Book Reviews

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2016

Annotated Listing of New Books

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2016

JEL Classification System

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2016

Doctoral Dissertations in Economics

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2016

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2017

Growth-Rate and Uncertainty Shocks in Consumption: Cross-Country Evidence

By Emi Nakamura, Dmitriy Sergeyev, and Jón Steinsson

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2017

We provide new estimates of the importance of growth-rate shocks and uncertainty shocks for developed countries. The shocks we estimate are large and correspond to well-known macroeconomic episodes such as the Great Moderation and the productivity slowdow...

Optimal Monetary and Prudential Policies

By Fabrice Collard, Harris Dellas, Behzad Diba, and Olivier Loisel

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2017

The recent financial crisis has highlighted the interconnectedness between macroeconomic and financial stability, raising questions about how to combine monetary and prudential policies. This paper characterizes the jointly optimal monetary and prudential...

Worker Selection, Hiring, and Vacancies

By Ismail Baydur

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2017

This paper incorporates worker selection into a random matching model with multi-worker firms. Unlike the standard Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides (DMP) model, the extended model is compatible with cross-sectional behavior of vacancy yields, which rise with ...

Optimal Sovereign Default

By Klaus Adam and Michael Grill

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2017

When is it optimal for a fully committed government to default on its legal repayment obligations? Considering a small open economy with domestic production risk and noncontingent government debt, we show that it is ex ante optimal to occasionally deviate...

Liquidity Traps and Jobless Recoveries

By Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé and Martín Uribe

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2017

This paper proposes a model that explains the joint occurrence of liquidity traps and jobless growth recoveries. Its key elements are downward nominal wage rigidity, a Taylor-type interest rate feedback rule, the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates...

Targeting Long Rates in a Model with Segmented Markets

By Charles T. Carlstrom, Timothy S. Fuerst, and Matthias Paustian

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2017

This paper develops a model of segmented financial markets in which the net worth of financial institutions limits the degree of arbitrage across the term structure. The model is embedded into the canonical Dynamic New Keynesian (DNK) framework. We estima...

Trying to Understand the PPPs in ICP 2011: Why Are the Results So Different?

By Angus Deaton and Bettina Aten

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2017

Purchasing power parity exchange rates, or PPPs, are price indexes that summarize prices in each country relative to a numeraire country, typically the United States. These numbers are used to compare living standards across countries, by academics in stu...

Cross-Country Income Levels over Time: Did the Developing World Suddenly Become Much Richer?

By Robert Inklaar and D. S. Prasada Rao

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2017

The latest global survey on relative prices and income levels, for the year 2011, showed changes to relative income levels that were larger in lower income countries, thereby narrowing the world income distribution compared to estimates based on the previ...

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2017

Moving to Opportunity or Isolation? Network Effects of a Randomized Housing Lottery in Urban India

By Sharon Barnhardt, Erica Field, and Rohini Pande

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2017

A housing lottery in an Indian city provided winning slum dwellers the opportunity to move into improved housing on the city's periphery. Fourteen years later, winners report improved housing but no change in tenure security, family income, or human capit...

Experimental Evidence on the Long-Run Impact of Community-Based Monitoring

By Martina Björkman Nyqvist, Damien de Walque, and Jakob Svensson

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2017

We evaluate the longer run impact of a local accountability intervention in primary health care provision in Uganda. Short-run improvements in health care delivery and health outcomes remained in the longer run despite minimal follow-up. We find no impact...

Learning by Driving: Productivity Improvements by New York City Taxi Drivers

By Kareem Haggag, Brian McManus, and Giovanni Paci

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2017

We study learning by doing by New York City taxi drivers, who have substantial discretion over their driving strategies and receive compensation closely tied to their success in finding customers. In addition to documenting learning overall by these entre...

Can Social Information Affect What Job You Choose and Keep?

By Lucas C. Coffman, Clayton R. Featherstone, and Judd B. Kessler

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2017

We show that the provision of social information influences a high-stakes decision and this influence persists over time. In a field experiment involving thousands of admits to Teach For America, those told about the previous year's matriculation rate are...

Fertility Decline and Missing Women

By Seema Jayachandran

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2017

The desire for smaller families is conjectured as one reason the male-to-female sex ratio has increased with economic development in several countries. Families that strongly want at least one son are less likely to obtain him by chance at low fertility, ...

Ready for Boarding? The Effects of a Boarding School for Disadvantaged Students

By Luc Behaghel, Clément de Chaisemartin, and Marc Gurgand

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2017

Boarding schools substitute school to home, but little is known on the effects this substitution produces on students. We present results of an experiment in which seats in a boarding school for disadvantaged students were randomly allocated. Boarders enj...