When Do Research Consortia Work Well and Why? Evidence from Japanese Panel Data

By Lee G. Branstetter and Mariko Sakakibara

American Economic Review, March 2002

We examine the impact of a large number of Japanese government-sponsored research consortia on the research productivity of participating firms by measuring their patenting in the targeted technologies before, during, and after participation. Consistent w...

Carbon Border Adjustments, Climate Clubs, and Subsidy Races When Climate Policies Vary

[Symposium: International Dimensions of Climate Change Policy]

By Kimberly A. Clausing and Catherine Wolfram

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2023

Jurisdictions adopt climate policies that vary in terms of both ambition and policy approach, with some pricing carbon and others subsidizing clean production. We distinguish two types of policy spillovers from these diverse approaches. First, when countr...

Global Transportation Decarbonization

[Symposium: International Dimensions of Climate Change Policy]

By David Rapson ⓡ Erich Muehlegger

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2023

Replacing fossil fuels in the name of decarbonization is necessary but will be particularly difficult due to their as-yet unrivaled bundle of attributes: abundance, ubiquity, energy density, transportability and cost. There is a growing commitment to elec...

Compensating Wage Differentials in Labor Markets: Empirical Challenges and Applications

By Kurt Lavetti

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2023

The model of compensating wage differentials is among the cornerstone models of equilibrium wage determination in labor economics. However, empirical estimates of compensating differentials have faced persistent credibility challenges. This article summ...

What Can Historically Black Colleges and Universities Teach about Improving Higher Education Outcomes for Black Students?

By Gregory N. Price and Angelino C. G. Viceisza

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2023

Historically Black colleges and universities are institutions that were established prior to 1964 with the principal mission of educating Black Americans. In this essay, we focus on two main issues. We start by examining how Black College students perform...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2023

Induced Innovation and Energy Prices

By David Popp

American Economic Review, March 2002

I use U.S. patent data from 1970 to 1994 to estimate the effect of energy prices on energy-efficient innovations. Using patent citations to construct a measure of the usefulness of the existing base of scientific knowledge, I consider the effect of both d...

Plant-Level Irreversible Investment and Equilibrium Business Cycles

By Marcelo L. Veracierto

American Economic Review, March 2002

This paper evaluates the importance of microeconomic irreversibilities for aggregate dynamics using a real-business-cycle (RBC) model characterized by investment irreversibilities at the establishment level. The main finding is that investment irreversibi...

How Important Is Human Capital for Development? Evidence from Immigrant Earnings

By Lutz Hendricks

American Economic Review, March 2002

This paper offers new evidence on the sources of cross-country income differences. It exploits the idea that observing immigrant workers from different countries in the same labor market provides an opportunity to estimate their human-capital endowments. ...

Front Matter

American Economic Review, September 2023

Worth Your Weight: Experimental Evidence on the Benefits of Obesity in Low-Income Countries

By Elisa Macchi

American Economic Review, September 2023

I study the economic value of obesity—a status symbol in poor countries associated with raised health risks. Randomizing decision-makers in Kampala, Uganda to view weight-manipulated portraits, I find that obesity is perceived as a reliable signal of we...

Imperfect Financial Markets and Investment Inefficiencies

By Elias Albagli, Christian Hellwig, and Aleh Tsyvinski

American Economic Review, September 2023

We analyze the consequences of noisy information aggregation for investment. Market imperfections create endogenous rents that cause overinvestment in upside risks and underinvestment in downside risks. In partial equilibrium, these inefficiencies are par...

A Road to Efficiency through Communication and Commitment

By Ala Avoyan and João Ramos

American Economic Review, September 2023

We experimentally examine the efficacy of a novel pre-play institution in a well-known coordination game—the minimum-effort game—in which coordination failures are robust and persistent phenomena. This new institution allows agents to communicate whil...

Market Structure, Oligopsony Power, and Productivity

By Michael Rubens

American Economic Review, September 2023

I examine the effects of oligopsony power on allocative efficiency and income redistribution by studying a size regulation in the Chinese tobacco industry that led to ownership consolidation. I show that separate identification of input price markdowns, g...

The Macroeconomics of the Greek Depression

By Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, Loukas Karabarbounis, and Rohan Kekre

American Economic Review, September 2023

Greece experienced a boom until 2007, followed by a collapse of unprecedented magnitude and persistence. We assess the sources of the boom and the bust, using a rich estimated dynamic general equilibrium model. External demand and government consumption f...

Second-Best Fairness: The Trade-off between False Positives and False Negatives

By Alexander W. Cappelen, Cornelius Cappelen, and Bertil Tungodden

American Economic Review, September 2023

A main focus in economics is how to design optimal policies in second-best situations, which often requires a trade-off between giving some individuals more than they deserve, false positives, and others less than they deserve, false negatives. This paper...

Choice Screen Auctions

By Michael Ostrovsky

American Economic Review, September 2023

Choice screen auctions have been recently deployed in 31 European countries, allowing consumers to choose their preferred search engine on Google's Android platform instead of being automatically defaulted to Google's own search engine. I show that a seem...

Front Matter

American Economic Review: Insights, September 2023

Sources of U.S. Economic Growth in a World of Ideas

By Charles I. Jones

American Economic Review, March 2002

Rising educational attainment and research intensity in recent decades suggest that the U.S. economy is far from its steady state. This paper develops a model reconciling these facts with the stability of U.S. growth rates. In the model, long-run growth a...

The Power of Certainty: Experimental Evidence on the Effective Design of Free Tuition Programs

By Elizabeth Burland, Susan Dynarski, Katherine Michelmore, Stephanie Owen, and Shwetha Raghuraman

American Economic Review: Insights, September 2023

Proposed "free college" policies vary widely in design. The simplest set tuition to zero for everyone. More targeted approaches limit free tuition to those who demonstrate need through an application process. We experimentally test the effects of these tw...