A Biological Model of Unions

By Michael Kremer and Benjamin A. Olken

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2009

This paper applies principles from evolutionary biology to the study of unions. We show that unions that implement the preferred wage and organizing policies of workers will be displaced in evolutionary competition by unions that either extract less fr...

The Importance of Information Targeting for School Choice

By Kehinde F. Ajayi, Willa H. Friedman, and Adrienne M. Lucas

American Economic Review, May 2017

Although school choice programs are common, we know little about the underlying decision-making processes. In this study, we randomly assigned 900 junior high schools in Ghana, a country with universal secondary school choice, to 1 of 3 treatment arms: (1...

The Political Geography of Tax H(e)avens and Tax Hells

By Nico A. Hansen and Anke S. Kessler

American Economic Review, September 2001

A Spatial Theory of Trade

By Esteban Rossi-Hansberg

American Economic Review, December 2005

The equilibrium relationship between trade and the spatial distribution of economic activity is fundamental to the analysis of national and regional trade patterns, as well as to the effect of trade frictions. We study this relationship using a trade mode...

The Performance of Forecast-Based Monetary Policy Rules Under Model Uncertainty

By Andrew Levin, Volker Wieland, and John C. Williams

American Economic Review, June 2003

We investigate the performance of forecast-based monetary policy rules using five macroeconomic models that reflect a wide range of views on aggregate dynamics. We identify the key characteristics of rules that are robust to model uncertainty; such rules ...

The Gastroenterology Fellowship Market: Should There Be a Match?

By Muriel Niederle and Alvin E. Roth

American Economic Review, May 2005

The Neoclassical Advent: American Economics at the Dawn of the 20th Century

[Symposium: Looking Backward at Economics and the Economy]

By Joseph Persky

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2000

For the U.S. economy, the last quarter of the 19th century brought the closing of the Western frontier, agricultural hardship in the South, the rise of large corporations and trusts, and the emergence of a serious labor movement. The fledgling American ec...

How Occupied France Financed Its Own Exploitation in World War II

By Filippo Occhino, Kim Oosterlinck, and Eugene N. White

American Economic Review, May 2007

Harriet Taylor Mill

By Janet A. Seiz and Michele A. Pujol

American Economic Review, May 2000

Optimal Auction Design and Equilibrium Selection in Sponsored Search Auctions

By Benjamin Edelman and Michael Schwarz

American Economic Review, May 2010

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Bernard Saffran

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2000

Book Reviews

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2015

The Biological Basis of Economic Behavior

By Arthur J. Robson

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2001

This paper first considers the implications of biological evolution for economic preferences. It analyzes why utility functions evolved, considers evidence that utility is both hedonic and adaptive, and suggests why such adaptation might have evolved. Tim...

Health Care Usage and Health Status of Immigrant Children: The Effects of Nativity versus Citizenship

By Mónica García-Pérez

American Economic Review, May 2013

This paper addresses the relationship between child access to and use of health services, perceived health, and parental nativity. Parental region of birth is identified to include the underlying cultural differences across immigrant groups. We found that...

The Employment Consequences of Wrongful-Discharge Laws: Large, Small, or None at All?

By David H. Autor, John J. Donohue, and Stewart J. Schwab

American Economic Review, May 2004

How Liable Should a Lender Be? The Case of Judgment-Proof Firms and Environmental Risk: Reply

By Rohan Pitchford

American Economic Review, June 2001

Frequentist and Subjectivist Perspectives on the Problems of Model Building in Economics

By Dale J. Poirier

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1988

I plan to discuss, in as simple and nontechnical a fashion as possible, the subjectivist-Bayesian attitude toward model building in econometrics and to contrast it with the standard frequentist attitude. To convey what I believe is the principle distingui...

NAIRU Uncertainty and Nonlinear Policy Rules

By Laurence H. Meyer, Eric T. Swanson, and Volker W. Wieland

American Economic Review, May 2001

Currency Choice and Exchange Rate Pass-Through

By Gita Gopinath, Oleg Itskhoki, and Roberto Rigobon

American Economic Review, March 2010

We show, using novel data on currency and prices for US imports, that even conditional on a price change, there is a large difference in the exchange rate pass-through of the average good priced in dollars (25 percent) versus nondollars (95 percent). ...

Economists and White House Decisions

[Symposium: Economists as Policy Advocates]

By Stuart E. Eizenstat

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1992

While I served in the White House, [as Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs and Policy and Executive Director of the White House Domestic Policy Staff from 1977-81], Ph.D. economists occupied the positions of Secretary of Labor, Secretary of Co...