Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2024

Labor Market Effects of Credit Constraints: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

By Anil Kumar and Che-Yuan Liang

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2024

We exploit the 1997 and 2003 constitutional amendments in Texas—allowing home equity loans and lines of credit for nonhousing purposes—as natural experiments to estimate the effect of easier credit access on the labor market. Using state-level as well...

Can Web Courses Replace the Classroom in Principles of Microeconomics?

By Byron W. Brown and Carl E. Liedholm

American Economic Review, May 2002

Learning by Offending: How Do Criminals Learn about Criminal Law?

By Arnaud Philippe

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2024

This paper investigates how criminals learn about criminal laws. It uses a natural experiment in which sentences were drastically increased for a specific type of recidivism in France. In the short run, advertising the reform did not trigger any change in...

Gender Differences in Preferences for Meaning at Work

By Vanessa Burbano, Nicolas Padilla, and Stephan Meier

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2024

Scholars have examined whether preferences for job characteristics help explain why men and women sort into different occupations but have overlooked preferences for meaning at work. We first document gender differences in preferences for meaning in a lar...

Did the Paycheck Protection Program Help Small Businesses? Evidence from Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities

By Sumit Agarwal, Brent W. Ambrose, Luis A. Lopez, and Xue Xiao

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2024

In this study, we examine the broader economic effects of the US federal government's Paycheck Protection Program by focusing on the performance of securitized commercial mortgages. We provide novel evidence for spillover effects of government interventio...

Intergenerational and Sibling Spillovers in High School Majors

By Gordon B. Dahl, Dan-Olof Rooth, and Anders Stenberg

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2024

This paper estimates family spillovers in high school major choice in Sweden, where admission to oversubscribed majors is determined based on GPA. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find large sibling and intergenerational spillovers that depend ...

The Impact of Legal Abortion on Maternal Mortality

By Sherajum Monira Farin, Lauren Hoehn-Velasco, and Michael F. Pesko

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2024

Legal abortion has recently been suggested as an essential health care service. In this study, we consider whether abortion legalization over 1969–1973 improved women's health as measured by maternal mortality. Our event study results indicate that lega...

Firm Donations and Political Rhetoric: Evidence from a National Ban

By Julia Cagé, Caroline Le Pennec, and Elisa Mougin

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2024

We study France's 1995 ban on firm donations to politicians. We use a difference-in-differences approach and a novel dataset combining the campaign manifestos issued by candidates running in French parliamentary elections with data on their campaign contr...

The Effects of a Large-Scale Mental Health Reform: Evidence from Brazil

By Mateus Dias and Luiz Felipe Fontes

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2024

This paper studies the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform, which reorganized the public mental health care provision by introducing mental health centers (CAPS) as a community-based substitute for inpatient care. Our research design exploits the rollout of CAPS...

Tripping through Hoops: The Effect of Violating Compulsory Government Procedures

By Natalia Emanuel and Helen Ho

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2024

Millions of Americans must navigate complex government procedures under the threat of punishment. Violating these requirements can lead to poverty traps or deepening legal system involvement. We use a field experiment to estimate the effect of failing to ...

How Do Copayment Coupons Affect Branded Drug Prices and Quantities Purchased?

By Leemore Dafny, Kate Ho, and Edward Kong

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2024

We estimate the causal effects of drug copayment coupons, which reduce consumer cost sharing for branded prescription drugs, on net-of-rebate price and quantities sold. We show that coupon introductions increase the quantity of drugs without generic subst...

Indirect Savings from Public Procurement Centralization

By Clarissa Lotti, Arieda Muço, Giancarlo Spagnolo, and Tommaso Valletti

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2024

Centralization of public procurement can lower prices for the government's direct purchase of goods and services. This paper focuses on indirect savings. Public administrations that do not procure directly through a central procurement agency might benefi...

Microeconomic Principles Teaching Tricks

By Daniel S. Hamermesh

American Economic Review, May 2002

Shaping the Habits of Teen Drivers

By Timothy J. Moore and Todd Morris

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2024

We show that a targeted law can modify teens' risky behavior. We examine the effects of an Australian intervention banning first-year drivers from driving late at night with multiple peers, which had accounted for one-fifth of their traffic fatalities. Us...

Optimal Internality Taxation of Product Attributes

By Andreas Gerster and Michael Kramm

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2024

This paper explores how a benevolent policymaker should optimally tax (or subsidize) product attributes when consumers are behaviorally biased. We demonstrate that market choices are informative about biases, which can be exploited for targeting biased co...

Rural Roads, Farm Labor Exits, and Crop Fires

By Teevrat Garg, Maulik Jagnani, and Hemant K. Pullabhotla

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2024

Even as policymakers seek to encourage economic development by addressing misallocation due to frictions in labor markets, the associated production externalities—such as air pollution—remain unexplored. Using a regression discontinuity design, we sho...

Government Transfers and Votes for State Intervention

By Giuseppe Albanese, Guido de Blasio, and Lorenzo Incoronato

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2024

Government transfers might have long-lasting consequences on electoral outcomes. We study a regional policy implemented in Italy over the second half of the twentieth century and leverage variation in transfers to show that parties promoting more state in...

Competitive Bidding in Drug Procurement: Evidence from China

By Shengmao Cao, Lisa Xuejie Yi, and Chuan Yu

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2024

We study the equilibrium effects of introducing competitive bidding in drug procurement. In 2019, China introduced a competitive bidding program where drug companies bid for a prespecified procurement quantity in nine provinces. Using a difference-in-diff...

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2024