Are Idle Hands the Devil's Workshop? Incapacitation, Concentration, and Juvenile Crime

By Brian A. Jacob and Lars Lefgren

American Economic Review, December 2003

This paper examines the short-term effect of school on juvenile crime. To do so, we bring together daily measures of criminal activity and detailed school calendar information from 29 jurisdictions across the country, and utilize the plausibly exogenous v...

Two Illustrations of the Quantity Theory of Money: Breakdowns and Revivals

By Thomas J. Sargent and Paolo Surico

American Economic Review, February 2011

By extending his data, we document the instability of low-frequency regression coefficients that Lucas (1980) used to express the quantity theory of money. We impute the differences in these regression coefficients to differences in monetary policies acro...

Comparing Voting by Committees According to Their Manipulability

By R. Pablo Arribillaga and Jordi Massó

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2017

We consider the class of voting by committees to be used by a society to collectively choose a subset from a given set of objects. We offer a simple criterion to compare two voting by committees without dummy agents according to their manipulability. This...

David Gomtsyan on how the container revolution changed the economies of port cities

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Longshoreman jobs have mostly disappeared – but new jobs have been created, too

The Economics of Reparations

By William Darity Jr and Dania Frank

American Economic Review, May 2003

Falling through the Cracks? Grade Retention and School Dropout among Children of Likely Unauthorized Immigrants

By Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes and Mary J. Lopez

American Economic Review, May 2015

We evaluate how intensified interior immigration enforcement impacts the likelihood that children of unauthorized immigrants will repeat a grade or drop out of school. Using a weighted index of the intensity of interior immigration enforcement at the MSA ...

David Ong on the subtle role of beauty in college admissions

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Why do top U.S. colleges have more attractive students on average?

Erin McGuire on how crowdfunding can open doors for female entrepreneurs

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How can crowdfunding help close the gender gap among entrepreneurs?

The Catch-22 of External Validity in the Context of Constraints to Firm Growth

By Greg Fischer and Dean Karlan

American Economic Review, May 2015

We document the presence of multiple and varied constraints to small and medium firm growth. This presents both a practical problem for business training programs and a challenge to academic economists trying to identify mechanisms though which these p...

Do Sex Workers Respond to Disease? Evidence from the Male Market for Sex

By Manisha Shah

American Economic Review, May 2013

Sex markets play a key role in the transmission of sexually transmitted infections (STI) and HIV/AIDS in developing countries. While individuals should substitute away from risky sex as STI prevalence rises, female sex workers draw a premium for engaging ...

Should the US Eliminate Entry Barriers to the Practice of Law? Perspectives Shaped by Industry Deregulation

By Clifford Winston and Quentin Karpilow

American Economic Review, May 2016

States' requirements that lawyers obtain a license to practice law, as well as American Bar Association (ABA) regulations of legal practice, constitute barriers to entry to the legal profession. In this paper, we argue that eliminating entry barriers in l...

Francesco Furlanetto on what recent immigration did (and didn't do) to Norway's economy

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How increased immigration helped lower unemployment in Norway

Greg Upton on the boom and bust cycle in shale country

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How the arrival of shale gas and oil drilling changes local economies

Investment Incentives in Labor Market Matching

By John William Hatfield, Fuhito Kojima, and Scott Duke Kominers

American Economic Review, May 2014

We provide an illustration of how the design of labor market clearing mechanisms can affect incentives for human capital acquisition. Specifically, we extend the labor market matching model (with discrete transfers) of Kelso and Crawford (1982) to incorpo...

Al Roth on the evolution of kidney exchange markets

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How the market for kidneys works when no monetary payments are allowed

Going for the Gold: Economists as Expert Witnesses

[Symposium: Economists as Expert Witnesses]

By Michael J. Mandel

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1999

The use of economists as expert witnesses and consultants has grown dramatically in recent years, driven by such factors as the explosion of mergers and acquisitions. On the plus side, the expert witness boom will likely lead to better regulatory and lega...

The Boston Public School Match

By Atila Abdulkadiroğlu, Parag A. Pathak, Alvin E. Roth, and Tayfun Sönmez

American Economic Review, May 2005

Jihye Kam on the unintended consequences of single-sex schooling in South Korea

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Why single-sex schooling can discourage female students from pursuing certain majors

Margaret Jacobson on how Roosevelt jump-started the economy in 1933

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Why ditching the gold standard may have been crucial for recovery

Macro-perspective on Asset Grants Programs: Occupational and Wealth Mobility

By Francisco J. Buera, Joseph P. Kaboski, and Yongseok Shin

American Economic Review, May 2014

We provide a simple quantitative general equilibrium model of occupational choice with credit market frictions to analyze the aggregate and distributional effects of asset transfer programs. Asset transfer programs have a positive but transient effect on ...