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...

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

School Spending and Student Outcomes: Evidence from Revenue Limit Elections in Wisconsin

By E. Jason Baron

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

This study examines the impacts of two distinct types of school spending on student outcomes. State-imposed revenue limits cap the total amount of revenue that a school district in Wisconsin can raise unless the district holds a referendum asking voters t...

Semesters or Quarters? The Effect of the Academic Calendar on Postsecondary Student Outcomes

By Valerie Bostwick, Stefanie Fischer, and Matthew Lang

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

There exists a long-standing debate in higher education on which academic calendar is optimal. Using panel data on the near universe of four-year nonprofit institutions and leveraging quasi-experimental variation in calendars across institutions and years...

Yellow Vests, Pessimistic Beliefs, and Carbon Tax Aversion

By Thomas Douenne and Adrien Fabre

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

Using a representative survey, we find that after the Yellow Vests movement, French people would largely reject a tax and dividend policy, i.e., a carbon tax whose revenues are redistributed uniformly to each adult. They overestimate their net monetary lo...

Oil for What?-Illicit Iraqi Oil Contracts and the U.N. Security Council

By Paul Heaton

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2005

The Oil-For-Food program was established by United Nations Security Council Resolution 986 in 1995 as a means of providing humanitarian relief to Iraq, which had been under U.N. economic sanctions since the Persian Gulf War in 1991. After the invasion of ...

The Impact of the Affordable Care Act: Evidence from California's Hospital Sector

By Mark Duggan, Atul Gupta, and Emilie Jackson

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

We exploit changes in the discontinuity in health insurance coverage at age 65 induced by the implementation of the Affordable Care Act to examine effects on coverage, hospital use, and patient health. We then link these changes to effects on hospital fin...

Issuance and Incidence: SNAP Benefit Cycles and Grocery Prices

By Jacob Goldin, Tatiana Homonoff, and Katherine Meckel

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

Many safety net programs issue benefits as monthly lump-sum payments. We investigate how the timing of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit issuance affects food purchases and the incidence of the transfer. Using scanner data from a la...

Reducing Frictions in College Admissions: Evidence from the Common Application

By Brian Knight and Nathan Schiff

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

College admissions in the United States are decentralized, creating frictions that limit student choice. We study the Common Application (CA) platform, under which students submit a single application to member schools, potentially reducing frictions and ...

How Do Households Value the Future? Evidence from Property Taxes

By Hans R.A. Koster and Edward W. Pinchbeck

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

Despite the near ubiquity of intertemporal choice, there is little consensus on the rate at which individuals trade present and future costs and benefits. We contribute to this debate by estimating discount rates from extensive data on housing transaction...

The Effects of Mortgage Credit Availability: Evidence from Minimum Credit Score Lending Rules

By Steven Laufer and Andrew Paciorek

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

This paper uses changes in mortgage lenders' minimum credit score thresholds to credibly identify the effects of access to household credit. Falling under these thresholds has very large negative effects on borrowing for up to two years, and these effects...

Dominated Options in Health Insurance Plans

By Chenyuan Liu and Justin Sydnor

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

Prior research documents that there are sometimes dominated options in health plan menus, but is that common? We analyze Kaiser Family Foundation data on health plans that firms offer to their employees. For firms offering both a high-deductible and lower...

The Effect of Charter Schools on School Segregation

By Tomás Monarrez, Brian Kisida, and Matthew Chingos

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

We examine the impact of the expansion of charter schools on racial segregation in public schools, defined using multiple measures of racial sorting and isolation. Our research design utilizes between-grade differences in charter expansion within school s...

Technology, Taxation, and Corruption: Evidence from the Introduction of Electronic Tax Filing

By Oyebola Okunogbe and Victor Pouliquen

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

Many e-government initiatives introduce technology to improve efficiency and avoid potential human bias. Using experimental variation, we examine the impact of electronic tax filing (to replace in-person submission to tax officials) using data from Tajiki...

Adaptation to Environmental Change: Agriculture and the Unexpected Incidence of the Acid Rain Program

By Nicholas J. Sanders and Alan I. Barreca

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

The Acid Rain Program (ARP) cut sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions from power plants in the United States, with considerable benefits. We show this also reduced ambient sulfate levels, which lowered agriculture productivity through decreased soil s...

The Rising Value of Time and the Origin of Urban Gentrification

By Yichen Su

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

In recent decades, gentrification has transformed American central city neighborhoods. I estimate a spatial equilibrium model to show that the rising value of high-skilled workers' time contributes to the gentrification of American central cities. I show ...

Retrospectives: Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era

By Thomas C. Leonard

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2005

During the Progressive Era, eugenic approaches to social and economic reform were popular, respectable and widespread. This essay documents the influence of eugenic ideas upon American economic reform, especially in the areas of immigration and labor refo...

Improving Preferential Market Access through Rules of Origin: Firm-Level Evidence from Bangladesh

By Tobias Sytsma

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

In countries where there exist limited opportunities to source inputs locally, rules of origin undermine access to preferential trade agreements for final goods exporters. I analyze the 2011 revision to the rules of origin associated with the European Uni...

Increasing Hours Worked: Moonlighting Responses to a Large Tax Reform

By Alisa Tazhitdinova

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

Moonlighting is increasingly popular in OECD countries, with 5 to 10 percent of workers holding two or more jobs. However, little is known about the responsiveness of moonlighting to financial incentives due to the lack of identifying variation. This pape...

Removing Welfare Traps: Employment Responses in the Finnish Basic Income Experiment

By Jouko Verho, Kari Hämäläinen, and Ohto Kanninen

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

This paper provides evidence that replacing minimum unemployment benefits with a basic income of equal size has minor employment effects at best. We examine an experiment in Finland in which 2,000 benefit recipients were randomized to receive a monthly ba...