Teamwork as a Self-Disciplining Device

By Matthias Fahn and Hendrik Hakenes

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2019

We show that team formation can serve as an implicit commitment device to overcome problems of self-control. If individuals have present-biased preferences, effort that is costly today but rewarded at some later point in time is too low from the perspecti...

Do Credit Market Shocks Affect the Real Economy? Quasi-experimental Evidence from the Great Recession and "Normal" Economic Times

By Michael Greenstone, Alexandre Mas, and Hoai-Luu Nguyen

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2020

Using comprehensive data on bank lending and establishment-level outcomes from 1997–2010, this paper finds that small business lending is an unimportant determinant of small business and overall economic activity. A shift-share style research design is ...

Missing Growth from Creative Destruction

By Philippe Aghion, Antonin Bergeaud, Timo Boppart, Peter J. Klenow, and Huiyu Li

American Economic Review, August 2019

For exiting products, statistical agencies often impute inflation from surviving products. This understates growth if creatively-destroyed products improve more than surviving ones. If so, then the market share of surviving products should systematically ...

Physician Beliefs and Patient Preferences: A New Look at Regional Variation in Health Care Spending

By David Cutler, Jonathan S. Skinner, Ariel Dora Stern, and David Wennberg

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2019

There is considerable controversy about the causes of regional variations in health care expenditures. Using vignettes from patient and physician surveys linked to fee-for-service Medicare expenditures, this study asks whether patient demand-side factors ...

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2018

The Violent Consequences of Trade-Induced Worker Displacement in Mexico

By Melissa Dell, Benjamin Feigenberg, and Kensuke Teshima

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2019

Mexican manufacturing job loss induced by competition with China increases cocaine trafficking and violence, particularly in municipalities with transnational criminal organizations. When it becomes more lucrative to traffic drugs because changes in local...

Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican Bracero Exclusion

By Michael A. Clemens, Ethan G. Lewis, and Hannah M. Postel

American Economic Review, June 2018

An important class of active labor market policy has received little impact evaluation: immigration barriers intended to raise wages and employment by shrinking labor supply. Theories of endogenous technical advance raise the possibility of limited or eve...

Labor Supply and the Value of Non-work Time: Experimental Estimates from the Field

By Alexandre Mas and Amanda Pallais

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2019

We estimate the marginal value of non-work time (MVT) using a field experiment. We offered job applicants randomized wage-hour bundles. Choices over these bundles yield estimates of the MVT as a function of hours, tracing out a labor supply relationship. ...

Leader Selection and Service Delivery in Community Groups: Experimental Evidence from Uganda

By Erika Deserranno, Miri Stryjan, and Munshi Sulaiman

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2019

In developing countries, NGOs and governments often rely on local groups for the delivery of financial and public services. This paper studies how the design of rules used for group leader selection affects leader identity and shapes service delivery. To ...

Capital Cities, Conflict, and Misgovernance

By Filipe R. Campante, Quoc-Anh Do, and Bernardo Guimaraes

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2019

We investigate the links between capital cities, conflict, and the quality of governance, starting from the assumption that incumbent elites are constrained by the threat of insurrection, and that the latter is rendered less effective by distance from the...

Climate Change: The Ultimate Challenge for Economics

By William Nordhaus

American Economic Review, June 2019

The Culture of Overconfidence

By V. Bhaskar and Caroline Thomas

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2019

Perceptions of overconfidence can exacerbate the tendency of reputationally concerned leaders to continue bad projects. Reputation concerns alone induce a bias toward inefficient continuation in a leader receiving information privately. When she is overco...

Can We Control Carbon Dioxide? (From 1975)

By William Nordhaus

American Economic Review, June 2019

Asymmetric Information and Imperfect Competition in Lending Markets

By Gregory S. Crawford, Nicola Pavanini, and Fabiano Schivardi

American Economic Review, July 2018

We study the effects of asymmetric information and imperfect competition in the market for small business lines of credit. We estimate a structural model of credit demand, loan use, pricing, and firm default using matched firm-bank data from Italy. We fin...

Do Immigrants Assimilate More Slowly Today Than in the Past?

By Ran Abramitzky, Leah Boustan, and Katherine Eriksson

American Economic Review: Insights, March 2020

Using millions of historical census records and modern birth certificates, we document that immigrants assimilated into US society at similar rates in the past and present. We measure cultural assimilation as immigrants giving their children less foreign ...

Unity in Diversity? How Intergroup Contact Can Foster Nation Building

By Samuel Bazzi, Arya Gaduh, Alexander D. Rothenberg, and Maisy Wong

American Economic Review, November 2019

We use a population resettlement program in Indonesia to identify long-run effects of intergroup contact on national integration. In the 1980s, the government relocated two million ethnically diverse migrants into hundreds of new communities. We find grea...

Occupations and Import Competition: Evidence from Denmark

By Sharon Traiberman

American Economic Review, December 2019

I argue that the winners and losers from trade are decided primarily by occupation. In addition to fixed adjustment costs, workers build up specific human capital over time that is destroyed when they must change occupations. I show that ignoring human ca...

Sovereign Debt and Structural Reforms

By Andreas Müller, Kjetil Storesletten, and Fabrizio Zilibotti

American Economic Review, December 2019

We construct a dynamic theory of sovereign debt and structural reforms with limited enforcement and moral hazard. A sovereign country in recession wishes to smooth consumption. It can also undertake costly reforms to speed up recovery. The sovereign can r...

An Event Long-Short Index: Theory and Applications

By Raymond Fisman and Eric Zitzewitz

American Economic Review: Insights, December 2019

We propose a stock market-based measure to capture initial beliefs about an event's effect on firm profits, which may be used to measure whether initial expectations are subsequently realized. Our "Event Long-Short Index" is the difference in market-capit...

Book Reviews

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2019