Assortative Matching under Asymmetric Information: Evidence from Malawi

By Manuela Angelucci and Daniel Bennett

American Economic Review, May 2017

Asymmetric information is a key feature of the marriage market. In HIV-endemic settings, HIV risk is an important partner attribute that may influence marriage timing and partner selection. We use a sample of married women in rural Malawi to validate a mo...

Conflict and the Persistence of Ethnic Bias

By Moses Shayo and Asaf Zussman

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2017

How persistent are the effects of conflict on bias toward co-ethnics? What are the channels of persistence? We employ a measure of ethnic bias derived from decisions made by Israeli Arab and Jewish judges to study the levels and determinants of bias durin...

Incentive-Enhancing Preferences: Personality, Behavior, and Earnings

By Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, and Melissa Osborne

American Economic Review, May 2001

Which Entrepreneurs Are Coachable and Why?

By Kevin A. Bryan, András Tilcsik, and Brooklynn Zhu

American Economic Review, May 2017

Is coachability a usable concept for startups? Using a dataset on high-growth startups in a prominent university incubator, we show that firm characteristics do predict which firms are likely to follow advice but that these "coachable" firms are not more ...

The Bond Premium in a DSGE Model with Long-Run Real and Nominal Risks

By Glenn D. Rudebusch and Eric T. Swanson

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2012

The term premium in standard macroeconomic DSGE models is far too small and stable relative to the data—an example of the "bond premium puzzle." However, in endowment economy models, researchers have generated reasonable term premiums by assuming in...

Corporate Diversificaton

By Cynthia A. Montgomery

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1994

This paper documents the significant presence of diversified firms in the U.S. economy and presents three views on why firms diversify. The market power view argues that firms diversify to wield conglomerate power across markets. The agency view argues th...

Inherited Trust and Growth

By Yann Algan and Pierre Cahuc

American Economic Review, December 2010

This paper develops a new method to uncover the causal effect of trust on economic growth by focusing on the inherited component of trust and its time variation. We show that inherited trust of descendants of US immigrants is significantly influenced by t...

The Law and Economics of the Economic Expert Witness

[Symposium: Economists as Expert Witnesses]

By Richard A. Posner

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1999

I will consider the law and economics of the use of economic expert witnesses. After introducing the law governing the use of expert witnesses (including economists), I analyze and respond to several concerns regarding the use of expert witnesses. The fir...

The Environment and Directed Technical Change

By Daron Acemoglu, Philippe Aghion, Leonardo Bursztyn, and David Hemous

American Economic Review, February 2012

This paper introduces endogenous and directed technical change in a growth model with environmental constraints. The final good is produced from "dirty" and "clean" inputs. We show that: (i) when inputs are sufficiently substitutable, sustainable growth c...

Is the Threat of Reemployment Services More Effective Than the Services Themselves? Evidence from Random Assignment in the UI System

By Dan A. Black, Jeffrey A. Smith, Mark C. Berger, and Brett J. Noel

American Economic Review, September 2003

We examine the effect of the Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services system. This program "profiles" Unemployment Insurance (UI) claimants to determine their probability of benefit exhaustion and then provides mandatory employment and training services...

Announcements of Support and Public Good Provision

By Judd B. Kessler

American Economic Review, December 2017

Providing information about contributions to public goods is known to generate further contributions. However, it is often impossible to provide verifiable information on contributions. Through a large-scale field experiment and a series of laboratory exp...

An Account of Global Factor Trade

By Donald R. Davis and David E. Weinstein

American Economic Review, December 2001

A half century of empirical work attempting to predict the factor content of trade in goods has failed to bring theory and data into congruence. Our study shows how the Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek theory, when modified to permit technical differences, a breakdo...

Yes, r > g. So What?

By N. Gregory Mankiw

American Economic Review, May 2015

Piketty argues that r > g is the "the central contradiction of capitalism" and that it will lead to an "endless inegalitarian spiral." As a result, he argues for a new global tax on capital. In this brief essay, I explain why I am not persuaded b...

The New Econometrics of Structural Change: Dating Breaks in U.S. Labour Productivity

[Symposium: Econometric Tools]

By Bruce E. Hansen

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2001

We have seen the emergence of three major innovations in the econometrics of structural change in the past fifteen years: (1) tests for a structural break of unknown timing; (2) estimation of the timing of a structural break; and (3) tests to distinguish ...

The International Monetary Fund: 70 Years of Reinvention

[Symposium: The Bretton Woods Institutions]

By Carmen M. Reinhart and Christoph Trebesch

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2016

A sketch of the International Monetary Fund's 70-year history reveals an institution that has reinvented itself over time along multiple dimensions. This history is primarily consistent with a "demand driven" theory of institutional change, as the needs o...

Yugoslavia: The Case of Self-Managing Market Socialism

By Saul Estrin

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1991

For many years the Yugoslav economic system appeared to offer a middle way between capitalism and Soviet central planning. The Yugoslavs' brand of market socialism placed reliance on markets to guide both domestic and international production and exchange...

Can Hepatitis B Mothers Account for the Number of Missing Women? Evidence from Three Million Newborns in Taiwan

By Ming-Jen Lin and Ming-Ching Luoh

American Economic Review, December 2008

The "missing women" phenomenon in many Asian countries has previously been regarded as the result of son preference. However, some studies have argued half of the missing women can be explained by infection with Hepatitis B virus (HBV). We demonstrate tha...

The Use of Violence in Illegal Markets: Evidence from Mahogany Trade in the Brazilian Amazon

By Ariaster B. Chimeli and Rodrigo R. Soares

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2017

We provide evidence on the effect of market illegality on violence. Brazil was historically the main exporter of mahogany. Starting in the 1990s, trade was restricted and eventually prohibited. We build on previous evidence that mahogany trade persisted a...

Winter Blues: A SAD Stock Market Cycle

By Mark J. Kamstra, Lisa A. Kramer, and Maurice D. Levi

American Economic Review, March 2003

The Welfare Economics of Default Options in 401(k) Plans

By B. Douglas Bernheim, Andrey Fradkin, and Igor Popov

American Economic Review, September 2015

Default contribution rates for 401(k) pension plans powerfully influence choices. Potential causes include opt-out costs, procrastination, inattention, and psychological anchoring. Using realistically parameterized models, we show how the optimal default,...