Steven D. Levitt: 2003 John Bates Clark Medalist

By James M. Poterba

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2005

Steve's Clark Medal citation mentions his path-breaking contributions to the economics of crime and to the political economy of campaign finance. This paper describes Steve's research in each of these areas, as well as his contributions on a range of othe...

History Lessons: The End of American Exceptionalism? Mobility in the United States Since 1850

By Joseph P. Ferrie

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2005

New longitudinal data on individuals linked across nineteenth century U.S. censuses document the geographic and occupational mobility of more than 75,000 Americans from the 1850s to the 1920s. Together with longitudinal data for more recent years, these d...

Policy Watch: Reform of the U.S. Postal Service

By R. Richard Geddes

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2005

The author first reviews the current structure and regulation of the U.S. Postal Service. He then discusses the changing size and composition of the U.S. mail stream. Many other countries have already undertaken comprehensive postal reform, including both...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2005

Comments

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2005

Notes

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2005

Cognitive Reflection and Decision Making

[Symposium: Cognition, Brain Science and Economics]

By Shane Frederick

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2005

This paper introduces a three-item "Cognitive Reflection Test" (CRT) as a simple measure of one type of cognitive ability—the ability or disposition to reflect on a question and resist reporting the first response that comes to mind. The author will sho...

Individual Irrationality and Aggregate Outcomes

[Symposium: Cognition, Brain Science and Economics]

By Ernst Fehr and Jean-Robert Tyran

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2005

In their personal lives, many economists recognize that they are surrounded by individuals who are less than fully rational. In their professional lives, however, economists often use models that examine the interactions of fully rational agents. To reduc...

Assessing High House Prices: Bubbles, Fundamentals and Misperceptions

[Symposium: Housing Markets]

By Charles Himmelberg, Christopher Mayer, and Todd Sinai

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2005

How does one tell when rapid growth in house prices is caused by fundamental factors of supply and demand and when it is an unsustainable bubble? In this paper, we explain how to assess the state of house prices—both whether there is a bubble and what u...

Accounting for Stock Options

[Symposium: Stock Options Now and Then]

By Jeremy Bulow and John B. Shoven

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2005

As public companies begin their new fiscal years, they are implementing a new and controversial Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB, 2004) proposal for expensing stock options. Applied to 2003 and 2004, this rule would have slashed reported earning...

The Original Management Incentive Schemes

[Symposium: Stock Options Now and Then]

By Richard T. Holden

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2005

During the 1990s, the structure of pay for top corporate executives shifted markedly as the use of stock options greatly expanded. By the early 2000s, as the dot-com boom ended and the Nasdaq stock index melted down, these modern executive incentive schem...

A Natural Experiment in Monetary Policy Covering Three Episodes of Growth and Decline in the Economy and the Stock Market

By Milton Friedman

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2005

The third of three episodes in a major natural experiment in monetary policy that started more than 80 years ago is just now coming to an end. The experiment consists in observing the effect on the economy and the stock market of the monetary policies fol...

Intelligence Failures: An Organizational Economics Perspective

By Luis Garicano and Richard A. Posner

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2005

Two recent failures of the U.S. intelligence system have led to the creation of high-level investigative commissions. The failure to prevent the terrorist attacks of 9/11 prompted the creation of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the Unite...

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 ...

Winning Isn't Everything: Corruption in Sumo Wrestling

By Mark Duggan and Steven D. Levitt

American Economic Review, December 2002

Portfolio Choice and Trading in a Large 401(k) Plan

By Julie Agnew, Pierluigi Balduzzi, and Annika Sundén

American Economic Review, March 2003

We study nearly 7,000 retirement accounts during the April 1994-August 1998 period. Several interesting patterns emerge. Most asset allocations are extreme (either 100 percent or zero percent in equities) and there is inertia in asset allocations. Equity ...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2005

Comments

By Lawrence H. Goulder, Ian W.H. Parry, and Roberton C. Williams III

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2005

Notes

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2005

Some Uses of Happiness Data in Economics

[Symposium: Happiness Economics]

By Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2006

Happiness research is based on the idea that it is fruitful to study empirical measures of individual welfare. The most common is the answer to a simple well-being question such as "Are you Happy?" Hundreds of thousands of individuals have been asked this...