The Origins of Enduring Economic Inequality

By Samuel Bowles and Mattia Fochesato

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2024

We survey archaeological evidence suggesting that among hunter-gatherers and farmers in Neolithic western Eurasia (11,700 to 5,300 years ago) elevated levels of wealth inequality occurred but were ephemeral and rare compared to the substantial enduring in...

Reputation and Competition

By Johannes Hörner

American Economic Review, June 2002

This paper shows how competition generates reputation-building behavior in repeated interactions when the product quality observed by consumers is a noisy signal of firms' effort level. There are two types of firms and "good" firms try to distinguish them...

The Changing Identities of American Wives and Mothers

By Jeanne Lafortune, Laura Salisbury, and Aloysius Siow

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2024

Over the last century, resource allocations within families changed significantly, as did marriage matching patterns. College-educated women became more likely to marry (and, to a lesser extent, have children) than less educated women. A large literature ...

Should They Compete or Should They Cooperate? The View of Agency Theory

By Pierre Fleckinger, David Martimort, and Nicolas Roux

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2024

What is the most efficient way of designing incentives in an organization? Over the past five decades, agency theory has provided various answers to this crucial question. This line of research suggests that, depending on the organizational context, the o...

Soviet Mathematics and Economic Theory in the Past Century: A Historical Reappraisal

By Ivan Boldyrev

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2024

What are the effects of authoritarian regimes on scholarly research in economics? And how might economic theory survive ideological pressures? This article addresses these questions by focusing on the mathematization of economics over the past century and...

Can Massive Technological Progress Hurt Workers? A Review of Power and Progress by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson

By Fiona Scott Morton

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2024

This book offers a radical thesis: Technological innovation often benefits elites while worsening conditions for workers, challenging the common view that technology always improves living standards. Through historical transitions like the Industrial Revo...

Bajoghli, Narges; Vali Nasr, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, and Ali Vaez. How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare

By Kimberly Ann Elliott

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2024

Fairlie, Robert W.; Zachary Kroff, Javier Miranda, and Nikolas Zolas. The Promise and Peril of Entrepreneurship: Job Creation and Survival among US Startups

By Shai Bernstein

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2024

James Gerber. Border Economies: Cities Bridging the U.S.–Mexico Divide

By Madeline Zavodny

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2024

Diana B. Henriques. Taming the Street: The Old Guard, the New Deal, and FDR's Fight to Regulate American Capitalism

By Caroline Fohlin

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2024

Simon Hinrichsen. When Nations Can’t Default: A History of War Reparations and Sovereign Debt

By Satyajit Chatterjee

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2024

Troubled Banks, Impaired Foreign Direct Investment: The Role of Relative Access to Credit

By Michael W. Klein, Joe Peek, and Eric S. Rosengren

American Economic Review, June 2002

During the 1980's, theories were developed to explain the striking correlation between real exchange rates and foreign direct investment (FDI). However, this relationship broke down for Japanese FDI in the 1990's, as the real exchange rate appreciated whi...

Paul Seabright. The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power, and People

By Sascha O. Becker

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2024

Paul E. Smaldino. Modeling Social Behavior: Mathematical and Agent-Based Models of Social Dynamics and Cultural Evolution

By Alberto Bisin

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2024

Annotated Listing of New Books

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2024

JEL Classification System for Books

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2024

Doctoral Dissertations in Economics

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2024

Litigation Costs and Returns to Experience

By Paul Oyer and Scott Schaefer

American Economic Review, June 2002

We develop a model linking maximum damage awards available to plaintiffs in wrongful termination lawsuits, workers' propensity to sue as a function of experience, and returns to experience. Using Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data on protected-w...

Front Matter

American Economic Review, January 2025

Five Facts about MPCs: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment

By Johannes Boehm, Etienne Fize, and Xavier Jaravel

American Economic Review, January 2025

We present five facts from an experiment on the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) out of transitory transfers: (1) the one-month MPC on a cash-like transfer is 23 percent; (2) it is substantially higher (61 percent) on a transfer administered via a car...