Macroeconomics after the Crisis: Time to Deal with the Pretense-of-Knowledge Syndrome

[Symposium: Macroeconomics after the Financial Crisis]

By Ricardo J. Caballero

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2010

The recent financial crisis has damaged the reputation of macroeconomics, largely for its inability to predict the impending financial and economic crisis. To be honest, this inability to predict does not concern me much. It is almost tautological that se...

Treasure Islands

[Symposium: Tax Havens]

By James R. Hines Jr.

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2010

In movies and novels, tax havens are often settings for shady international deals; in practice, they are rather less flashy. Tax havens, also known as "offshore financial centers" or "international financial centers," are countries and territories that of...

Shopping for Anonymous Shell Companies: An Audit Study of Anonymity and Crime in the International Financial System

[Symposium: Tax Havens]

By J. C. Sharman

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2010

The last few years have seen an international campaign to ensure that the world's financial and banking systems are "transparent," meaning that every actor and transaction within the system can be traced to a discrete, identifiable individual. I present a...

Activist Fiscal Policy

By Alan J. Auerbach, William G. Gale, and Benjamin H. Harris

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2010

During and after the "Great Recession" that began in December 2007, the U.S. federal government enacted several rounds of activist fiscal policy. In this paper, we review the recent evolution of thinking and evidence regarding the effectiveness of activis...

Catastrophe Economics: The National Flood Insurance Program

By Erwann O. Michel-Kerjan

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2010

Hurricane Betsy, which hit Louisiana September 9, 1965, was one of the most intense, deadly, and costly storms ever to make landfall in the United States: it killed 76 people in Louisiana and caused $1.5 billion in damage—equal to nearly $10 billion...

The Job Market for New Economists: A Market Design Perspective

By Peter Coles, John Cawley, Phillip B. Levine, Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth, and John J. Siegfried

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2010

This paper, written by the members of the American Economic Association (AEA) Ad Hoc Committee on the Job Market, provides an overview of the market for new Ph.D. economists. It describes the role of the AEA in the market and focuses in particular on two ...

Retrospectives: An Early Supply-Side-Demand-Side Controversy: Petty, Law, Cantillon

By John Berdell

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2010

Early modern Europe in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries witnessed an unprecedented increase in the rate of economic growth, and governments entertained a wide range of proposals aimed at developing and harnessing foreign trade and emerg...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2010

Notes

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2010

Index

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2010

Education for Growth: Why and for Whom?

By Alan B. Krueger and Mikael Lindahl

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2001

This paper summarizes and tries to reconcile evidence from the microeconometric and empirical macro growth literatures on the effect of schooling on income and GDP growth. Much microeconometric evidence suggests that education is an important causal deter...

An Early Application of the Average Total Cost Concept

By F. M. Scherer

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2001

Book Reviews

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2001

Financial Contracting

By Oliver Hart

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2001

This paper discusses how economists' views of firms' financial structure decisions have evolved, from treating firms' profitability as given, to acknowledging that managerial actions affect profitability, to recognizing that firm value depends on the allo...

Economics of Alliances: The Lessons for Collective Action

By Todd Sandler and Keith Hartley

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2001

This essay provides an up-to-date summary of the findings of the literature on the economics of alliances. We show that the study of the economics of alliances has played a pivotal role in understanding and applying public good analysis to real-world appl...

The Taxing Task of Taxing Transnationals

By Thomas A. Gresik

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2001

Financial and real investment flexibility, tax competition, and superior economic information by transnationals both create a rationale for corporate income taxation and limit the effectiveness of such taxation. While these factors have led to a variety o...

Official Intervention in the Foreign Exchange Market: Is It Effective and, If So, How Does It Work?

By Lucio Sarno and Mark P. Taylor

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2001

Our paper assesses progress made by the profession in understanding whether and how exchange rate intervention works. We review theory and evidence on official intervention, concentrating primarily on work published in the last decade or so. We conclude t...

Promise and Pitfalls in the Use of "Secondary" Data-Sets: Income Inequality in OECD Countries As a Case Study

By Anthony B. Atkinson and Andrea Brandolini

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2001

This paper examines the role of secondary data-sets in empirical economic research, taking the field of income distribution as a case study. We illustrate problems faced by users of "secondary" statistics, showing how both cross-country comparisons and ti...

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2001

Book Reviews

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2001