The Economics of Fatherhood

By Robert J. Willis

American Economic Review, May 2000

Too Big to Fail before the Fed

By Gary Gorton and Ellis W. Tallman

American Economic Review, May 2016

"Too-big-to-fail" is consistent with policies followed by private bank clearing houses during financial crises in the U.S. National Banking Era prior to the existence of the Federal Reserve System. Private bank clearing houses provided emergency lending t...

The Education-Health Gradient

By Gabriella Conti, James Heckman, and Sergio Urzua

American Economic Review, May 2010

Exploring the Impact of Financial Incentives on Stereotype Threat: Evidence from a Pilot Study

By Roland G. Fryer Jr., Steven D. Levitt, and John A. List

American Economic Review, May 2008

Do Schools Matter for High Math Achievement? Evidence from the American Mathematics Competitions

By Glenn Ellison and Ashley Swanson

American Economic Review, June 2016

This paper uses data from the American Mathematics Competitions to examine the rates at which different high schools produce high-achieving math students. There are large differences in the frequency with which students from seemingly similar schools reac...

Report of the Editor: American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics

By John Leahy

American Economic Review, May 2013

A Test of Racial Bias in Capital Sentencing

By Alberto Alesina and Eliana La Ferrara

American Economic Review, November 2014

We collect a new dataset on capital punishment in the US and we propose a test of racial bias based upon patterns of sentence reversals. We model the courts as minimizing type I and II errors. If trial courts were unbiased, conditional on defendants race...

Present Bias and Collective Dynamic Choice in the Lab

By Matthew O. Jackson and Leeat Yariv

American Economic Review, December 2014

We study collective decisions by time-discounting individuals choosing a common consumption stream. We show that with any heterogeneity in time preferences, utilitarian aggregation necessitates a present bias. In lab experiments three quarters of "soci...

The Market for Charitable Giving

By John A. List

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2011

Through good and bad economic times, charitable gifts have continued to roll in largely unabated over the past half century. In a typical year, total charitable gifts of money now exceed 2 percent of gross domestic product. Moreover, charitable giving has...

Can Information Heterogeneity Explain the Exchange Rate Determination Puzzle?

By Philippe Bacchetta and Eric Van Wincoop

American Economic Review, June 2006

Empirical evidence shows that most exchange rate volatility at short to medium horizons is related to order flow and not to macroeconomic variables. We introduce symmetric information dispersion about future macroeconomic fundamentals in a dynamic rati...

The Housing Market(s) of San Diego

By Tim Landvoigt, Monika Piazzesi, and Martin Schneider

American Economic Review, April 2015

This paper uses an assignment model to understand the cross section of house prices within a metro area. Movers' demand for housing is derived from a life-cycle problem with credit market frictions. Equilibrium house prices adjust to assign houses that di...

Puzzles: Penny Stocks, Discount Brokers, Better Bidding, and More

By Barry Nalebuff

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1988

In presenting economic puzzles, I have three goals in mind: some puzzles are chosen to stimulate research; others offer examples that will help undergraduate and graduate teaching; all should provide quality distractions during seminars. This feature begi...

Explaining the Evolution of Educational Attainment in the United States

By Rui Castro and Daniele Coen-Pirani

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, July 2016

We study the evolution of educational attainment of the 1932-1972 cohorts using a human capital investment model with heterogeneous learning ability. Inter-cohort variation in schooling is driven by changes in skill prices, tuition, and education quality ...

The Use of Full-Line Forcing Contracts in the Video Rental Industry

By Katherine Ho, Justin Ho, and Julie Holland Mortimer

American Economic Review, April 2012

Bundling is at the forefront of many policy debates as new technologies allow firms to implement more complex bundling arrangements. Realistic analyses of bundling—particularly between suppliers and retailers—require detailed data on both sup...

Price Subsidies, Diagnostic Tests, and Targeting of Malaria Treatment: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial

By Jessica Cohen, Pascaline Dupas, and Simone Schaner

American Economic Review, February 2015

Both under- and over-treatment of communicable diseases are public bads. But efforts to decrease one run the risk of increasing the other. Using rich experimental data on household treatment- seeking behavior in Kenya, we study the implications of this...

Team Contests with Multiple Pairwise Battles

By Qiang Fu, Jingfeng Lu, and Yue Pan

American Economic Review, July 2015

We consider a multi-battle team contest in which players from two rival teams form pairwise matches to fight in distinct component battles, which are carried out sequentially or (partially) simultaneously. A team wins if and only if its players win a majo...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2012

What Explains the Gender Gap in College Track Dropout? Experimental and Administrative Evidence

By Ingvild Almås, Alexander W. Cappelen, Kjell G. Salvanes, Erik Ø. Sørensen, and Bertil Tungodden

American Economic Review, May 2016

We exploit a unique data set, combining rich experimental data with high-quality administrative data, to study dropout from the college track in Norway, and why boys are more likely to drop out. The paper provides three main findings. First, we show that ...

Commodity Prices and Growth in Africa

[Symposium: Slow Growth in Africa]

By Angus Deaton

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1999

African states that came to independence by the late 1960s made a rapid transition to authoritarian rule during a period of reasonably robust growth. Growth then faltered badly from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s as these regimes coped with external shock...

Information Aggregation in Polls

By John Morgan and Phillip C. Stocken

American Economic Review, June 2008

We study information transmission via polling. A policymaker polls constituents, who differ in their information and ideology, to determine policy. Full revelation is an equilibrium in a poll with a small sample, but not with a large one. In large poll...