Macroeconomic Modeling for Monetary Policy Evaluation

[Symposium: Monetary Policy]

By Jordi Galí and Mark Gertler

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2007

We describe some of the main features of the recent vintage of macroeconomic models used for monetary policy evaluation. We point to some of the key differences with respect to the earlier generation of macro models and highlight the insights for policy t...

How the World Achieved Consensus on Monetary Policy

[Symposium: Monetary Policy]

By Marvin Goodfriend

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2007

The worldwide progress in monetary policy is a great achievement and, especially considering the situation 30 years ago, a remarkable success story. I describe how the world achieved a working consensus on the core principles of monetary policy by the lat...

The Evolution of Central Bank Governance around the World

[Symposium: Monetary Policy]

By Christopher Crowe and Ellen E. Meade

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2007

The past two decades have seen enormous changes in central banks and their practices. In some countries, older institutions have been fundamentally restructured. In other, such as the countries of the former Soviet Union, entirely new central banks have b...

Personnel Economics: The Economist's View of Human Resources

[Symposium: Human Resource Management]

By Edward P. Lazear and Kathryn L. Shaw

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2007

Personnel economics drills deeply into the firm to study human resource management practices like compensation, hiring practices, training, and teamwork. Why should pay vary across workers within firms -- and how "compressed" should pay be within firms? ...

Human Resources from an Organizational Behavior Perspective: Some Paradoxes Explained

[Symposium: Human Resource Management]

By Jeffrey Pfeffer

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2007

Workplaces in America and elsewhere show pervasive job dissatisfaction, distrust, and disengagement, with the evidence suggesting that these problems are getting worse and have a number of negative consequences for employers as well as employees. What fol...

Paying Respect

[Symposium: Human Resource Management]

By Tore Ellingsen and Magnus Johannesson

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2007

Why do people work? Economic theory generally, and the principal-agent model specifically, emphasize the role of material incentives. But many academics, for example, work diligently year after year for a nearly fixed real salary, continuing to work hard ...

The Economics of Dowry and Brideprice

By Siwan Anderson

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2007

Payments between families at the time of marriage have existed throughout the history of most developed countries and are currently pervasive in many areas of the developing world. These payments can be substantial enough to affect the welfare of women an...

Bankruptcy Reform and Credit Cards

By Michelle J. White

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2007

From 1980 to 2004, the number of personal bankruptcy filings in the United States increased more than five-fold, from 288,000 to 1.5 million per year. By 2004, more Americans were filing for bankruptcy each year than were graduating from college, getting ...

Markets: Preserving Funeral Markets with Ready-to-Embalm Laws

By David E. Harrington

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2007

Thirty-nine states currently have ready-to-embalm laws, which typically require that all firms selling any type of funeral service (even those specializing in cremations) have embalming preparation rooms and all funeral directors be trained as embalmers....

Retrospectives: Léon Walras and the Nobel Peace Prize

By Agnar Sandmo

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2007

This paper is an account of the history of Léon Walras's attempt to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1906. It describes Walras's moves to get three of his Lausanne colleagues to nominate him for the prize, the arguments advanced in the proposal...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2007

Corrections

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2007

Notes

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2007

Index by Author to Volume 21

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2007

Life-Cycle Prices and Production

By Mark Aguiar and Erik Hurst

American Economic Review, December 2007

We use scanner data and time diaries to document how households substitute time for money through shopping and home production. We document substantial heterogeneity in prices paid for identical goods for the same area and time, with older households s...

Theft, Gift-Giving, and Trustworthiness: Honesty Is Its Own Reward in Rural Paraguay

By Laura Schechter

American Economic Review, December 2007

In developing countries lacking legal enforcement, villagers may use implicit contracts to minimize crime. I construct a dynamic limited-commitment model, in which a thief cannot commit to forego stealing, but is induced to steal less by the promise of ...

Child Protection and Child Outcomes: Measuring the Effects of Foster Care

By Joseph J. Doyle Jr.

American Economic Review, December 2007

Little is known about the effects of placing children who are abused or neglected into foster care. This paper uses the placement tendency of child protection investigators as an instrumental variable to identify causal effects of foster care on long-te...

Trade Liberalization, Intermediate Inputs, and Productivity: Evidence from Indonesia

By Mary Amiti and Jozef Konings

American Economic Review, December 2007

This paper estimates the productivity gains from reducing tariffs on final goods and from reducing tariffs on intermediate inputs. Lower output tariffs can increase productivity by inducing tougher import competition, whereas cheaper imported inputs ca...

Establishment Size Dynamics in the Aggregate Economy

By Esteban Rossi-Hansberg and Mark L. J. Wright

American Economic Review, December 2007

This paper presents a theory of establishment size dynamics based on the accumulation of industry-specific human capital that simultaneously rationalizes the economy- wide facts on establishment growth rates, exit rates, and size distributions. The the...

Demographics and Industry Returns

By Stefano DellaVigna and Joshua M. Pollet

American Economic Review, December 2007

How do investors respond to predictable shifts in profitability? We consider how demographic shifts affect profits and returns across industries. Cohort size fluctuations produce forecastable demand changes for age-sensitive sectors, such as toys, bicy...