Optimal Defaults

By James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian, and Andrew Metrick

American Economic Review, May 2003

The Role of Entrepreneurship in US Job Creation and Economic Dynamism

[Symposium: Entrepreneurship]

By Ryan Decker, John Haltiwanger, Ron Jarmin, and Javier Miranda

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2014

An optimal pace of business dynamics—encompassing the processes of entry, exit, expansion, and contraction—would balance the benefits of productivity and economic growth against the costs to firms and workers associated with reallocation of pr...

The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks

By Christina D. Romer and David H. Romer

American Economic Review, June 2010

This paper investigates the impact of tax changes on economic activity. We use the narrative record, such as presidential speeches and Congressional reports, to identify the size, timing, and principal motivation for all major postwar tax policy actions...

Intergenerational Transfers and Savings

[Symposium: Explaining Savings]

By Laurence J. Kotlikoff

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1988

What is the main explanation for savings? Is it primarily accumulation for retirement as claimed by Albert Ando, Richard Brumberg, and Franco Modigliani in their celebrated Life Cycle Model of Savings? Is it primarily intentional accumulation for intergen...

The Impact of the Great Migration on Mortality of African Americans: Evidence from the Deep South

By Dan A. Black, Seth G. Sanders, Evan J. Taylor, and Lowell J. Taylor

American Economic Review, February 2015

The Great Migration–the massive migration of African Americans out of the rural South to largely urban locations in the North, Midwest, and West–was a landmark event in US history. Our paper shows that this migration increased mortality of African Ame...

Trends in Quality-Adjusted Skill Premia in the United States, 1960-2000

By Pedro Carneiro and Sokbae Lee

American Economic Review, October 2011

This paper presents new evidence that increases in college enrollment lead to a decline in the average quality of college graduates between 1960 and 2000, resulting in a decrease of 6 percentage points in the college premium. A standard demand and supply...

A New Method of Estimating Risk Aversion

By Raj Chetty

American Economic Review, December 2006

I show existing evidence on labor supply behavior places an upper bound on risk aversion in the expected utility model. I derive a formula for the coefficient of relative risk aversion (γ) in terms of the ratio of the income elasticity of labor supply to...

Vertical Integration, Market Foreclosure, and Consumer Welfare in the Cable Television Industry

By Tasneem Chipty

American Economic Review, June 2001

I examine the effects of vertical integration between programming and distribution in the cable television industry. I assess the effects of ownership structure on program offerings, prices, and subscriptions, and I compare consumer welfare across integra...

The Cyclicality of Skill Acquisition: Evidence from Panel Data

By Fabio Méndez and Facundo Sepúlveda

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, July 2012

This paper presents new empirical evidence regarding the cyclicality of skill acquisition activities. The paper studies both training and schooling episodes at the individual level using quarterly data from the NLSY79 for a period of 19 years. We find tha...

Classroom Games: Speculation and Bubbles in an Asset Market

By Sheryl B. Ball and Charles A. Holt

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1998

This paper describes a classroom exercise in which students trade assets of uncertain value in a sequence of market periods. Assets pay one-dollar dividends at the end of each period, but once the dividend is paid there is fixed probability that the asset...

The Long-Term Effects of the Printing Press in Sub-Saharan Africa

By Julia Cagé and Valeria Rueda

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2016

This article investigates the long-term consequences of the printing press in the nineteenth century sub-Saharan Africa on social capital nowadays. Protestant missionaries were the first to import the printing press and to allow the indigenous population ...

The Role of Government Reimbursement in Drug Shortages

By Ali Yurukoglu, Eli Liebman, and David B. Ridley

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2017

Beginning in the mid-2000s, the incidence of drug shortages rose, especially for generic injectable drugs such as anesthetics and chemotherapy treatments. We examine whether reimbursement changes contributed to the shortages, focusing on a reduction in Me...

Pass-Through of Emissions Costs in Electricity Markets

By Natalia Fabra and Mar Reguant

American Economic Review, September 2014

We measure the pass-through of emissions costs to electricity prices. We perform both reduced-form and structural estimations based on optimal bidding in this market. Using rich micro-level data, we estimate the channels affecting pass-through in a flexib...

Serial Default and the "Paradox" of Rich-to-Poor Capital Flows

By Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff

American Economic Review, May 2004

Narrow Networks on the Health Insurance Exchanges: What Do They Look Like and How Do They Affect Pricing? A Case Study of Texas

By Leemore Dafny, Igal Hendel, and Nathan Wilson

American Economic Review, May 2015

The Affordable Care Act has engendered significant changes in the design of health insurance products. We examine the "narrowness" of hospital networks affiliated with plans offered in the first year of the marketplaces. Using data from Texas, we find lim...

Absolute Poverty: When Necessity Displaces Desire

By Robert C. Allen

American Economic Review, December 2017

A new basis for an international poverty measurement is proposed based on linear programming for specifying the least cost diet and explicit budgeting for nonfood spending. This approach is superior to the World Bank's $1-a-day line because it is (i) clea...

Copying and Copyright

[Symposium: Intellectual Property Rights]

By Hal R. Varian

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2005

Today most newly created textual, photographic, audio, and video content is available in digital form. Even older content that was not "born digital" can relatively easily converted to machine-readable formats. At same time, the world has become more netw...

Modeling the Revolving Revolution: The Debt Collection Channel

By Lukasz A. Drozd and Ricardo Serrano-Padial

American Economic Review, March 2017

We investigate the role of information technology (IT) in the collection of delinquent consumer debt. We argue that the widespread adoption of IT by the debt collection industry in the 1990s contributed to the observed expansion of unsecured risky lending...

Merit Aid, College Quality, and College Completion: Massachusetts' Adams Scholarship as an In-Kind Subsidy

By Sarah R. Cohodes and Joshua S. Goodman

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2014

We analyze a Massachusetts merit aid program that gives highscoring students tuition waivers at in-state public colleges with lower graduation rates than available alternative colleges. A regression discontinuity design comparing students just above and...

Microeconomic Origins of Macroeconomic Tail Risks

By Daron Acemoglu, Asuman Ozdaglar, and Alireza Tahbaz-Salehi

American Economic Review, January 2017

Using a multisector general equilibrium model, we show that the interplay of idiosyncratic microeconomic shocks and sectoral heterogeneity results in systematic departures in the likelihood of large economic downturns relative to what is implied by the no...