Beware of Venturing into Private Equity

[Symposium: Private Equity]

By Ludovic Phalippou

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2009

As a step towards understanding whether a private equity governance structure reduces overall agency conflicts relative to a public equity governance structure (as is often argued), this paper describes the contracts between private equity funds and inve...

Pride and Diversity in Social Economies

By Fabio Maccheroni, Massimo Marinacci, and Aldo Rustichini

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2014

We study a two-period economy in which agents preferences take into account their relative economic position. The study builds on a decision theoretic analysis of the social emotions that underlie these relative concerns. These emotions, envy and pride...

The Power of Political Voice: Women's Political Representation and Crime in India

By Lakshmi Iyer, Anandi Mani, Prachi Mishra, and Petia Topalova

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2012

Using state-level variation in the timing of political reforms, we find that an increase in female representation in local government induces a large and significant rise in documented crimes against women in India. Our evidence suggests that this increa...

Economics: A Moral Inquiry with Religious Origins

By Benjamin M. Friedman

American Economic Review, May 2011

In contrast to the standard interpretation of the origins of economics out of the secular European Enlightenment of the 18th century, the transition in thinking that we rightly identify with Adam Smith and his contemporaries and followers, which gave us e...

"Build-or-Buy" Strategies in the Local Loop

By Marc Bourreau and Pınar Doğan

American Economic Review, May 2006

Poverty Volatility and Macroeconomic Quiescence

By Philip N. Jefferson

American Economic Review, May 2008

Computer Network Resources for Economists

[Symposium: Internet]

By William L. Goffe

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1994

This paper outlines resources for economists on the Internet, the large and very rapidly expanding computer network that is revolutionizing research in many fields. Even at this early stage, there are a number of very useful resources (such as large datab...

An Equilibrium Term Structure Model with Recursive Preferences

By Anh Le and Kenneth J. Singleton

American Economic Review, May 2010

One Essay on Dissertation Formats in Economics

By Wendy A. Stock and John J. Siegfried

American Economic Review, May 2013

Dissertations in economics have changed dramatically over the past forty years, from primarily treatise-length books to sets of essays on related topics. We document trends in essay-style dissertations across several metrics, using data on dissertation fo...

Place Based Policies, Heterogeneity, and Agglomeration

By Patrick Kline

American Economic Review, May 2010

The Creation of Effective Property Rights

By Herschel I. Grossman

American Economic Review, May 2001

Minutes of the Annual Meeting: Denver, CO, January 8, 2011

By John J. Siegfried

American Economic Review, May 2011

Puzzles: Slot Machines, Zomepirac, Squash, and More

By Barry Nalebuff

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1990

This issue of puzzles can only be described as eclectic. The topics of the puzzles range from medical statistics to TV game shows to Las Vegas slot machines to squash to running around in squares. As usual, most puzzle answers are at the back. However, th...

The Mystique Surrounding the Central Bank's Balance Sheet, Applied to the European Crisis

By Ricardo Reis

American Economic Review, May 2013

A central bank's resource constraint bounds the dividends it can distribute by the present value of seignorage, which is a modest share of GDP. This is in spite of the mystique behind a central bank's balance sheet. Moreover, the statutes of the Federal R...

Policy Watch: Death Watch for the Estate Tax?

By William G. Gale and Joel B. Slemrod

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2001

Competitive Altruism, Mentalizing, and Signaling

By Ed Hopkins

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2014

One explanation of altruism is that it arises from "mentalizing", the process of understanding the mental states of others. Another is based on sexual selection: altruism is a costly signal of good genes. This paper shows that these two arguments are s...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2017

Keeping It in the Family: Lineage Organization and the Scope of Trust in Sub-Saharan Africa

By Jacob Moscona, Nathan Nunn, and James A. Robinson

American Economic Review, May 2017

We present evidence that the traditional structure of society is an important determinant of the scope of trust today. Within Africa, individuals belonging to ethnic groups that organized society using segmentary lineages exhibit a more limited scope of t...

Exchange Rates and Employment Instability: Evidence from Matched CPS Data

By Linda Goldberg, Joseph Tracy, and Stephanie Aaronson

American Economic Review, May 1999

Productivity Dispersion in Medicine and Manufacturing

By Amitabh Chandra, Amy Finkelstein, Adam Sacarny, and Chad Syverson

American Economic Review, May 2016

The conventional wisdom in health economics is that large differences in average productivity across US hospitals are the result of idiosyncratic features of the healthcare sector which dull the role of market forces. Strikingly, however, we find that pro...