Poverty in America: Trends and Explanations

[Symposium: Poverty]

By Hilary W. Hoynes, Marianne E. Page, and Ann Huff Stevens

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2006

Despite robust growth in real GDP per capita in the last three decades, U.S. poverty rates have changed very little. We summarize some basic facts about poverty in the United States, relying on a combination of previously published data from the Census Bu...

Poor People in Rich Nations: The United States in Comparative Perspective

[Symposium: Poverty]

By Timothy Smeeding

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2006

Cross-national comparisons can teach lessons about antipoverty policy. While all nations value low poverty, high levels of economic self-reliance and equality of opportunity for younger persons, they differ dramatically in the extent to which they reach t...

Addressing Absence

[Symposium: Public Sector Absenteeism]

By Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2006

Absent providers are a major problem both for public health facilities and primary schools in many developing countries. For example, in India, absence rates for teachers are over 24 percent, and for health providers they are over 40 percent. This paper p...

Anomalies: Utility Maximization and Experienced Utility

By Daniel Kahneman and Richard H. Thaler

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2006

In this column, we discuss a version of the utility maximization hypothesis that can be tested—and we find that it is false. We review empirical challenges to utility maximization, which return to the old question of whether preferences optimize the exp...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2006

Notes

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2006

Delegated Monitors, Large and Small: Germany's Banking System, 1800-1914

By Timothy W. Guinnane

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2002

Banks play a greater role in the German financial system than in those of the United States or Britain. Germany's large universal banks are admired by those who advocate bank deregulation in the United States. Others admire the universal banks for their s...

Looking Inside the Labor Market: A Review Article

By Peter Howitt

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2002

When unemployed workers are available, why don't firms cut wages until the excess supply is eliminated? In his book, Why Wages Don't Fall During a Recession, Truman F. Bewley concludes, based on interviews with managers and labor leaders, that the most im...

Can We Trust Social Capital?

By Joel Sobel

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2002

This essay looks at the literature on social capital from the perspective of game theory. It reviews Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam and Social Capital: A Multifaceted Approach edited by Partha Dasgupta and Ismail Serageldin.

Annotated Listing of New Books

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2002

Time Discounting and Time Preference: A Critical Review

By Shane Frederick, George Loewenstein, and Ted O'Donoghue

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2002

This paper discusses the discounted utility (DU) model: its historical development, underlying assumptions, and "anomalies" - the empirical regularities that are inconsistent with its theoretical predictions. We then summarize the alternate theoretical fo...

Schools and Skills in Developing Countries: Education Policies and Socioeconomic Outcomes

By Paul Glewwe

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2002

This paper reviews recent research on the determinants of educational outcomes, and the impact of those outcomes on other socioeconomic phenomena. It addresses three questions: 1) What school policies are most cost-effective in producing students with par...

Who Talks to Whom? Intra- and Interdisciplinary Communication of Economics Journals

By Rik Pieters and Hans Baumgartner

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2002

Citation patterns between 42 journals in economics from 1995 to 1997 are examined, plus between economics and anthropology, political science, psychology, sociology and five business disciplines. Building on social network theory, we identify a hierarchic...

Annotated Listing of New Books

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2002

JEL Classification System

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2002

Enterprise Restructuring in Transition: A Quantitative Survey

By Simeon Djankov and Peter Murrell

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2002

We survey the empirical literature analyzing the process of enterprise restructuring in transition economies. The survey provides new insights into the relative effectiveness of different reform policies, and into how this effectiveness varies across regi...

Modern Hyper- and High Inflations

By Stanley Fischer, Ratna Sahay, and Carlos A. Végh

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2002

Since 1947, hyperinflations in market economies have been rare. More common have been longer inflationary processes at rates above 100 percent per annum. This paper examines the main characteristics of such very high inflation episodes. We find that (i) a...

Annotated Listing of New Books

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2002

Evaluating Welfare Reform in the United States

By Rebecca M. Blank

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2002

This paper reviews the economic literature on welfare reform over the 1990s. A brief summary of the policy changes is followed by a discussion of the methodological techniques that analyze the effects of these changes on outcomes. The paper then criticall...

Identity and Schooling: Some Lessons for the Economics of Education

By George A. Akerlof and Rachel E. Kranton

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2002

This review culls noneconomic literature on education--by sociologists, anthropologists, and practitioners to present a new economic theory of students and schools. This theory elaborates two themes that have eluded economic analysis. First is the student...