Art as an Investment and Conspicuous Consumption Good

By Benjamin R. Mandel

American Economic Review, September 2009

This paper provides a simple and empirically plausible model of artworks as investment vehicles. It reconciles the observation that average financial returns for collectibles are low and volatile with the theory of consumption-based asset pricing. Art ass...

Children's Resources in Collective Households: Identification, Estimation, and an Application to Child Poverty in Malawi

By Geoffrey R. Dunbar, Arthur Lewbel, and Krishna Pendakur

American Economic Review, February 2013

The share of household resources devoted to children is hard to identify because consumption is measured at the household level and goods can be shared. Using semiparametric restrictions on individual preferences within a collective model, we identify ...

Marry Your Like: Assortative Mating and Income Inequality

By Jeremy Greenwood, Nezih Guner, Georgi Kocharkov, and Cezar Santos

American Economic Review, May 2014

Has there been an increase in positive assortative mating? Does assortative mating contribute to household income inequality? Data from the United States Census Bureau suggests there has been a rise in assortative mating. Additionally, assortative mating ...

The Distribution of Wealth and the MPC: Implications of New European Data

By Christopher D. Carroll, Jiri Slacalek, and Kiichi Tokuoka

American Economic Review, May 2014

Using a standard, realistically calibrated model of buffer-stock saving with transitory and permanent income shocks, we study how cross-country differences in the wealth distribution and household income dynamics affect the marginal propensity to consume ...

Secular Stagnation in the Open Economy

By Gauti B. Eggertsson, Neil R. Mehrotra, and Lawrence H. Summers

American Economic Review, May 2016

Conditions of secular stagnation--low interest rates, below target inflation, and sluggish output growth--now characterize much of the global economy. We consider a simple two-country textbook model to examine how capital markets transmit secular stagnati...

Money and Asset Liquidity in Frictional Capital Markets

By Wei Cui and Sören Radde

American Economic Review, May 2016

We endogenize asset liquidity and financing constraints in a dynamic general equilibrium model with search frictions on capital markets. Assets traded on frictional capital markets are only partially saleable. Liquid assets, such as fiat money, instead, a...

Technology, International Trade, and Pollution from US Manufacturing

By Arik Levinson

American Economic Review, December 2009

Pollution emitted by US manufacturers declined markedly over the past several decades, even as real manufacturing output increased. I first show that most of the decline in US manufacturing pollution has resulted from changing production processes ("techn...

The Fundamental Institutions of China's Reforms and Development

By Chenggang Xu

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2011

China's economic reforms have resulted in spectacular growth and poverty reduction. However, China's institutions look ill-suited to achieve such a result, and they indeed suffer from serious shortcomings. To solve the "China puzzle," this paper analyzes ...

Interpreting the Tariff-Growth Correlation of the Late 19th Century

By Douglas A. Irwin

American Economic Review, May 2002

Effects of Environmental and Land Use Regulation in the Oil and Gas Industry Using the Wyoming Checkerboard as a Natural Experiment: Retraction

By Shelby Gerking and William E. Morgan

American Economic Review, June 2007

Evidence on Discrimination in Consumer Markets

[Symposium: Discrimination in Product, Credit and Labor Markets]

By John Yinger

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1998

Economists have contributed to the measurement of racial and ethnic discrimination in consumption and to the identification of its causes, especially in housing markets and car sales. To test the hypothesis that discrimination exists, economists have turn...

The Demand for Youth: Explaining Age Differences in the Volatility of Hours

By Nir Jaimovich, Seth Pruitt, and Henry E. Siu

American Economic Review, December 2013

Over the business cycle young workers experience much greater volatility of hours worked than prime-aged workers. This can arise from age differences in labor supply or labor demand characteristics. To distinguish between these, we document that, for yo...

Comments

By Jerry H. Tempelman, Hendrik Bessembinder, and William Maxwell

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2008

Women on Boards in Finance and STEM Industries

By Renée B. Adams and Tom Kirchmaier

American Economic Review, May 2016

We document that women are less represented on corporate boards in Finance and more traditional STEM industry sectors. Even after controlling for differences in firm and country characteristics, average diversity in these sectors is 24% lower than the mea...

Retrospectives: Economists and the Fed: Beginnings

By Perry Mehrling

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2002

As usually understood, the significant debate over the founding of the Fed was between advocates of the real bills doctrine and advocates of the quantity theory of money. This understanding however conflates two different distinctions: one between the ban...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Bernard Saffran

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2002

Comments: Pricing and Cost of Electronics Journals

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2002

Notes

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2002

The Consumer Price Index: Conceptual Issues and Practical Suggestions

[Symposium: Consumer Price Index]

By Charles L. Schultze

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2003

A National Academy of Sciences Panel recently made a number of recommendations to the BLS for improving the Consumer Price Index, while also suggesting some cautions to be observed when considering the adoption of new concepts and techniques. This paper d...

Durable Goods Theory for Real World Markets

By Michael Waldman

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2003

The early 1970s witnessed three major advances in durable-goods theory--Swan (1970, 1971) and Sieper and Swan (1973) on optimal durability, Coase (1972) on time inconsistency, and Akerlof (1970) on adverse selection. This paper surveys durable goods theor...