Depreciating Licenses

By E. Glen Weyl and Anthony Lee Zhang

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2022

Many governments assign use licenses for natural resources, such as radio spectrum, fishing rights, and mineral extraction rights, through auctions or other market-like mechanisms. License design affects resource users' investment incentives as well as th...

Child Marriage Bans and Female Schooling and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Natural Experiments in 17 Low- and Middle-Income Countries

By Nicholas Wilson

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2022

I measure the effect of child marriage bans on female educational attainment and employment using a difference-in-differences approach employing subnational spatial and cohort variation in a sample of over 250,000 female respondents from 17 low- and middl...

How Much Are Public School Teachers Willing to Pay for Their Retirement Benefits? Comment

By Shawn Ni, Michael Podgursky, and Fangda Wang

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2022

In a widely cited study, Fitzpatrick (2015) found that more than one quarter of Illinois teachers were unwilling to pay 19 cents for pension enhancements worth one dollar in present value. We revisit this finding by tracking the same cohort of teachers to...

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2022

Intangible Capital and Modern Economies

[Symposium: Intangible Capital]

By Carol Corrado, Jonathan Haskel, Cecilia Jona-Lasinio, and Massimiliano Iommi

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2022

The production of goods and services is central to understanding economies. The textbook description of a firm, typically in agriculture or manufacturing, focuses on its physical "tangible" capital (machines), labor (workers), and the state of "know-how...

The Economics of Intangible Capital

[Symposium: Intangible Capital]

By Nicolas Crouzet, Janice C. Eberly, Andrea L. Eisfeldt, and Dimitris Papanikolaou

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2022

Intangible assets are a large and growing part of firms' capital stocks. Intangibles are accumulated via investment--foregoing consumption today for output in the future—but they lack a physical presence. Rather than stopping with this "lack," we inst...

Marketing Investment and Intangible Brand Capital

[Symposium: Intangible Capital]

By Bart J. Bronnenberg, Jean-Pierre Dubé, and Chad Syverson

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2022

US companies invested over $500 billion in 2021 in intangible brand capital, over 2% of GDP. During the past decade, US companies have also been growing their internal marketing capabilities, an often overlooked source of human capital. We discuss the pri...

Four Facts about Human Capital

[Symposium: Human Capital]

By David J. Deming

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2022

This paper synthesizes what economists have learned about human capital since Becker (1962) into four stylized facts. First, human capital explains at least one-third of the variation in labor earnings within countries and at least half of the variation a...

Review of Hoshi and Kashyap's Corporate Financing and Governance in Japan

By Juro Teranishi

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2003

Examining the development of the Japanese financial system since the Meiji era, Hoshi and Kashyap derive a number of interesting propositions on the evolution of bank-centered financing, its contribution to rapid growth, and its future transformation. The...

Measuring Human Capital

[Symposium: Human Capital]

By Katharine G. Abraham and Justine Mallatt

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2022

We review the existing literature on the measurement of human capital. Broadly speaking, economists have proposed three approaches to constructing human capital measures—the indicator approach, the cost approach, and the income approach. Studies emplo...

Expected and Realized Inflation in Historical Perspective

[Symposium: Inflation Expectations]

By Carola Binder and Rupal Kamdar

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2022

This paper provides historical context for the relationship between expected and realized inflation. We begin with a discussion of early theoretical thought about how inflation expectations are formed. Then, we discuss survey- and asset-based measures o...

The Subjective Inflation Expectations of Households and Firms: Measurement, Determinants, and Implications

[Symposium: Inflation Expectations]

By Michael Weber, Francesco D'Acunto, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, and Olivier Coibion

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2022

Households' and firms' subjective inflation expectations play a central role in macroeconomic and intertemporal microeconomic models. We discuss how subjective inflation expectations are measured, the patterns they display, their determinants, and how the...

Blending Theory and Data: A Space Odyssey

[Symposium: Methods in Applied Micro]

By Dave Donaldson

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2022

This article describes methods used in the field of spatial economics that combine insights from economic theory and evidence from data in order to answer counterfactual questions. I outline a general framework that emphasizes three elements: a specific...

Principles for Combining Descriptive and Model-Based Analysis in Applied Microeconomics Research

[Symposium: Methods in Applied Micro]

By Neale Mahoney

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2022

In this article, I offer guidance on how to combine descriptive and model-based empirical analysis within a paper. Drawing on examples from three recently published applied microeconomics papers, I argue that it is important to create a tight link between...

Overreaction and Diagnostic Expectations in Macroeconomics

By Pedro Bordalo, Nicola Gennaioli, and Andrei Shleifer

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2022

We present the case for the centrality of overreaction in expectations for addressing important challenges in finance and macroeconomics. First, non-rational expectations by market participants can be measured and modeled in ways that address some of th...

Retrospectives: On the Evolution of the Rules versus Discretion Debate in Monetary Policy

By Harris Dellas and George S. Tavlas

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2022

Episodes of macroeconomic upheaval associated with monetary policy failure have provided the stage for important debates on rules versus discretion. We discuss the main features, results, commonalities, and differences in the debates that emerged after ...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2022

Book Reviews

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2003

Annotated Listing of New Books

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2003

JEL Classification System

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2003