A Model of Positive Self-Image in Subjective Assessments

By Luís Santos-Pinto and Joel Sobel

American Economic Review, December 2005

This paper suggests a mechanism that describes individuals' positive self-image in subjective assessments of their relative abilities. The mechanism assumes individuals have heterogeneous production functions that determine ability as a function of multip...

The Efficacy of Information Policy: A Review of Archon Fung, Mary Graham, and David Weil's Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency

By Clifford Winston

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2008

The economics of information has identified an important role for government to correct situations where competition is not sufficient to reveal valuable information to consumers. Archon Fung, Mary Graham, and David Weil's Full Disclosure: The Perils a...

Foreign Students in U.S. Doctoral Programs

By Nahid Aslanbeigui and Veronica Montecinos

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1998

In 1996, foreigners represented over half of the doctoral student population in economics, up from 20 percent in 1972. This article presents a profile of foreign students in economics Ph.D. programs in the United States based on survey and interview data ...

Thirty Years of Prospect Theory in Economics: A Review and Assessment

By Nicholas C. Barberis

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2013

In 1979, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, published a paper in Econometrica titled "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk." The paper presented a new model of risk attitudes called "prospect theory," which elegantly captured the e...

Micro and Macro Labor Supply Elasticities: A Reassessment of Conventional Wisdom

By Michael Keane and Richard Rogerson

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2012

The response of aggregate labor supply to various changes in the economic environment is central to many economic issues, especially the optimal design of tax policies. Conventional wisdom based on studies in the 1980s and 1990s has long held that the ana...

The Economics of the Climate

By Geoffrey Heal

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2017

I review the economic characteristics of the climate problem, focusing on the choice of discount rates in the presence of a stock externality, risk and uncertainty/ambiguity, and the role of integrated assessment models (IAMs) in analyzing policy choices....

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 ...

Linking Numerical and Analytical Models of Carbon Leakage

By Jared C. Carbone

American Economic Review, May 2013

I use an applied general equilibrium model to quantify the influence of a new, theoretical channel for carbon leakage effects, as identified by Fullerton, Karney and Baylis (2012). I first produce parameterizations of the model that generate a close corre...

Reassessing Discretionary Fiscal Policy

[Symposium: Fiscal Policy]

By John B. Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2000

Recent changes in policy research and in policy-making call for a reassessment of countercyclical fiscal policy. Such a reassessment indicates that countercyclical fiscal policy should focus on automatic stabilizers rather than discretionary actions. Mone...

The Economic Impacts of Climate Change: Evidence from Agricultural Output and Random Fluctuations in Weather: Comment

By Anthony C. Fisher, W. Michael Hanemann, Michael J. Roberts, and Wolfram Schlenker

American Economic Review, December 2012

In a series of studies employing a variety of approaches, we have found that the potential impact of climate change on US agriculture is likely negative. Deschênes and Greenstone (2007) report dramatically different results based on regressions of agr...

Behavioral Responses to Wealth Taxes: Evidence from Sweden

By David Seim

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2017

This paper provides an empirical assessment of an annual wealth tax. Using Swedish administrative data, I estimate net-of-tax-rate elasticities of taxable wealth in the range [0.09, 0.27]. Cross-checking self-reported assets against asset data unavailable...

Personalized Risk Assessments in the Criminal Justice System

By Sharad Goel, Justin M. Rao, and Ravi Shroff

American Economic Review, May 2016

In an effort to bring greater efficiency, equity, and transparency to the criminal justice system, statistical risk assessment tools are increasingly used to inform bail, sentencing, and parole decisions. We examine New York City's stop-and-frisk program,...

The Contribution of the Minimum Wage to US Wage Inequality over Three Decades: A Reassessment

By David H. Autor, Alan Manning, and Christopher L. Smith

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2016

We reassess the effect of minimum wages on US earnings inequality using additional decades of data and an IV strategy that addresses potential biases in prior work. We find that the minimum wage reduces inequality in the lower tail of the wage distributio...

Economic Liberalization and Indian Economic Growth: What's the Evidence?

By Ashok Kotwal, Bharat Ramaswami, and Wilima Wadhwa

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2011

India's growth and poverty performance over the last three decades has been a subject of great curiosity. Unlike the East Asian countries, India's growth spurt is not associated with exceptionally high domestic savings or foreign capital inflows or manufa...

Health and Schooling Investments in Africa

[Symposium: Slow Growth in Africa]

By T. Paul Schultz

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1999

Intercountry comparisons show Africa's health and education falls short of other regions, controlling for income, women's educations, and urbanization, but growth regressions do not clarify whether this low human capital caused slow growth. Microeconometr...

The Economic Importance of Financial Literacy: Theory and Evidence

By Annamaria Lusardi and Olivia S. Mitchell

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2014

This paper undertakes an assessment of a rapidly growing body of economic research on financial literacy. We start with an overview of theoretical research, which casts financial knowledge as a form of investment in human capital. Endogenizing financial k...

Ontology, Methodological Individualism, and the Foundations of the Social Sciences

By Robert Sugden

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2016

This is a review essay based on a critical assessment of The Ant Trap: Rebuilding the Foundations of the Social Sciences by Brian Epstein. Epstein argues that models in the social sciences are inadequate because they are based on a false ontology o...

How Much Would You Pay to Resolve Long-Run Risk?

By Larry G. Epstein, Emmanuel Farhi, and Tomasz Strzalecki

American Economic Review, September 2014

Though risk aversion and the elasticity of intertemporal substitution have been the subjects of careful scrutiny, the long-run risks literature as well as the broader literature using recursive utility to address asset pricing puzzles have ignored the ful...

A Potential Disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet: Implications for Economic Analyses of Climate Policy

By Delavane Diaz and Klaus Keller

American Economic Review, May 2016

The Earth system may react in a nonlinear threshold response to climate forcings. Incorporating threshold responses into integrated assessment models (IAMs) used for climate policy analysis poses nontrivial challenges, for example due to methodological li...

School Vouchers: A Survey of the Economics Literature

By Dennis Epple, Richard E. Romano, and Miguel Urquiola

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2017

We review the theoretical, computational, and empirical research on school vouchers, with a focus on the latter. Our assessment is that the evidence to date is not sufficient to warrant recommending that vouchers be adopted on a widespread basis; howe...