Price and Quality of Desktop and Mobile Personal Computers: A Quarter-Century Historical Overview

By Ernst R. Berndt and Neal J. Rappaport

American Economic Review, May 2001

Mistaken Play in the Deferred Acceptance Algorithm: Implications for Positive Assortative Matching

By Alex Rees-Jones

American Economic Review, May 2017

Recent literature has documented failures of truthful preference reporting in the strategy-proof deferred acceptance algorithm. I consider the implications of these strategic mistakes for a common welfare consideration: the ability of the mechanism to sor...

To Work or Not to Work? Child Development and Maternal Labor Supply

By Paul Frijters, David W. Johnston, Manisha Shah, and Michael A. Shields

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2009

We estimate the effect of early child development on maternal labor force participation. Mothers of poorly developing children may remain at home to care for their children. Alternatively, mothers may enter the labor force to pay for additional educati...

Achieving Escape Velocity: Neighborhood and School Interventions to Reduce Persistent Inequality

By Roland G. Fryer Jr. and Lawrence F. Katz

American Economic Review, May 2013

This paper reviews the evidence on the efficacy of neighborhood and school interventions in improving the long-run outcomes of children growing up in poor families. We focus on studies exploiting exogenous sources of variation in neighborhoods and schools...

The Ins and Outs of Cyclical Unemployment

By Michael W. L. Elsby, Ryan Michaels, and Gary Solon

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2009

A dominant trend in recent modeling of labor market fluctuations is to treat unemployment inflows as acyclical. This trend has been encouraged by recent influential papers that stress the role of longer unemployment spells, rather than more unemploymen...

Sudden Stops and Phoenix Miracles in Emerging Markets

By Guillermo A. Calvo, Alejandro Izquierdo, and Ernesto Talvi

American Economic Review, May 2006

The Economic and Policy Consequences of Catastrophes

By Robert S. Pindyck and Neng Wang

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2013

How likely is a catastrophic event that would substantially reduce the capital stock, GDP, and wealth? How much should society be willing to pay to reduce the probability or impact of a catastrophe? We answer these questions and provide a framework for...

Ability-Tracking, Instructional Time, and Better Pedagogy: The Effect of Double-Dose Algebra on Student Achievement

By Kalena E. Cortes and Joshua S. Goodman

American Economic Review, May 2014

This paper provides new evidence on tracking by studying an innovative curriculum implemented by Chicago Public Schools (CPS). In 2003, CPS enacted a double-dose algebra policy requiring 9th grade students with 8th grade math scores below the national med...

Democracy and Development: The Devil in the Details

By Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini

American Economic Review, May 2006

Children in the Vanguard of the U.S. Welfare State: A Review of Janet Currie's The Invisible Safety Net and Jane Waldfogel's What Children Need

By Eugene Smolensky

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2007

Policy driven social science research intended to influence the future of the U.S. welfare state has, during the past decade, emphasized improving the life-chances of children, particularly children disadvantaged at birth by the socioeconomic status of...

Competition, Comparative Performance, and Market Transparency

By Bruce I. Carlin, Shaun William Davies, and Andrew Iannaccone

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2012

We study how competition affects market transparency, taking into account that comparative performance is assessed via tournaments and contests. Extending Dye (1985) to a multi-firm setting in which top performers are rewarded, we show that increased com...

Reflections on 25 Years of CSWEP

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1998

The Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. Here, we republish the text of the resolution that created CSWEP, along with comments on the role of CSWEP in the economics profession from Robin L....

Executive Compensation: Six Questions That Need Answering

By John M. Abowd and David S. Kaplan

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1999

This article address six questions concerning executive compensation, drawing on recent advances in the study of executive compensation, including the role of stock and option holdings: How much does executive compensation cost the firm? How much is execu...

The Doing Business Project: How It Started: Correspondence

By Simeon Djankov

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2016

How Deep Are the Roots of Economic Development?

By Enrico Spolaore and Romain Wacziarg

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2013

The empirical literature on economic growth and development has moved from the study of proximate determinants to the analysis of ever deeper, more fundamental factors, rooted in long-term history. A growing body of new empirical work focuses on the me...

Takeovers: Their Causes and Consequences

[Symposium: Takeovers]

By Michael C. Jensen

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1988

Economists have accumulated considerable evidence and knowledge on the effects of the takeover market. Here, I focus on current aspects of the controversy. My assessment is that the market for corporate control is creating large benefits for shareholders ...

Welfare Cost of Business Cycles with Idiosyncratic Consumption Risk and a Preference for Robustness

By Martin Ellison and Thomas J. Sargent

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2015

The welfare cost of random consumption fluctuations is known from De Santis (2007) to be increasing in the level of uninsured idiosyncratic consumption risk. It is known from Barillas, Hansen, and Sargent (2009) to increase if agents care about robustness...

Do Child Tax Benefits Affect the Well-Being of Children? Evidence from Canadian Child Benefit Expansions

By Kevin Milligan and Mark Stabile

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2011

We exploit changes in child benefits in Canada to study the impact of family income on child and family well-being. Using variation in child benefits across province, time, and family type, we study outcomes spanning test scores, mental health, physical h...

Understanding Bubbly Episodes

By Vasco M. Carvalho, Alberto Martin, and Jaume Ventura

American Economic Review, May 2012

Over the last two decades US aggregate wealth has fluctuated substantially. Against the backdrop of the Great Recession, the effects of these boom-and-bust cycles have come to dominate academic and policy discussions. How can we explain these fluctuations...

Economic Forecasting

By Graham Elliott and Allan Timmermann

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2008

Forecasts guide decisions in all areas of economics and finance and their value can only be understood in relation to, and in the context of, such decisions. We discuss the central role of the loss function in helping determine the forecaster's objectiv...