and Michael Greenstone

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2016

Laboratory studies suggest that improved cooking stoves can reduce indoor air pollution, improve health, and decrease greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries. We provide evidence, from a large-scale randomized trial in India, on the benefits of a...

The Effect of Language on Economic Behavior: Evidence from Savings Rates, Health Behaviors, and Retirement Assets

By M. Keith Chen

American Economic Review, April 2013

Languages differ widely in the ways they encode time. I test the hypothesis that the languages that grammatically associate the future and the present, foster future-oriented behavior. This prediction arises naturally when well-documented effects of la...

What is Discrimination? Gender in the American Economic Association, 1935-2004

By Stephen G. Donald and Daniel S. Hamermesh

American Economic Review, September 2006

We illustrate problems of measuring discrimination using elections to AEA offices. With a new econometric technique, we find female candidates have a much better than random chance of victory. This advantage is either reverse discrimination or reflects be...

Bargaining over Entry with a Compulsory License Deadline: Price Spillovers and Surplus Expansion

By Eric W. Bond and Kamal Saggi

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2017

We analyze bargaining between a developing country (South) and a multinational firm over the local price of its patented product. We use an alternating offers bargaining game in which the South can resort to compulsory licensing (CL) if the two parties fa...

Probabilistic Patents

[Symposium: Intellectual Property Rights]

By Mark A. Lemley and Carl Shapiro

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2005

Economists often assume that a patent gives its owner a well-defined legal right to exclude others from practicing the invention described in the patent. In practice, however, the rights afforded to patent holders are highly uncertain. Under patent law, a...