Retrospectives: Tragedy of the Commons after 50 Years

By Brett M. Frischmann, Alain Marciano, and Giovanni Battista Ramello

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2019

Garrett Hardin's "The Tragedy of the Commons" (1968) has been incredibly influential generally and within economics, and it remains important despite some historical and conceptual flaws. Hardin focused on the stress population growth inevitably placed ...

The Gender Gap in Undergraduate Economics Course Persistence and Degree Selection

By Laura J. Ahlstrom and Carlos J. Asarta

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2019

This study examines male and female course persistence and choice of economics degree via a combination of student, instructor, and structural characteristics. We find that students of both genders who declare economics as their major are more likely to t...

Differential Privacy and Census Data: Implications for Social and Economic Research

By Steven Ruggles, Catherine Fitch, Diana Magnuson, and Jonathan Schroeder

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2019

The Census Bureau has announced new methods for disclosure control in public use data products. The new approach, known as differential privacy, represents a radical departure from current practice. In its pure form, differential privacy techniques may ma...

Reconciling Results on Racial Differences in Police Shootings

By Roland G. Fryer Jr.

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

Police use of force, particularly lethal force, is one of the most divisive issues of the twenty-first century. To understand the nexus of race, criminal justice, and police brutality, academics and journalists have begun to amass impressive datasets on o...

The Sources of Capital Misallocation

By Joel M. David and Venky Venkateswaran

American Economic Review, July 2019

We develop a methodology to disentangle sources of capital "misallocation," i.e., dispersion in value-added/capital. It measures the contributions of technological/informational frictions and a rich class of firm-specific factors. An application to Chines...

When Nudges Are Forever: Inertia in the Swedish Premium Pension Plan

By Henrik Cronqvist, Richard H. Thaler, and Frank Yu

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

To inform economists and policymakers about whether the effects of nudges are persistent in one specific context, we study the choice architecture of the Swedish Premium Pension Plan. The data we study consist of all initial choices and subsequent rebalan...

Price Discovery in Cryptocurrency Markets

By Igor Makarov and Antoinette Schoar

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2019

We ask which markets drive bitcoin prices and how price discovery happens across different exchanges. Does the greater exuberance for cryptocurrencies outside the United States affect prices only on local markets or does it impact price formation on globa...

Drug Violence, Immigration Enforcement, and Selectivity: Evidence from Mexican Immigrants

By Heriberto Gonzalez-Lozano and Sandra Orozco-Aleman

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2019

We study how drug violence in Mexico and internal immigration enforcement in the United States affect the selectivity of Mexican immigrants. We find that violence is associated with an increase in English proficiency among immigrants. Furthermore, the det...

Return-to-Work Policies and Labor Supply in Disability Insurance Programs

By Arezou Zaresani

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

Return-to-work policies in disability insurance (DI) programs allow beneficiaries to collect a portion of their benefits while working. I investigate whether a large increase in incentives to work in a return-to-work policy could induce benefit recipients...

How Does Household Income Affect Child Personality Traits and Behaviors?

By Randall Akee, William Copeland, E. Jane Costello, and Emilia Simeonova

American Economic Review, March 2018

We examine the effects of a quasi-experimental unconditional household income transfer on child emotional and behavioral health and personality traits. Using longitudinal data, we find that there are large beneficial effects on children's emotional and be...

Retrospectives: Ricardo on Machinery

By Samuel Hollander

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2019

We are currently experiencing an outpouring of concern both popular and professional regarding technological unemployment. I shall be discussing an apparent about-turn on the subject by David Ricardo (1772-1823), who at different times, even in different ...

Incentivizing Better Quality of Care: The Role of Medicaid and Competition in the Nursing Home Industry

By Martin B. Hackmann

American Economic Review, May 2019

This paper develops a model of the nursing home industry to investigate the quality effects of policies that either raise regulated reimbursement rates or increase local competition. Using data from Pennsylvania, I estimate the parameters of the model. Th...

The Impact of College Diversity on Behavior toward Minorities

By Scott E. Carrell, Mark Hoekstra, and James E. West

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2019

This paper estimates the impact of racially diverse peers on white males' subsequent behavior toward minorities. To overcome selection bias, we exploit data from the US Air Force Academy where students are randomly assigned to autonomous peer groups. A ra...

The Impact of Investment Incentives: Evidence from UK Corporation Tax Returns

By Giorgia Maffini, Jing Xing, and Michael P. Devereux

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2019

Using UK corporation tax returns, we provide evidence on the effects of accelerated depreciation allowances on investment, exploiting exogenous changes in the qualifying thresholds for first-year depreciation allowances (FYAs) in 2004. The investment rate...

Charging Ahead: Prepaid Metering, Electricity Use, and Utility Revenue

By Kelsey Jack and Grant Smith

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2020

Monthly bills for services such as electricity often go unpaid in developing countries. Prepaid meters offer a potential technological solution. In Cape Town, South Africa, over 4,000 residential customers on monthly billing were switched to prepaid meter...

Is Populism Necessarily Bad Economics?

By Dani Rodrik

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

I distinguish between political and economic populism. Both are averse to agencies of restraint, or, equivalently, delegation to technocrats or external rules. In the economic domain, delegation to independent agencies (domestic or foreign) occurs in two ...

Optimal Taxation with Behavioral Agents

By Emmanuel Farhi and Xavier Gabaix

American Economic Review, January 2020

This paper develops a theory of optimal taxation with behavioral agents. We use a general framework that encompasses a wide range of biases such as misperceptions and internalities. We revisit the three pillars of optimal taxation: Ramsey (linear commodit...

AEASTAT: 2020 Annual Meeting

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Sessions for AEA Committee on Economic Statistics, 2020 ASSA meetings

Discrimination in Ambient Air Pollution Monitoring?

By Corbett Grainger and Andrew Schreiber

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2019

In the United States, ambient air quality is regulated through National Ambient Air Quality standards (NAAQS). Enforcement of these standards is delegated to state and sub-state regulators who are also tasked with designing their own monitoring networks f...

Economics of the Pharmaceutical Industry

By Darius N. Lakdawalla

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2018

The pharmaceutical industry accounts for a substantial chunk of the US economy's research and development investments, which have resulted in significant medical breakthroughs. At the same time, the costs of pharmaceutical products continue to rise, as do...